radeonic2 said:
The 190 Watt peak figure is from ATI themselves.
While the effort xbitlabs have put into their measurement scheme is commendable, it should be noted that it consistently posts low figures for power draw. Part of that is by not including PSU losses that most other sites do, but I suspect that their testing methodology doesn't generate maximum power draw. This matters little if you use their numbers for internal comparisons of different cards, which incidentally is how xbitlabs uses their data.
I admit that the peak number is unlikely to be comparable to Intels TDP - I used it for contrast. While it remains to be seen just how low the CPU manufacturers dare to go with their power draws, it
is clear that they have broken their trend of constantly pushing up power draw to achieve higher clocks and performance. Maintaining low power draw and low noise, and enabling smaller footprint computers are perceived as bringing greater overall user value than another xx% of absolut performance. The same reasoning is not automatically applicable to GPUs, because the IHVs can and do offer different chips for different market strata, but it is also obvious that thus far, IHVs have largely seen power draw as irrelevant for GPUs compared to pushing up performance.
It is also clear that top end GPUs will draw a lot more power than the CPUs. I wonder if OEMs are willing to carry the cost for that in terms of basic design. Will Dell want to carry the extra burden in terms of PSU capabilities, thermal design complexity and cooling capabilities, the constraints it places on suitable case volumes et cetera for the eventuality that the customer might want to put a high end gfx card into the box? I doubt it. Even among people who play games, the high end gaming rigs for the hardware fetishists are a narrowing niche, that may or may not be self-sustainable. I feel that the industry by pushing the limits too far, cheered on by hardware review sites, is hurting the PC gaming business as a whole.
As far as I'm concerned, if some people want to race towards the power draw precipice with their systems, that's fine with me.
But I don't want to pay the price for it in terms of development costs and industry standards limitations. Those folks can damn well carry their own costs, and my wallet will support alternative priorities. Now my wallet isn't big enough to make a major difference, unfortunately
. But if your interests clashes with the interests of every administative computer, every business computer, every home surfing computer and so on, the writing really is on the wall.
