![]() THG's new testing rig (Opens in a new window) gets around this problem rather nicely. This doesn't impact system-level power measurements drawn at the wall, but it does hide the impact of GPU VRM and RAM power consumption from the GPU-Z application itself. Nvidia GPUs report total power consumption to the program fairly accurately, but AMD only reports its actual GPU core power consumption, not the impact of the rest of the board. There are software tools for reporting GPU power consumption, but apps like GPU-Z still depend on the GPU telling the application how much power it's using. Neither Nvidia nor AMD guarantee that a 150W GPU will draw exactly 150W, for example. As with CPUs, that TDP rating is best thought of as a metric for GPU power dissipation (meaning, how much heat the cooler needs to be able to deal with) as opposed to an exact power consumption metric. Like CPUs, GPUs (Opens in a new window) define a TDP rating. ![]() Over at Tom's Hardware, they've built themselves an extensive GPU testing rig and put a huge range of cards through their paces to answer one question: How much power do GPUs actually draw? Tracking the exact power consumption of a given component, be it CPU, GPU, or something like RAM, requires a soldering iron and some skill in using it. It's easy to answer how much power a system draws at the wall - a basic Kill-A-Watt meter doesn't cost much, and while it doesn't offer features like power consumption tracking over time, it'll still provide good bulk information if you track it manually for several minutes during a consistent workload. ![]() ![]() Nailing down how much power PC components consume is a surprisingly difficult question. ![]()
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