Real-World HD 2900 XT Video Card Testing
Editor’s Note: Let me (Ryan) step in here for just a second to add in MY two-cents about this power supply being evaluated. What follows is a real-world testing addition to the Enermax Liberty DXX 500w review to follow up on some of Enermax’s claims about the unit.
Because Enermax was so adamant to push the fact that their Liberty 400w and 500w power supplies were capable of running the Radeon HD 2900 XT cards in full performance, overclocking mode, we felt the need to test that first hand. After Lee had completed his normal, exhausting testing on our Enermax sample, he handed it over to me to be pressure cooked on my GPU test beds.
You are looking at an Intel 975XBX2 motherboard with an Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 CPU running at 2.93 GHz with 2GB of DDR2-800 memory and of course, the Radeon HD 2900 XT graphics cards — actually the 1GB Diamond Multimedia model I recently reviewed. The test bed uses a Creative X-Fi sound card, single DVD-ROM drive and single Raptor X 150GB hard drive.
The Enermax Liberty 500w PSU, with its 8-pin capable PCIe adaptor, was able to power and run the system through several days of gaming and testing without so much as a hiccup. As promised, using the 6-pin and 8-pin PCIe power combination, the ATI Catalyst drivers allowed me to unlock and overclock the GPU.
I measure AC power consumption at the wall using a “watts up? Pro” watt meter and found that the Enermax Liberty was able to drive the test system to above 330 watts under a full gaming load without issue:
** AC watts measured at the wall
While not even close to the 500 watt maximum of the power supply’s rated output, the 332W AC load, which is equivalent to approximately 266W DC (332W x 0.8 average efficiency), is more than 53% of theoretical peak load. The PSU was able to easily maintain that level (or within a few watts of it) for over 5 hours straight in one of our looped tests. As Lee showed in the previous pages in his testing, the Liberty DXX 500W PSU was quiet while running at this level as well.
Overall I’d have to say the power supply was able to meet Enermax’s claims about real-world usage and any gamer looking to power a single HD 2900 XT system should have no problems when pairing it with this unit.
Editor’s Note: Back to you, Lee!
