XFX 7950GX2 570M XXX Edition Video Card

The XFX Bundle & Power Consumption

The XFX Geforce 7950GX2 Retail Bundle:

The bundle that XFX puts together with the 7950GX2 comes with the DVD version of Laura Croft Tomb Raider Legend, which can be found for $40 online when purchased on it’s own. The bundle also includes a driver CD, a user’s manual, a power cable, two DVI to VGA adapters, and the video dongle.

Power Consumption Levels:

Low power consumption and being ‘green friendly’ is all the rage in the market today. We took a pair of the GeForce 7800GTX 512’s and measured them at idle and load versus the overclocked XFX GeForce 7950GX2 and the results were shocking. Let’s take a look at the test system used for power consumption testing.

• AMD A64 X2 5000+ (AM2) Processor
• ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluexe Motherboard
• Nautilus 500 Water Cooling by Corsair Memory
• 4GB Corsair PC-6400C3 800MHz DDR2 Memory
• Thermaltake 750W ToughPower Power Supply

We looked at the total system power consumption at idle with nothing running on the desktop.

Reference NVIDIA 7800GTX 512’s – 177W
XFX’s GeForce 7950GX2 XXX Edition – 154W

At idle the GeForce 7950GX2 uses roughly 23W less power than a pair of 7800GTX 512’s. Let’s now run a 3D application like Futuremarks 3DMark06 and see what they run like under a load.

Reference NVIDIA 7800GTX 512’s – 401W
XFX’s GeForce 7950GX2 XXX Edition – 284W

Now that is a difference worth talking about! A pair of GeForce 7800GTX 512 video card were seen using up to 401W during 3DMark06, which is pretty high considering the entire system is not at 100% load. The XFX GeForce 7950 consumed 284W, which is roughly 117W less than the pair of 512MB 7800GTX’s. Now that is a significant difference when it comes to power savings. Speaking of power savings let’s see how that will impact your monthly power bill.

What does saving 117W mean to you? Electricity is measured in kilowatt-hours and the current charge for electricity varies from state to state. Since pricing varies from state to state and during seasons let’s just use $0.14 per kilowatt-hour for pricing to figure up some rough numbers.

Cost Savings:

• 24 hours a day – $11.97 per month or $143.59 yearly
• 8 hours a day – $3.99 per month or $47.87 yearly
• 3 hours a day – $1.50 per month or $17.50 yearly

If you run a 3D screen saver and game for a full 24 hour day the 117W difference when under load could save you nearly $145 over just a single year! A more realistic figure would be eight hours a day (because we know how long you really play WoW after work) and even at eight hours the savings would be nearly $4 per month. When it comes to power consumption the GeForce 7950GX2 looks to be a winner!