Power Consumption

Let's see how the GeForce 9600 GT, with its 65 nm G94, performed in terms of power consumption.

Fairly logically, the 9600 GT's consumption is very close to that of the 8800 GT 256 MB, but still behind it; the increase in memory seems to more be than compensated for by the loss of nearly half the GPU's stream processors, despite the higher frequencies. You can see that under load (which we now measure with STALKER), the 9600 GT consumes as much power as the HD 3850. The latter, though, holds onto a clear advantage in 2D, due to its smaller engraving depth, better deactivation of the unused parts, and a larger drop in frequency: 300 MHz compared to 670 for the HD 3850. Note that Nvidia claims a maximum consumption of 95 W for its card.