Power usage

To test the X3 Booster I assembled a system with the latest hardware, an Intel Core 2 E6700 with two X1900XT graphics cards. I recorded power usage up to 506 Watt from the wall outlet when the system was stressed and overclocked.

To measure the difference in usage I compared the Silverstone 750W PSU to an older Superflower 420W. It came as no surprise that the Superflower could not keep the system stable when using two high end VGA cards, the PC would simply cold reboot whenever I tried to do a stress test. With the X3 Booster installed alongside the Superflower the VGA cards were offloaded from the main 420W PSU and I could run stability tests for hours on end without issue.

Let?s take a closer look at the performance numbers:

Test Setup
CPU	Intel Core 2 Duo E6700
Mainboard	Intel Desktop mainboard D975XBX ?bad axe?
Video cards	Connect 3D X1900XT Crossfire Edition Connect 3D X1900XTX
Memory	2 * 1024 Mb DDR2 PC7200 EPP OCZ
Other	Nec 2050 DVD writer Seagate 120 gig 2x Seagate 200Gb SATA

To get an idea what power the system needed without the high end ATI cards I installed an older Geforce 6600 and set out to overclock the Core 2 E6700 from its stock frequencies of 2.66Ghz to 3.33Ghz, raising the vcore along the way to 1.45v.



A little over 200W is needed for this setup, not too bad; an older power supply will do well here. But not when two high end VGA cards are thrown into the mix. They were run at default speeds, as well as overclocked (710/810) with ATI Tool and this ATI X1900 and X1800 Series Overclocking Guide .

The results below cover the measurements taken from these configurations:

The Setup running at default with a single X1900XTX

The Setup running overclocked with a single X1900XTX overclocked

The Setup running at default with a pair of X1900XT(X) in crossfire mode

The Setup running overclocked with a pair of X1900XT(X) in crossfire mode & overclocked

Single X1900 XT test

The orange bar is the sum of the green (Superflower) and the blue bar (X3 booster).



On the single PSU system total power draw is 388W, with the Superflow/X3 combo it?s slightly higher at 394W.

Crossfire (Dual) X1900 XT test



The X3 Booster alone has almost the same power load as the Superflower PSU when everything is overclocked and stressed, almost reaching the 250W mark.

Voltages

The X3 booster has only one voltage rail to measure: the 12v line. I took measurements using a multimeter in different situations:

With the two X1900 cards in idle situation

With the two X1900 cards in stressed situation

With the two X1900 cards overclocked in stressed situation



The 12 V drops only ~0,02 volt under heavy load, this is a very good result.

Onto the noise tests and conclusion ->