HIS Radeon HD 6990 4GB Review
Before bringing this article to a close, we'd like to cover a few final data points--namely power consumption and noise. Throughout all of our benchmarking and testing, we monitored how much power our test system was consuming using a power meter. Our goal was to give you all an idea as to how much power each configuration used while idling and while under a heavy workload. Please keep in mind that we were testing total system power consumption at the outlet here, not just the power being drawn by the graphics cards alone.
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Considering the kind of performance offered by the dual-GPU Radeon HD 6990, it's no surprise the card uses a lot of power, relatively speaking. When running at its stock clocks, our test system pulled 484 watts from the outlet with the Radeon HD 6990 installed, which was somewhat lower than the GeForce GTX 590. With the Radeon HD 6990 running in AUSUM mode though, it used the most juice, coming in at 529 watts.
With that much power being consumed, the Radeon HD 6990 has a good amount of heat to dissipate, and as such the card can be fairly loud when running under a sustained load. If you're thinking of a 6990, be warned that the card does generate a good amount of noise when being pushed. It's quiet at idle, but under load you're definitely going to hear it above your other system components.
