Power Consumption Measurements
Performance at Idle and Load:
Everything gets flipped upside down when we compare idle and peak loads. While the mid-range GeForce cards are unbeatable at idle, they require considerably more power than the other cards under full load. Later in our efficiency analysis we'll see whether they make good use of that extra power draw. The undisputed power hog in our test is a GeForce GTX 560 Ti that comes with both an eight-pin and a six-pin auxiliary power plug. We question whether this is really necessary, because even our GeForce GTX 580 doesn’t pull that wattage from the wall.