Power Consumption, Temperatures and Noise
With all the power efficiency improvement talk that NVIDIA has been pushing on us since learning about the new Kepler GPU, we were eager to see how the actual power consumption actually turned out.
It hasn’t been often…or ever…that we have really said this: NVIDIA has the best performing and most power efficient GPU for the high end gamer. The GTX 680 is able to outperform the HD 7970 in most of our gaming titles while using less power – 29 watts less to be exact. And even more interesting this power consumption "peak" should be about the same on every game you play, if the GPU Boost technology is working like it supposed to.
In terms of temperature the Radeon cards still take the lead here but keep in mind that the GeForce GTX 680 is always balancing the performance, power and fan speeds in near real-time so the 81-83C level is likely the highest you’ll see.
The good news keeps coming for NVIDIA as we see the GTX 680 is actually running quieter than the Radeon HD 7970 while running more efficiently. The new GeForce card is just a great overall product!
The reason for frame rate
The reason for frame rate capping is to lower the temps of the card. Which also reduces the fanspeed automatically and consuming less power overall.
It works, I tried it in Battlefield 3 with my two GTX 580’s in SLI. Normally I get about 100 FPS on Ultra, gpu’s at 82C max. With a FPS cap of 80 FPS, I drop temps down to 70’s. 10 degree savings and quieter operation.
Txaa is best filter
Txaa is best filter