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 Lightning was a hungry monster in the power consumption tests. At both idle and load the card drew more power from the wall than a GTX 285 which is likely down to a combination of the overclock and the redesigned power hardware on the card. Under peak, the Lightning drew a hefty 45W more from the wall than a stock card.