Power Consumption

In an apples to apples comparison of the nForce 780a SLI MCP versus the AMD 780G, the single chip 780G mGPU on the Gigabyte motherboard is 30W lower than the 780a on the CrossHair II Formula at idle. With Hybrid Graphics the 780a+8500 GT again uses considerably more power than the 780G+HD 3450 solution, but as we've shown previous actually performs less.

When we're talking about Hybrid Power though, this is where the Nvidia 780a really saves the power - cutting 25W off at idle and virtually matching the power use under load, bar a couple of watts more.

Compared to the 790FX with the higher power Phenom X4 9850E in the driving seat, the boards are pretty matched in terms of power - the Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe has a 4W higher idle power than the CrossHair II Formula, but it's also 6W lower power under load.