Testing (continued):

Power Consumption:

Power consumption testing involved the use of an AC power monitor (a Seasonic Power Angel) to monitor the AC Wattage drawn by the test system. Since all hardware other than the graphics card remained the same from test to test, any change in the power reading can be attributed to the demand of the graphics card. Idle conditions were established by letting the system sit at the Windows desktop until a stable value was achieved, and for load testing 3DMark Vantage was executed two times back-to-back.



For idle condition testing we see that the HD6870 is the most energy efficient, besting the HD5870 by 3 Watts, and the HD5850 by 10 Watts.



Under a load, the HD6870 really shines, drawing 54 Watts less than the HD5870, and 55 Watts less than the HD5850. That makes the HD6870 roughly 19% more energy efficient than either HD5000 series card, which is a sizable power savings that could translate to slight savings on your electric bill.