Real Power Consumption - 4870 X2 & GTX295 out of Spec!

[largon]

Furmark is a GPU power virus. Of course it can cause the card to exceed it's TDP.
HD4870X2 consumes >100W more in Furmark than it peaks in games / other benchmarks. GTX285 peaks at bit less than 150W in real world situations.

HT4U's measurements are useless.

[T_Flight]

Wow! Just Wow! I don't even know where to start with this, but since it's not worth my time I won't except to say they do not have th capability to measure power on these cards.

Saying that, what they draw is irrelevant. These are performance cards. It takes power to run them. They are not for the meek or the penny pincher. They are neither cheap, nor cheap to run. Blasting performance cards isd about as rediculous as saying a top fuel dragster is inefficient...well DUH! What do you expect? It's almost as if these people think they are gonna get that kind of power for free like it will just magically appear from osmosis.

It's irrelevant how much power these things consume. I could care less. The only thing I look at with a video card is what is gonna give me the best performance. That is the only thing I look at. If I wanted "efficiency" and cheap to operate I sure as heck would not be looking at 400-500 dollar max performance video cards.

Man, I'm cracking up here on this. It just defies logic.

[16floz470ml]

How many motherboards have auxiliary pcie power connectors? This article lets you know that they could be of some use if you are really stressing the vga. My board has a regular 4 pin auxiliary power by the pcie1 and it has a sata style auxiliary right by the pcie2.