Temperature Testing

Even though the G200 is based off a supposedly efficient 65nm manufacturing process, it is one heck of a hot-running card. During our 30 minute test the temperature peaked just 20°C shy of the core’s 105°C thermal threshold with the fan running near 100%. This does not bode well at all about the efficiency of this chip and is frankly a bit worrying since we saw a rise to 80°C within 3 minutes of beginning the test. Higher temperatures of 86°C came about 10 minutes later but by that point the fan was running itself ragged trying to keep temperatures under control. Our guess is that Nvidia is wishing they had switched to a 55nm manufacturing process for this GPU.

Acoustical Properties

If the temperatures were a bit on the high side, they were of no fault of the 80mm fan since it was trying for all it was worth to comply with what the fan speed controller was asking. If you haven’t already guessed let me spoil the fun for you: this is one of the loudest cards on my test bench in a long time.

With temperatures running near the 80°C mark after a few minutes of testing the fan speed ramped up to about 75% but the fun really started at 86°C. It is at this temperature that the fan spins up to a full 100% and puts out a sound like an onrushing tidal wave on steroids. Luckily, this isn’t the same utterly annoying dust buster-like sound the infamous HD2900XT cards were known for but it sure doesn’t go unnoticed even with speakers turned up high enough to have the neighbors pounding on my door. Granted, our test here is what we would consider a “worst case” scenario in terms of heat but consider yourself warned nonetheless.

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.

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.


When at idle speeds, the efficiency of the GTX 280 is simply amazing and shows that Nvidia is putting their dynamic clock and voltage regulation technology to very good use. Then when we put a constant load on the card, the baby is literally thrown out with the water and we see the highest power consumption of any card we have ever tested. Nvidia claims that their reference boards consume up to 236W which means higher clocked versions will probably approach the 300W mark. Even though the G200 core is fabricated on a 65nm manufacturing process, those 1.4 billion transistors means it guzzles power.

Not only does this translate into massive amounts of heat and a loud fan as we saw above but it also means you will need a hell of a power supply. I would recommend nothing less than a good 600W power supply with an 8-pin PCI-E connector.