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6950 power consumption figures.

MikeHiow

MikeHiow

MikeHiow

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System in my sig, GPU at 1.2v and CPU at 1.37v under load - these figures are total consumption and output figures assume a conservative 80% efficiency in my PSU (CX500, which is 80 rated).

Figures in: input/output

CPU idle(ish*): 82/65w
CPU 100% load (p95): 204/163w
CPU 100% load + GPU 100% load (Furmark): 395/315w

Which gives around 152w for the GPU at 0.1v over stock. Quite impressive, I'd say, and would mean you could technically run two 6950s in crossfire on a 500w PSU (although, I probably wouldn't recommend it).

This also demonstrates just how power efficient SB processors are. 82w idle is ridiculously low. That is around 31p a day or £8.82 a month to keep it running idle - it's hardly worth switching it off, ever.

* IM, Steam, Firefox running
 
Last edited:
MikeHiow said:
System in my sig, GPU at 1.2v and CPU at 1.37v under load - these figures are total consumption and output figures assume a conservative 80% efficiency in my PSU (CX500, which is 80 rated).

Figures in: input/output

CPU idle(ish*): 82/65w
CPU 100% load (p95): 204/163w
CPU 100% load + GPU 100% load (Furmark): 395/315w

Which gives around 152w for the GPU at 0.1v over stock. Quite impressive, I'd say, and would mean you could technically run two 6950s in crossfire on a 500w PSU (although, I probably wouldn't recommend it).

This also demonstrates just how power efficient SB processors are. 82w idle is ridiculously low. That is around 31p a day or £8.82 a month to keep it running idle - it's hardly worth switching it off, ever.

* IM, Steam, Firefox running
Click to expand...

Are theses figures measured at the wall socket using a power monitor or are they just estimates?
 
I'm really surprised that the CPU's that efficient. Very impressive!

With Intel & ATI(AMD), it seems that you'd hardly need to buy more than a 650 PSU :D
 
I'm suprised you are running all that on a CX500, I nearly bought one last night for a spare machine I am building until I discovered it only delivers 34A on the 12v rail. Corsair themselves say:

The Builder Series CX500 delivers the power needed for medium specification home or office PCs that do not have high numbers of components
Click to expand...

It seemed to be a really quite basic PSU for day to day office machines.
 
Going by the above information, a decent 600-650w power supply would be more than ample. Just check a decent portion of that is the 12v rail rating.
 
MikeHiow said:
34A is sufficient.

And yes, all of the above was measured with a power meter.
Click to expand...

Suprised, heck even my GTX 280 required more than that on the 12v rail. I'm not going to turn this into PSU hysteria like other threads full of people recommending upgrades to perfectly good PSU's but the difference here is that you appear to have purchased a low end system builder PSU in the first place, what an odd thing to do?
 
I bought it in the summer to run a cheap C2D/4890 build and simply saw no reason to upgrade it when going to SB - as the above figures show, it's perfectly capable of running the machine.
 
How did you come to the conclusion it was unable to power it?

That PSU appears to have two 18A 12V rails? Are you sure you had the graphics card on its own rail? How old was the PSU?

The other thing to consider is that Sandybridge is very good with power - if you had a power hungry CPU, this could also contribute towards any issues you had.
 
PSU was less than a year old and I was just using the only PCI-E connector it comes with. The fan on the 6950 would spin however no display on my monitor. CPU was a phenom II dual core.

After trying a corsair 750hx, it worked fine.
 
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