While Intel and AMD have moved aggressively towards reducing the amount of power their processors consume, nVIDIA and ATi have largely neglected this issue. In fact under load it's possible for videocard GPUs to suck up more power than the CPU draws. With the nVidia G80 core built on TSMC's 90nm technology, you know this graphics card is going to consume a lot of power.

While we have no way of measuring directly how much power the Foxconn FV-N88SMCD2-ONOC uses, PCSTATS will measure total system power draw and compare the same basic installation with a couple different videocards to get a rough idea of how power consumption fluctuates for each specific videocard.

The test system will consist of an AMD Athlon64 FX-62, Asus M2-CROSSHAIR motherboard, a reference Athlon64 FX-62 cooler, 2GB of Corsair Twin2X2048-6400C3 memory, a 74GB WD Raptor SATA hard drive, an 8x Gigabyte DVD writer and a floppy drive. The Power supply used here is nice little A-PFC compliant Seasonic S12-600W.

The videocards that will be tested against the Foxconn FV-N88SMCD2-ONOC will come from both the nVIDIA and ATi camps. Representing nVIDIA are the MSI NX8800GTX-T2D768E-HD (GeForce 8800GTX), MSI NX7950GX2-T2D1GE (GeForce 7950GX2), a MSI NX7900GTX-T2D512E (GeForce 7900GTX) and a Gigabyte GV-NX76T256D-RH (GeForce 7600GT) videocard. Representing ATi are an Asus X1900XTX 2DHTV/512M/A (Radeon X1900 XTX) and an Asus EAX1950PRO/HTDP/256M/A (Radeon X1950 Pro) videocard.

Let's have a look now at the results, just remember the Watts value is total system power draw. Lower numbers are best.

videocardPower Consumption on Total System Power Draw Tests
Idle:	Watts*	Ranking
MSI NX8800GTX-T2D768E-HD	196
MSI NX7950GX2-T2D1GE	183
MSI NX7900GTX-T2D512E	165
Gigabyte GV-NX76T256D-RH	140
Asus EAX1900XTX 2DHTV/512M/A	160
Asus EAX1950PRO/HTDP/256M/A	150
Foxconn FV-N88SMCD2-ONOC	171
Foxconn FV-N88SMCD2-ONOC (Overclocked to 650/2000)	178
Load:	Watts*	Ranking
MSI NX8800GTX-T2D768E-HD	345
MSI NX7950GX2-T2D1GE	315
MSI NX7900GTX-T2D512E	277
Gigabyte GV-NX76T256D-RH	213
Asus EAX1900XTX 2DHTV/512M/A	333
Asus EAX1950PRO/HTDP/256M/A	252
Foxconn FV-N88SMCD2-ONOC	302
Foxconn FV-N88SMCD2-ONOC (Overclocked to 650/2000)	317

[ *This figure represents total system power consumption in Watts, either with the system at idle, or the peak value recorded while running 3DMark06. ]

At idle, the Foxconn FV-N88SMCD2-ONOC videocard draws 171W of power at stock speeds, and 178W when overclocked. The FV-N88SMCD2-ONOC is not very efficient but then again neither nVIDIA nor ATi has done much to address this issue of power consumption with current generation GPUs.

The MSI NX7950GX2-T2D1GE and Asus EAX1950PRO/HTDP/256M/A videocard from the previous generation both draw quite a bit of power, but the MSI NX8800GTX-T2D768E-HD sits at top spot using 196W of power.

Under load, the Foxconn FV-N88SMCD2-ONOC sucks up a lot more juice. The system ramps up from 171W to just over the 300W mark, with a total system power consumption of 302W! When the videocard is overclocked, power usage balloons to 317W. This is second only to the MSI NX8800GTX-T2D768E-HD and Asus EAX1950PRO/HTDP/256M/A videocards. The Asus EAX1900XTX 2DHTV/512M/A takes the cake as its total system power consumption reaches to 333W under load!

One thing is clear, neither ATi or nVIDIA is a saint when it comes to power usage of their modern flagship graphics cards. Videocards definitely gobble up a lot of the power a total computer system uses!

nVIDIA is usually the pioneer of new videocard technologies so we look forward in seeing how it will work to addresses the power issues that affect modern videocards. Videocards have started to move towards parallel computing like processors, is that the way of the future? In any case it will certainly be interesting to see what nVIDIA and ATi end up doing, because power consumption cannot continue unabated....

Next up, High Definition Content playback tests.