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 1920x1200.

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 saving of the Sapphire Vapor-X when idle is likely due to the more advanced VRMs and the lower RPM fan.

Under load, these factors become more evident - the Vapor-X has an extra 1GB of memory to power and yet only consumes 13W more than the reference card. It helps that the fan of the Vapor-X never has to blow particularly hard to dissipate the heat from the vapour chamber cooler.