Radeon 5850 about 300w consumption under load...how much for 7970?

[SMutty]

I'm running:

Intel i7 950
Radeon 5850 (current GPU)
8GB memory
1 TB HDD
Blu-ray player
750w Corsair power supply...

I'm hoping to squeeze a 7970 in without needing a new PSU...i've heard they are pretty good on power consumption..just need a few people to confirm how many watts they are using under load?

 

[blastingcap]

Is this a serious question? You can do crossfire 7970 with that level of PSU.

A 5850 only uses 108 watts at max gaming load, according to TPU: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/EAH_5850_TOP_DirectCu/26.html and your CPU's TDP is 130 watts (theoretical), so you are probably under 300w draw at stock clocks. I can see 300w+ if you are doing some sort of significant overvolting + overclocking, though, if they are both at max load at the same time. Which can definitely happen (G3D got up to 350 watts: http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-5850-review-crossfire/9 )

Now, granted, if you were to significantly overvolt/overclock your CPU and 2 7970s in xfire, then that would strain your PSU, but a single 7970 won't even make your PSU sweat.

 

[Lonyo]

Yeah, seriously, 750w is way above what you would need.

 

[hdfxst]

this guy has 4 7970's http://www.xfastest.com/cms/tid-69701/ and the whole system is pulling 1000 watts.750 is more than you need

 

[tweakboy]

For xfire and SLI ,, how many rails ? sound about right..

for anything higher then that, then you would need higher PSU, so people buying 1k watts PSU should be using tri sli or quad sli or tri xfire.... gl

 

[BFG10K]

Moved to PSU forum.

Super Moderator BFG10K.

 

[lehtv]

A 5850 only uses 108 watts at max gaming load, according to TPU: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/EAH_5850_TOP_DirectCu/26.html

I don't understand how these numbers could possibly be true. If they were true, 5850 would only need one 6-pin PCIe connector but in fact it has two.

I'm more inclined to believe these results from Guru3D and Anandtech:
http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-5850-review-crossfire/9 168W
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2848/13 load minus idle = 175W (system power, includes some CPU load)

Correct though that the OP's PSU can handle 7970 crossfire. 7970 uses the same amount of power as GTX 570, and 750W is generally sufficient for GTX 570 SLI. In the case of Corsair, it is definitely sufficient.