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Power Consumption
Voltages & Temperatures
A closer look shows that the passively-cooled card regulates its voltage a bit more quickly and accurately. However, this doesn’t make any noticeable difference: the average clock rates and gaming results come out nearly the same.
Both cards’ power consumption may as well be identical, too. The small fan consumes less than a single watt during normal operation. This is in the same order of magnitude as differences we'd measure due to GPU quality.
A 32W result during gaming and a 34W measurement under our stress test do exceed Nvidia's TDP specification. But that number only covers the GPU. This means our two GP108s do stay within the 30W limit.
Power Consumption & Current
A look at the gaming loop graph shows short peaks of almost 40W. Zoom in even further and you'll see the cards go as high as ~48W. Every one of those brief peaks is followed by a valley, though, which compensates for it. In short, the peaks are nothing to worry about; the averages end up right where they should according to the manufacturer's technical specs.
Brief current peaks of 3.3A don’t pose any danger to other hardware components, either.
During our stress test, the load and power consumption curve are more constant and even. The highest peaks reach approximately 39W.
The current plot looks good as well.
Motherboard Slot Utilization
As usual, we test the cards’ conformance to the PCI-SIG's slot specification, which allows a maximum current of 5.5A. Gigabyte’s new graphics cards make it all the way to 2.7A, or just under half of the specified ceiling. There’s no cause for concern with these GT 1030s.
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