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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.
All of these cards are power hungry high end models, although the Asus Matrix HD7970 Platinum consumes less power under load than both the HIS 7970 X Turbo IceQ X2 and the Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic when Lethal Boost is enabled.
Thats another beautiful card for AMD. Quite a few really high end, loaded boards for 7970 lovers.
Good review thanks.
ASUS deserve a lot of credit for this – I love it when companies go nuts on the design for the high end audience. Im tempted to go for this later in the year, but I agree – the Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic Edition looks to be a slightly better deal all round.
Zardon – top review bro. I still think the GTX680 is the best value for money high end card on the market however. you can pick up a killer one for £380
Im not a fan of triple slot coolers – I think in this case it has helped ASUS lower the noise levels which is welcomed, but they are huge cards and take up so much space in a case. I think Sapphire 6GB Toxic is still the best, but the extramemory really isn’t needed for most people/situations