X-bit labs

Faster, Quieter, Lower: Power Consumption and Noise Level of Contemporary Graphics Cards

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Anton Shilov, Yaroslav Lyssenko

[ 07/30/2006 | 02:54 PM ]

It is no secret that as the contemporary graphics cards get more powerful and hence require better quality power supply units and more efficient cooling systems. Power consumption and the level of generated noise very often become other important criteria besides performance and image quality when one is shopping for a graphics accelerator. Today we will try to find out what VGA cooling solutions are the quietest and the loudest ones, and what contemporary graphics cards can be called the most economical from the power consumption standpoint.

Table of contents:

• Cards We Play With
  
• Power Consumption Measurements: Testbed and Methods
  
• Noise Level: Testbed and Methods
  
• Premium Graphics Cards
  
• Power Consumption
  
• Noise Level
  
• High-End Graphics Cards
  
• Power Consumption
  
• Noise Level
  
• Performance-Mainstream Graphics Cards
  
• Power Consumption
  
• Noise Level
  
• Mainstream Graphics Cards
  
• Power Consumption
  
• Noise Level
  
• Entry-Level Graphics Cards
  
• Power Consumption
  
• Noise Level
  
• Conclusion
  
• Power Consumption
  
• Noise Level
  

About half a year ago we last performed a comparative test of power consumption of graphics cards (for details see our article called The Grand Clash for Watts: Power Consumption of Modern Graphics Cards). A lot of new exciting products that set new performance records have been released since then. We now pay more attention to the noise characteristics of graphics cards because their ever-growing power consumption calls for more and more complex cooling systems with faster and louder fans.

Fortunately, cooling technologies have also been developing theoretically as well as practically, so we do hope that despite the growing appetites ordinary PCs won’t reach the noise level of a vacuum cleaner or a hair-drier.

For example, a few years ago they used to make thick-ribbed and large heatsinks from ordinary anodized aluminum and capped them with high-speed fans to improve cooling efficiency. Today, passive coolers with thin ribs, copper bases, heat pipes and combinations of the mentioned technologies are getting widespread. And so, the increasing power consumption of graphics processors shouldn’t make computers much noisier.

The downside of this growing complexity of cooling systems is that the manufacturers sometimes try to reduce the cost of a product by installing something simpler and cheaper on it. As a result, a graphics card with low power consumption may prove to be rather noisy at work.

In this article we will examine the power consumption of present-day graphics cards and will also check how noisy they are.

Cards We Play With

So, power consumption is indeed an important factor, but not the decisive one. Besides pure performance and desired architectural features, one has to pay attention to a whole lot of other physical factors like those we mentioned in our previous article on this topic. Here they are:

• Noise level
• Control over the cooler’s fan
• Interfaces supported (dual-link DVI, composite, etc)
• Power consumption in idle mode
• Power consumption in Peak 2D and Low-power 3D modes
• Power consumption in 3D mode
• Peak power consumption
• Dimensions (length, width and height of the cooling system)
• Weight
• Additional power connectors

In this review we focus mostly on power consumption in various operating modes and on the level of noise, but we will keep this list in our mind and stress any good or bad points of a particular product according to it.