Originally posted by: angry hampster
It's pretty self explanatory. You need 30 amps on the 12 volt rail(s) to properly power the card according to nV.
It is an arbitrary and in most cases superfluous minimum that [poorly] attempts to build-in enough assurance of adequately supporting total system power using a range of power supplies on the market, from the Apex's to the PCP&C's.
If board makers or NVIDIA/ATI would publish the real world power figures for their reference cards, it would go a long way towards appropriate PSU selection.
I have contacted AMD (ATI) and NVIDIA on this a few times now. NVIDIA has never replied to a single email but AMD has, albiet with the usual formulated blow-off (i.e. Thank you for contacting ATI. We value all input from blah blah blah).
Perhaps we could start a little movement using the power of AT to pressure these morons into adopting a policy of releasing meaningful data? A mass contact form campaign or maybe even an Anandtech editorial taking manufacturers to task for providing worthless information about such a potentially important if not critical aspect of system building?
Those online petition thingies are next to useless. My thinking is that nothing short of a full-blown effort by multiple hardware review sites will make them budge. I bet three or four major review sites publishing a critical piece in the same week would get their attention.
Facebook
Twitter