2900XT - More or Less Power?

[meh]

I'm getting mixed messages here. In this site's review, it says the 2900XT uses less power than the GTX, while other sites says it uses more and almost as much as the GTX Ultra. Which is true?

 

[jaguarskx]

I tend to trust Xbitlab.com's power consumption measurements for both CPU and GPUs.

Here's a link to a GPU power consumption article:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/r600-architecture_14.html

As you can see from the above chart the 2900XT uses about 30w more than the 8800GTX. This does not come as a surprise since over the past several years ATI cards have used more power than their nVidia counterparts.

 

[meh]

Wow that's crazy then.. really I don't know what to think. I can get the 2900XT for half off MSRP because my friend works at ATI, but I'm not sure I want it for less performance at higher power needs and louder card.

 

[jaguarskx]

The lower performance is mostly due to driver issues. I think the nVidia 8800 series had a similar issue when they first came out.

 

[jusomdude]

I'd deffinetely get it at half price. I guess that's not sayin much since I got it at full price though Mine is actually more quite than the x1800xt I was using. Both are sapphire cards. I don't think the power usage is that big of an issue if you got the psu to support it. What's a few more bucks a month? I kinda am a fan of ati but I have an nvidia card in my second spare part computer. I might have bought an nvidia card if I didn't need to buy a new motherboard and reinstall my OS's and everything along with it.