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Power Consumption: Idle

Radeon R9 295X2 8 GB Review: Project Hydra Gets Liquid Cooling
By , Igor Wallossek

Desktop Mode Without Load

As with the Radeon HD 7990, AMD's Radeon R9 295X2 features AMD’s ZeroCore Power capability, which is active in two different states. It's important to make a distinction between a powered-on display with Windows idle and a powered-down monitor triggered by Windows' profiles.

When ZeroCore Power does its job, consumption drops from 28.5 to 13.5 W at idle, as one Hawaii processor is turned off. Then, the display switches off as well, and power use drops to 6-7 W. At that point, even the card's fan stops spinning.

In case you're missing the 3.3 V rail's blue line (as we were at first), all of the Radeon R9 295X2's components pull from the +12 V rail now.

Comparing To The Radeon HD 6990 and 7990

If you take a close look at the chart below, you'll see that the +3.3 V rail was used by the Radeon HD 7990, if only just barely. Also, nearly all of the power is provided by the card's auxiliary connectors, rather than the motherboard's slot. 

The Radeon R9 2905X2's behaviour is more similar to cards like the GeForce GTX 780 and 780 Ti, while AMD's older models are mainly driven by the separate power leads.

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  • 0 Hide
    Paolo Cardinale , 8 April 2014 14:13
    Mantle's bench???
  • 1 Hide
    AMD Radeon , 8 April 2014 15:07
    good guy AMD
  • 0 Hide
    Motoxyogi , 9 April 2014 08:58
    Good writeup.Just a heads up, the 100 microsec gaming power consumption graph for the 295X seems to have the wrong peak total value
  • 0 Hide
    olafgarten , 18 April 2014 08:35
    IT USES ASETEK. KILL IT WITH FIRE!
  • 0 Hide
    PlanetCreation , 20 April 2014 11:36
    Would this be a overkill for 1080p gaming?