Here we'll take a look at a few of the environmental effects the graphics board has on its surroundings and the rest of the system by looking at the Power usage, Heat and Noise outputs. Due to the measuring equipment we'll not be able to give definitive quantities solely pertaining to the graphics board, as we are unable to entirely isolate it. Each of the metrics are taken at a system level, however where the same system is used and only the graphics board swapped out we can begin to gauge the effects the boards have in relation to one another, although the numbers are only a guide.

For the testing of all the elements we took the idle noise level results shortly after boot-up, by placing the noise level meter at the bottom of the case, the case side was then placed on and the power and temperature readings were taken. 3DMark03's graphics intensive Game Tests were then looped through 4 times, to load up the graphics, and then on the fifth run of Game Test 2 the power peak reading was taken, the system temperature read, and finally the case side removed and the noise level measured. 3DMark03 is used as it has a fairly low CPU utilisation, placing much of the emphasis on the graphics capabilities.

Note that we've not included figures for X1900 XT here as we are not actually using an X1900 board, but rather the X1900 Crossfire board which may have some different properties.

Unsurprisingly the X1900 XTX has the highest power draw of all the cards here, at a peak of 311W, 41 higher than the X1800 XT. The X1900 Crossfire system increases the peak power draw to 440W, 43W above the X1800 Crossfire. Its interesting to note that the drop in clocks in 2D mode is having quite an effect on the X1900 with the XTX drawing 25W less than the X1800 XT and the X1900 Crossfire 1W less as well!

No surprises as far as the system temperatures are concerned, with the highest power draw configurations having the most effect on the system temps. All the system temperatures are within a similar range, though, as the graphics boards all exhaust their hot air out the back of the case, assisting in the overall system airflow.

With the same heatsink-fan arrangements between the X1900 and X1800 its not surprising to find that they have similar affects on the noise within the system case.