[SOLVED] R9 290, 290X power consumption

[galenmyra]

I'm trying to find out how much difference it is in power consumption between the R9 290 and R9 290X.

According to this review, the two cards consumes about the same amount of power in all 3 games tested:
https://www.techspot.com/review/736-amd-radeon-r9-290/page8.html

In this review however, it differs around 40W between the 290 cards and the 290X cards:
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-290-and-290x,3728-4.html

How can there be so much difference between the tests?

 

[RCFProd]

In your first Techspot link, there are clearly higher peaks for the R9 290X power draw graphs. The only tests where the R9 290 came close to that amount of power consumption is where they manually overclocked the R9 290 with a custom air cooler.

Overall though, various aftermarket R9 290/290X cards come with different voltage and clock speed settings. It depends on the manufacturer.

 

[galenmyra]

In your first Techspot link, there are clearly higher peaks for the R9 290X power draw graphs. The only tests where the R9 290 came close to that amount of power consumption is where they manually overclocked the R9 290 with a custom air cooler.

Overall though, various aftermarket R9 290/290X cards come with different voltage and clock speed settings. It depends on the manufacturer.

Where do you see that, the power consumption are about the same for both cards in all 3 games, and the reviewer even states that:
"Again, we see very little difference between the power consumption of the R9 290 and the R9 290X in Max Payne 3, being separated by only a few watts. "

 

[RCFProd]

Oops, apparently I opened only the second link by mistake.

The differences between the two tests are pretty clear now. Tom's Hardware used stress testing to determine the maximum power draws, whilst Techspot used a few games to determine the power draw. Games will often not go to the absolute limits like stress testing software to reach the maximum potential power draw the GPU's are capable of.

I can't directly see what Techspot used to calculate the power draws. If they used software to do so, the results might not even be accurate. Hardware specialised for that task is the best way, and Tom's Hardware uses hardware not software to calculate power draw.

 

[galenmyra]

Oops, apparently I opened only the second link by mistake.

The differences between the two tests are pretty clear now. Tom's Hardware used stress testing to determine the maximum power draws, whilst Techspot used a few games to determine the power draw. Games will often not go to the absolute limits like stress testing software to reach the maximum potential power draw the GPU's are capable of.

I can't directly see what Techspot used to calculate the power draws. If they used software to do so, the results might not even be accurate. Hardware specialised for that task is the best way, and Tom's Hardware uses hardware not software to calculate power draw.

Thank you!