Power Consumption
On top of our graphics performance testing, we’ve also measured the power consumption of the tested graphics card at both idle and load. For this we used the same systems that we have used for our 3D performance testing.
For our idle testing, we left the cards idling on the desktop for ten minutes, recording the average draw at the wall socket. For load testing, we used our benchmark routine from
Crysis in DirectX 10 mode and measured the peak power consumption throughout the benchmark. We tested the cards in a number of other scenarios and this proved to be the most intensive in all cases, so you can consider this to be a worst-case scenario.
Bear in mind that we have disabled all CPU-related power management options in the motherboard's BIOS so that we can highlight exactly how well the GPU's power management features are working (or not).
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ATI Radeon HD 3870
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ATI Radeon HD 4850
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Nvidia GeForce GTX 260
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EVGA Geforce GTX 280 Superclocked
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Nvidia GeForce GTX 280
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Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT
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ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2
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Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+
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Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX
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Nvidia Geforce 9800 GX2
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ATI Radeon HD 4870
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165.0
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182.0
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182.0
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189.0
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189.0
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194.0
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194.0
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202.0
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207.0
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213.0
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219.0
Watts (lower is better) - Average Reading
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ATI Radeon HD 3870
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Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT
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ATI Radeon HD 4850
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Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX+
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Nvidia GeForce GTX 260
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Nvidia GeForce 9800 GTX
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ATI Radeon HD 4870
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Nvidia GeForce GTX 280
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EVGA GeForce GTX 280 Superclocked
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ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2
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Nvidia Geforce 9800 GX2
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268.0
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285.0
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295.0
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320.0
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326.0
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326.0
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333.0
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364.0
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373.0
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387.0
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388.0
Watts (lower is better) - Average Reading
Only at load where the EVGA is slightly faster in the three main areas of core, shader and memory clocks does it use slightly more energy than the stock clocked - just 9W for a bit more performance. When the system dials back its clocks to idle, there is no difference between the cards however.
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