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.



Nvidia has endeavoured to make the GTX 275 consume less power than previous GT200 GPUs when idle, which lower idle power consumption, idle heat and idle noise. Conversely, the HD 4890 is very power hungry when idle despite the GPU throttling to 240MHz. The roles reverse when the two cards are under load, with the GTX 275 caused our test rig to consume up to 364W while the same test rig with a HD 4890 installed consumed only up to 317W.