Power Consumption

We measured the power consumption of the ATI Radeon HD 2900 Pro (we emulated it by lowering the frequencies of a Radeon HD 2900 XT) using a special testbed with a modified Intel Desktop Board D925XCV equipped with measuring shunts. In 3D mode the cards were loaded by the first SM3.0/HDR test from the 3DMark06 suite running in a loop at 1600x1200 with 4x FSAA and 16x AF. The Peak 2D mode was emulated by means of the 2D Transparent Windows test from PCMark05. We got the following results:

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So, the ATI Radeon HD 2900 Pro consumes about the same amount of power as the senior model. The 8-pin connector supplies most power in 3D mode while the other channels have moderate load. The new card requires about 30W less in 3D mode than the ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT, but its total power consumption is still high. It is as high as that of the Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX which belongs to the premium product class.