Sapphire HD 7970 Dual X Review

Testing:

Power consumption of the system will be measured at both idle and loaded states, taking into account the peak voltage of the system with each video card installed. I will use Unigine's Heaven Benchmark version 2.5 to put a load onto the GPU using the settings below. A 15-minute load test will be used to heat up the GPU, with the highest measured temperature recorded as the result. The idle results will be measured after 15 minutes of inactivity on the system. With dual-GPU setups, the two core temperatures will be averaged.

Settings

• Unigine 3.0 Heaven Benchmark
• 1920x1200 Resolution
• 8x AA
• 15-minute load test
• 15-minute idle test
• Measurement is in watts

Lower = Better

The power consumption of the Sapphire HD 7970 Dual X sits just slightly above the XFX 7970 at idle in stock trim but matches it blow-for-blow under load and when overclocked.  This isn't all that surprising since both cards, with the exception of the cooler, are essentially identical and were running at similar clock speeds.