7970 Power Draw

[hammerforged]

Just read the reivew of the Asus 7970 on Hardocp. I noticed the power draw of the system under full load of an overclocked card was 607 watts. Im running an overclocked 2600K at 4.6ghz and I have a 650watt corsair power supply. Is this going to be enough to handle a 7970? Didnt realize the power consumption got that high with an overclock. Kind of worried about needing to upgrade power supplies now. Any thoughts?

http://hardocp.com/article/2012/01/25/asus_radeon_hd_7970_video_card_review/8

 

[tunatime]

You should be fine thats at the wall load if i rember right so at 600 at the wall you might pull 550 form the psu

 

[eclypse]

Try it out.. if your system powers off under load or playing a game, time to get a 750-1000WATT P/S. Usually its smart to get a little higher P/S then needed. You dont want to stress the crap out of a P/S runing it near its max all the time.

 

[haste]

My APC unit is telling me my rig is pulling 550w while playing Dirt 3. this is with 3 1080p monitors and a logitech g27 all plugged into it. 7970 clocks maxed out in CCC at 1125/1575. rig in sig.

i think you'll be fine, op.

 

[hammerforged]

Thanks for the replies. I love the low power draw of the card during idle, very impressive. I know that a bigger power supply may be in my future but its a lot of extra cost on top of a new card. Thankfully my current power supply is modular.

 

[Sufu]

3x OC 7970 on a Core i7 @ 4Ghz and I was just pulling 1kw from the wall

 

[eclypse]

All depends on the load.. I've noticed in 3Dmark Vantage that in the last very test pulls the most wattage.. almost a 100 watts more then the other tests.

As i said.. if the PC ever powers off durring load.. time to buy a bigger P/S.

BTW.. I have 2x Ultra X4 1600WATT P/Ss in 1200watt mod each. I recently tested each P/S draw with my Kill-A-Watt. The power supply that had the MB/CPU (990x at 4.7Ghz),and 2 GTX580s (stock) pulled around 6-700 watts durring vantage and the other P/S that had 2 GTX580s and 6 pumps and 40 fans and 5 HDDs pulled around 8-900 watts for the same test.

 

[allen1090]

It should be fine, I'm running a very similar system to you and have a 7970 with a corsair 650w

 

[Yoda4561]

From the review

" The entire testing system, excluding the speakers and monitor, are plugged into the Kill-A-Watt device. Therefore, power consumption numbers include all components, not just the video card. For this process, we played through the entire testing level while watching the Kill-A-Watt, and then recorded the highest number we saw during the test "



Disregarding the innacuracies from the kill-a watt used, that would mean the power supply had to provide about 550 watts, within the capabilies of a high quality 600 watt unit.

 

[buttons]

My system draws 408 watts under load from my three GPUs (6550, 7970,5870) but cpu idle. these 7970 undervolt like crazy! running mine at .93V from 1.175V

 

[strwrsxprt]

According to my Kill-A-Watt, my system (just the computer) pulls ~80W idle, and ~340W overclocked and playing BF3. When my 7970 wasn't overclocked, my Kill-A-Watt only reported ~270W while playing BF3. That seems low compared to other reviews I've seen, so maybe my Kill-A-Watt isn't reporting correctly?

This is a mini-ITX 2600k and Sapphire 7970 @ 1200/1600.

 

[eclypse]

According to my Kill-A-Watt, my system (just the computer) pulls ~80W idle, and ~340W overclocked and playing BF3. When my 7970 wasn't overclocked, my Kill-A-Watt only reported ~270W while playing BF3. That seems low compared to other reviews I've seen, so maybe my Kill-A-Watt isn't reporting correctly?

This is a mini-ITX 2600k and Sapphire 7970 @ 1200/1600.

Yeah you prob have it on the wrong setting.. make sure its on WATTS.

 

[Sweetleader]

So far I've seen my system max out at around 430W at the wall with a Kill-a-watt. Rig in sig. It seems kinda low but I guess I can't complain. Means I can probably run a 7990+7970 on this 860W fine.