Power Consumption

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 1920x1200.

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 GeForce GTX 285's idle power consumption isn't bad, but we were frankly hoping for more of a reduction than the 4W we recorded here. Of course, the GTX 285 has higher clocks than the GTX 280 and both have the same excellent power saving technology built into the GPU, so I guess the savings fall in line where they probably should be.

At load, there's a saving of 8W which, when you consider that you're getting an extra ten percent performance, isn't a bad saving. The Zotac GeForce GTX 285 AMP! Edition's higher clocks result in slightly higher power consumption than the GTX 280, but it is delivering an extra ten to 15 percent performance across the board.

Finally, despite Nvidia saying that the 285's peak power consumption was lower than the GTX 280's, we found that the peak power usage was actually higher on our test system with the GTX 285 installed. The difference between the Zotac AMP! Edition and the reference clocked card was just 5W, despite the difference in average load being more like 10W.