Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 Vapor-X OC 6GB 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.

In relation to a raw 7970, we do acknowledge that there is a considerable increase in the power draw, but that said its not the most power hungry card we’ve seen and it has got an overclock and more GDDR5 to cater for, so in that light 328W of power being drawn by to complete system at load is actually not that bad.