Preliminary remark on the three power modes
In the Wattman, in addition to the standard setting (ex works), which is called Balanced Mode, you will also find the possibility to save energy with the Power Save Mode or, conversely, to put a decent skip on it with the Turbo Mode. In addition, there is a second BIOS, which generally helps to shift these performance values downwards. As great as that sounds at first, power save mode lacks performance, turbo mode lacks efficiency and the reviewer lacks time in the end. We will include these settings again in a follow-up article, but then also measure them with a self-converted water cooling system.
For today's article, we focus on the delivery status (Balanced Mode), which should also be the most practical for the user.
Power consumption at a glance
We measure a value of just under 19 watts for the card in the idle, which is just fine, even if we had hoped for a little less. As with the Vega FE, we were a little irritated with multi-monitor operation, as this result can vary more clearly when using a wide variety of combinations. That ranged from approx. 25 watts at two equal to more than 40 watts when operating with three very different output devices. We'll look at the values for gaming and the stress test right away.
The power consumption in normal productive everyday life ranges from approx. 140 to 150 watts (2D drawings, 3D wireframe) up to just under 285 watts for gaming (balanced mode). We better not write about turbo mode, because these values are rather theoretical, because the card runs much faster into the temperature limit and there is no time for a real, multi-minute measurement at the end. Apart from the noise produced.
Gaming Loop
Depending on the temperature of the GPU (and thus also the clock), the power consumption is higher or lower. If the card is still cold, it can hold up to almost 300 watts and reaches very short-term peaks up to a good 385 watts. The latter is not dramatic and is safely intercepted by any reasonably current power supply on the secondary side. Once fully warmed up, it is still just under 285 watts and the tips are approx. 350 watts. Here, too, the power supply is required to smooth accordingly.
The flowing currents look analogous:
Stress
Now let's look at what Power Tune does when the predicted load gets too high! On the next graphic we can see very nicely how the intervals of the clock control turn out and what effect this throttling has on the power consumption. The periodic ups and downs are much lower.
In this case, too, the measured current flows correspond to this:
Loading of the motherboard slot
This point has been requested by readers since the launch of the Radeon RX 480 (also for Nvidia cards), so we will now include this measurement with every test. With the card tested today, however, the concern is completely unfounded, because the slot is used very moderately with a maximum of 2.4 amps and is thus even well below half of what is allowed.
- 1 - Einführung und Übersicht
- 2 - Details zu Architektur und HBM2-Speicher
- 3 - Demontage, Kühler und Interposer-Details
- 4 - Platinendesign und Detailinformationen
- 5 - Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation
- 6 - Battlefield 1
- 7 - Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III
- 8 - Doom (2016)
- 9 - Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands
- 10 - Hitman (2016)
- 11 - Metro Last Light (Redux)
- 12 - Rise of the Tomb Raider
- 13 - Tom Clancy's The Division
- 14 - The Witcher 3
- 15 - Und kann sie Mining?
- 16 - Leistungsaufnahme im Detail
- 17 - Takt, Temperaturen und Geräuschemission
- 18 - Zusammenfassung und Fazit
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