Less Power used with AA, How ?

[wolf2009]

I'm testing power draw with furmark with a Kill-A-Watt meter

Without AA - 235W

With 8AA - 215W

How can that be ? doesn't AA use more of the GPU ?

 

[vengence]

magic.

 

[pigwalk]

Office Magic?

 

[Raap]

Well, isn't it possible that when using AA certain parts of the card will create a bottleneck for other parts, thus lowering those other parts' power usage?

 

[Brent_Justice]

Your AA setting is too high creating a bottleneck, i.e., the shaders cannot work full tilt because you are memory bottlenecking the card. Reduce to 2X AA and you'll find the highest power numbers you can get.