Asus Matrix HD 7970 Platinum 3GB Graphics Card Review

To test power consumption, we monitor the overall power of the system through a plug-in electricity usage monitor at an idle and load state. This allows us to show the fluctuation between how much power draw the graphics card takes at idle and at load. By monitoring the overall usage of the whole system, it gives an easy comparison if you wish to do the same yourself as opposed to buying very expensive individual testing equipment.

Power wise, the card uses a very low 144 Watts at idle which is below that of the 680 SOC and not to much of an increase over the stock AMD reference card. At load, the system ended up pulling 322 Watts which is still below that of the 680 SOC but is quite a big jump from the stock AMD 7970 card.