Does Eyefinity draw more power? Recording power consumption?

[Kalith]

Hi all,

I've just got hold of a new ATI 5870 and have it all connected up and running. I was a little worried originally as the specifications for this card suggested a 500W power supply. Mines is a 550W and only had one 6-pin PCI connector; so I've had to use the Two molex to One 6-pin adapter. Crysis on max settings levels out the GPU temp at 65 degrees with 60% fan speed. No blue screens yet...

I was wondering if there was a way of recording what utilization of Watts my power supply is at under heavy usage like this though. It would be nice to see if I'm within a comfortable margin or if I'm pushing my luck.

It think it would also be handy to know as I'm looking to upgrade to an eyefinity 3x1 setup in the near future.

Does anyone know whether the power requirements for a 3 monitor setup are considerably more or not? The monitors will obviously be plugged into the mains but I'm guessing the GPU is going to need more power to push out the graphics to two extra monitors? Not an expert on PSU's as you can tell

 

[EsaT]

Maybe 120-130W avg. in Crysis. (Furmark can go 50+W higher)
And it doesn't go up no matter how many monitors you have because card just doesn't get any extra processing power available for every new monitor.

Total load on PSU really depens on as much about other components.
That rig in my sig gets just to 300W load on PSU when playing Crysis/Warheads.

 

[Kalith]

Ahhh cheers, that's good to know. I'm probably gonna save a log of the GPU temp / fan stats over sustained use, i.e. more than 20 mins and make sure there's deffo no problems. If extra monitors don't draw extra power from the PSU though, then I'll probably just keep the one I've got and focus on buying those two extra screens.

Regards,
Kalith

 

[scrlk]

If you can afford Eyefinity, I think you can afford 3 displays . Wish I was that lucky.