GeForce GTS 250 Roundup (ASUS, Gigabyte, Sparkle, EVGA)

Power Consumption

For this test we hooked up our power supply to a UPM power meter that will log the power consumption of the whole system twice every second. In order to stress the GPU as much as possible we once again use the Batch Render test in 3DMark06 and let it run for 30 minutes to determine the peak power consumption while letting the card sit at a stable Windows desktop for 30 minutes to determine the peak idle power consumption. We have also included several other tests as well. Please note that after extensive testing, we have found that simply plugging in a power meter to a wall outlet or UPS will NOT give you accurate power consumption numbers due to slight changes in the input voltage. Thus we use a Tripp-Lite 1800W line conditioner between the 120V outlet and the power meter.


Considering this roundup featured cards which were both overclocked and had stock speeds, most of the power consumption figures were well within expectations but there were some exceptions. You should also note that the GTS 512MB card used here is simply a reflashed 9800 GTX+ which explains why it is not showing the same idle power consumption levels as the other GTS 250 cards.

For some reason, the ASUS card had slightly higher power consumption than the reference GTS 250 1GB. Whether this was due to lower-quality component choices can be debate somewhere else but we reran the tests 4 times with the same results so this is more than just the usual margin of error.

As is quite apparent, the Sparkle card does not downclock when in 2D mode though in their SPAtune program, you can manually switch the clock speeds to “Green” mode to lower power consumption. This lack of downclocking led to higher than expected idle power consumption numbers.

Finally we have the Gigabyte card; it has slightly higher than reference idle numbers but its power consumption under load is excellent. It seems like the claimed efficiency with Gigabyte’s Ultra Durable VGA is more than just marketing hype.