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 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.


Power consumption at idle is exactly what we'd expect, with the GT200 core dropping into its low power consumption state leading to an excellent power consumption of just 169 watts, fantastic considering the system is running with a highly overclocked core i7 processor at its heart!


We were so surprised by the Palit GeForce GTX 275's load power consumption that we retested it more than a few times. Remarkably the card draws a full 22 watts less than a stock GTX 275; the fruit of Palit's redesigned card and power delivery circuitry. This is obviously a clear advantage over a stock card, especially as the Palit delivers, as you'd expect, identical graphical performance to a stock GTX 275. Impressive stuff!