GeForce GTS 250: Nvidia's G92 Strikes Again

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Power Consumption

You might recall that Nvidia axed support for HybridPower with its GT200-based graphics cards as soon as the new architecture was able to reign in idle power consumption. No longer was it necessary to buy a motherboard with integrated graphics just to keep consumption under control.

Nvidia has made no comment on supporting that quickly-killed feature with the GTS 250. However, last year’s shift to 55 nm manufacturing seemingly made HybridPower irrelevant. As you can see here, all three Nvidia cards use less power at idle than any of the AMD boards we tested.

Under load, consumption jumps by quite a bit. But the two G92-based offerings both dip in under AMD’s Radeon HD 4850—a card that they both also outperform in a majority of tests.

As far as power consumption is concerned, Nvidia has an upper hand.

Chris Angelini
Chris Angelini
Chris Angelini is an Editor Emeritus at Tom's Hardware US. He edits hardware reviews and covers high-profile CPU and GPU launches.
86 Comments Comment from the forums
  • i wonder what would be the stand of 4850 and 4870 with 1gb frame buffer
    Reply
  • thepinkpanther
    when the GTX4xx series i guess nvidia will launch the g92 refresh yet again, this time as an entry level graphics card.
    Reply
  • xx12amanxx
    Hmm no mention of the slower model's Nvidia is going to push instead of these cherry picked Oced model's.I heard these Oced model's were just for reviewers and that most of these cards will actually be slower model's with even less performance.
    Reply
  • johnbilicki
    "so long as performance goes up or sideways as price goes down, we don’t see an issue with the reintroduction of proven technology"

    ...which (in the context it has been applied) is the same as saying we don't mind nVidia renaming an 8800GT to a 9800GT and then a 9800GT to a whatever 2xx series...and so on and so forth. My point is simple: nVidia is pulling an extremely sleazy marketing scheme on consumers by renaming existing models. If you goof admit it and get on with life; that's why I appreciated the fact that when the first generation of Phenoms were botched AMD gracefully renamed unaffected quads with a 50 (IE 9650 instead of 9600). Trying to remember all the different names of the exact same model is like dealing with someone who IM's you from five different screen names, eventually you just end up blocking them out.
    Reply
  • Good review, but i missed the noise and heat comparative
    Reply
  • cangelini
    xx12amanxxHmm no mention of the slower model's Nvidia is going to push instead of these cherry picked Oced model's.I heard these Oced model's were just for reviewers and that most of these cards will actually be slower model's with even less performance.
    Cherry picked? It's a retail product.
    Reply
  • curnel_D
    Chris, it's a decent article, but why in the world would you use 512mb models in everyting aside from the 250 and 260. If you would have shown the 1gb 4870, along with a 1gb 9800+, it would have showed a clearer picture of how the 250 is identical to the 9800+/9800/8800GT.

    Meh.

    And there are MASSIVE rumours saying that Nvidia is hand-picking the review models sent to reviewers, even confirmed by HardOCP. Addressing that in this article would have been great.
    Reply
  • If I'm not mistaken didn't the 9 series and the HD4XXX series launch at about the same time effectively putting them into the same class? So why does everyone love to compare the 2XX series to the 4XXX cards and on top of that usually giving the ram advantage to nvidia i.e. comparing 1GB cards to 512MB cards?
    Reply
  • sohei
    i think Nvidia want's to marry this card with us ...love with force is not possible ...we need a new "woman" from nvidia not other clothes ...Nvidia has enough experience with clothes ...they should enter in fashion business like Microsoft
    Reply
  • vaskodogama
    huh, anyway, I don't like the naming of GT200 cards anyway! AMD's got better price, and naming scheme!
    thepinkpantherwhen the GTX4xx series i guess nvidia will launch the g92 refresh yet again, this time as an entry level graphics card.I Agree!
    Reply