Power Consumption (Idle and Gaming)

In order to get an idea of a GPU's real world power draw, we run our Crysis 3 2,560 x 1,600 benchmark, which is currently our toughest single screen GPU test. We use a watt meter to measure the maximum total system power draw during the test, and also take an idle reading at the Windows desktop (2,560 x 1,600).

Thermal Performance (Idle and Gaming)

Thermal output is measured using Unigine's free Heaven 3.0 benchmark, as its DirectX 11 features will stress all parts of a modern GPU. We leave all GPU fan profiles and settings as they come. We use the default Unigine settings with a resolution of 2,560 x 1,600 and leave the benchmark running for ten minutes so that temperatures plateau. We record the peak GPU temperature using GPU-Z, and present the data as the delta T (the difference between the GPU temperature and the ambient temperature in our labs). We also take an idle reading at the Windows desktop (2,560 x 1,600).



*As there is no stock model of the AMD Radeon HD 7850 2GB, and we do not have stock samples of the AMD Radeon HD 7790 1GB or AMD Radeon R9 280X, they cannot be included in the thermal performance graphs