There are several interesting conclusions that can be drawn from looking at the following data. Not to sound skeptical, but the first piece of information drawn from the data is that NVIDIA was telling the truth about their power consumption. It is not that we don't trust the marketing and PR personnel from any particular company; it is just that we like to verify the claims of a firm regarding a product. It is good to know that the public can get good information about products they purchase.

The second obvious fact is that the NVIDIA 7800 GTX consumes less power than both the ATI and the 6800 Ultra. It is only a small percentage difference between the cards in terms of power, but that money adds up.

The third interesting observation is that the power consumption of the 7800 GTX is less than the ATI, yet it can render games with much greater speed than the X850XT PE.

Lastly there are the SLI figures. Apparently the 7800 GTX can not only manage power efficiently for itself, but that there are even gains from the previous generation in SLI. During the Half Life 2 demo, the 7800s in SLI ran with higher frame rates, yet consumed 46W less. Add that to the savings while idle, and it could mean some money in your wallet over the course of a year or two.

During the most demanding part of our power benchmarking, the 7800 GTX in SLI consumed 384W during 3DMark2005's Canyon Flight when the creature is jumping over the vessel. As you can see, here in the US we use a simple power meter called Watts Up? Pro.