Power Consumption (Idle and Gaming)

We tested the power consumption with a Watts Up? Pro power meter, using the device to record the total system power consumption at the wall socket, while we ran three sets of four runs of Crysis in DX10 at 1,920 x 1,200.

Using the data recorded by the meter we could determine the peak output, the consistent minimum and the average load over the entire run of tests.

As both ATI and Nvidia test benches are now identical Core i7 systems, we can accurately determine the apples to apples difference of what power both PCs take to run.



The power consumption of all the HD 4770s on test is impressive. Its 40nm manufacturing process resulted in a total system power draw of 171W at idle and 239W at load for the XFX ATI Radeon HD 4770 512MB. At load this is 7W less than the ATI Radeon HD 4830 512MB which drew 246 and 29W less than the next rival, the XFX GeForce 9600 GSO XXX Edition 384MB which drew 268W.