ATI Radeon HD 5450 & HD 5570 Review
Power Usage
Power usage is becoming increasingly important in this green age. Most enthusiasts disregard power usage in favour of raw performance but at the other end of the spectrum, budget and mainstream users are more wary.
The entire system drew a total of 256W from the wall, idle with the HD 5450. Under full GPU load, this figure increased to 281W. The HD 5570 demonstrated an expectedly higher power draw with figures of 296W and 350W, idle and load respectively.
The power differential values are pretty much in line with reported specifications. Genuine low-power cards are a welcome addition to the 5000-Series line-up but the performance is what will truly determine their value.
The 5570 consumes 69 watts more power under load and 40 watts more in idle? No way, something must have gone wrong here. The results on other sites are in a different league – single digit watt difference in idle and ~30 watts under load.
Thanks for your comment Howitzer. The fact is exactly as I stated, this is the power draw on the *entire* system. Other sites may have the tools such as power meters that can measure the video card power draw at the slot level. I am only privy to a Kill-A-Watt unit.
The major factor in this is that the 1100W PSU that powers my system has driven up the idle power load quite a bit. Now the difference in the figures will also take into account any additional power draw from the CPU also being under load along with other smaller components like hard drive(s) spinning up and so on.
We do hope to continue improving our testing with better equipment, as our very limited resources will allow.
Thanks for your time. =)