Sapphire Pure Black X79N Motherboard and HD7970 GPU Review

To test power consumption today we are using a Keithley Integra unit and we measure power consumption from the VGA card inputs, not the system wide drain. We measure results while gaming in Crysis Warhead and record the results.

In such an energy aware climate, AMD are making a big deal out of their new ‘ZeroCore Power’ technology. Many solutions today use power gating, clock gating and memory compression to reduce idle power requirements, but ZeroCore power technology can completely power down the core GPU while the rest of the system remains active.

The card demands only 4 watts of power when in the long idle power state. This rises to a maximum of 215 watts when loaded with a high demand game, averaging often around 190-200 watts with some titles. When loaded with Furmark this rises to just over 270 watts.

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