GIGABYTE Radeon HD 7790 1GB & NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST 2GB Review

To test graphics cards for both their power consumption and temperature at load, we utilize a couple of different tools. On the hardware side, we use a trusty Kill-a-Watt power monitor which our GPU testing machine plugs directly into. For software, we use Futuremark’s 3DMark 11 to stress-test the card, and techPowerUp’s GPU-Z to monitor and record the temperatures.

To test, the general area around the chassis is checked with a temperature gun, with the average temperature recorded (and thus noted in brackets next to the card name in the first graph below). Once that’s established, the PC is turned on and left to site idle for five minutes. At this point, GPU-Z is opened along with 3DMark 11. We then kick-off an Extreme run of 3DMark and immediately begin monitoring the Kill-a-Watt for the peak wattage reached. We only monitor the Kill-a-Watt during the first two tests, as we found that’s where the peak is always attained.

Note: (xx.x°C) refers to ambient temperature in our charts.

As we’ve seen throughout our testing, NVIDIA’s GTX 650 Ti BOOST is the faster of the two cards, so it comes as no surprise that it also runs hotter and draws more power from the wall – quite a bit more power, in fact. AMD’s 7790 peaked our PC at 207W, while NVIDIA’s skyrocketed to 278W. How the 2GB 7790 would fare, we’re not sure.