Power Consumption

On top of our graphics performance testing, we’ve also measured the power consumption of the tested graphics card at both idle and load. For this we used the same systems that we have used for our 3D performance testing.

For our idle testing, we left the cards idling on the desktop for ten minutes, recording the average draw at the wall socket. For load testing, we used our benchmark routine from Crysis in DirectX 10 mode and measured the peak power consumption throughout the benchmark. We tested the cards in a number of other scenarios and this proved to be the most intensive in all cases, so you can consider this to be a worst-case scenario.

Bear in mind that we have disabled all CPU-related power management options in the motherboard's BIOS so that we can highlight exactly how well the GPU's power management features are working (or not).



The 4850 has made a name for itself as an electricity bill friendly card, and the Powercolor Radeon HD 4850 PCS+ continues this trend, despite being a little thirstier than the stock 4850. At idle the Powercolor Radeon HD 4850 PCS+ consumes just three watts more than the stock 4850, most likely due to its larger cooling fan and slightly higher core clock, and at load the difference between the cards is six watts - again, hardly a bill breaking increase and justified by the improve cooling solution and higher core clock.