Power Consumption (Idle and Gaming)

We tested the power consumption with a Watts Up? Pro power meter, using the device to record the total system power consumption at the wall socket, while we ran three sets of four runs of Crysis in DX10 at 1,920 x 1,200.

Using the data recorded by the meter we could determine the peak output, the consistent minimum and the average load over the entire run of tests.

As both ATI and Nvidia test benches are now identical Core i7 systems, we can accurately determine the apples to apples difference of what power both PCs take to run.


The iChill's idle power consumption is strangely a good 20W in excess of the the stock GTX 275, which is certainly a weird result considering the GTX 275's excellent low-power mode. This difference then is likely down to differences between individual GPUs rather than the iChill being particularly thirsty as three fans don't make much more difference than one.


The same seems to be the case when looking at the card's load power consumption, where the iChill we've tested pulls a clear 14W less than a stock GTX 275 under identical Crysis gameplay circumstances.