Putas wrote:Guaranteed power delivery is not a hard limit. Card like 290X can be pushed very far.
290X is an easy target - it's relatively new, and has been reviewed and measured quite a bit. Here's three examples:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9 … ew,3650-29.html (290W max/218W gaming)
http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/radeon-r … chmarks,10.html (286W max)
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/R9_290X/25.html (282W peak (actual gaming test), 315W "maximum" (which they define as furmark stress-testing))
We could probably assume that chart is using TPU's furmark data, but there's no attribution or source citation, so it's impossible to say. That's another criticism for that chart - nothing is cited, no measurement procedures are explained, etc. So who knows where they stole their data from, and if whoever originally tested this stuff was doing a good job, or if the numbers are even directly comparable. 😵
Like I said, I wouldn't put too much faith in it - it's lazily slapped together at best, and downright inaccurate at worst. If they can't even take the time to qualify where they're getting data from or what exactly they're showing with something as well measured and documented as the 290X, how can we trust their results for something older, rarer, etc? For example they claim FX 5800 Ultra is 74W TDP, just like 6800 Ultra, but from my own testing the 6800 Ultra draws more power in the same systems under the same working conditions. I've also never seen a published review showing power measurements for 5800 Ultra, so where are they getting their data from?