Power Consumption:

On top of our graphics performance testing, we have also measured the power consumption of EVGA's e-GeForce 8800 Ultra Superclocked at both idle and load. For this we used our standard test system configuration listed earlier on in the review. In addition, we also tested the power consumption of the Radeon X1950 XTX and Radeon HD 2900 XT on our Asus Striker Extreme so that we could directly compare power consumption across all of the GPUs.

For our idle testing, we left the systems idling on the desktop for ten minutes, recording the average draw at the wall socket. For load testing, we used our benchmark routine from The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and measured the peak power consumption in this section of the title. 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).


That's not a typo - EVGA's e-GeForce 8800 Ultra Superclocked card is actually lower than the Nvidia reference card we have here. It proves that not all chips have the same power consumption, and we can be sure that as the process gets even more mature, we'll see more improvements to energy efficiency. However, we can't help but feel Nvidia has some work to do on its idle power consumption - that's arguably more important than loaded power consumption because you're not gaming all day and all night (of course, that might be different if you've caught WoW).


On the positive side though, loaded power consumption is less than the Radeon HD 2900 XT in the same motherboard, despite having much more graphics horsepower on tap. It also uses much less power than both a pair of GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB cards, and a pair of Radeon HD 2900 XTs, too. So, although it loses out on performance a little, it wins when it comes to performance per watt - gosh, that term makes me cringe sometimes...