NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 Mainstream GPU

We'd like to cover a few final data points before bringing this article to a close. Throughout all of our benchmarking and testing, we monitored how much power our test systems were consuming using a power meter. Our goal was to give you an idea as to how much power each configuration used while idling and under a heavy workload. Please keep in mind that we were testing total system power consumption at the outlet here, not just the power being drawn by the motherboards alone.

NVIDIA was able to shrink the PCB down to 9" with the GeForce GTS 250, and in the process eliminate one of the GeForce 9800 GTX+'s 6-pin supplemental PCI Express power connectors.  That would lead you to believe the GeForce GTS 250 consumes less power than the 9800 GTX+.  And you'd be right.  While both idling and under load, the GeForce GTS 250 consumes about 20 - 45 fewer watts than the older 9800 GTX+.

Since we're on the subject of power consumption, which is related to heat, we should also talk for a moment about the GTS 250's cooler.  Throughout testing, we found the EVGA GeForce GTS 250 Superclocked edition to be very quiet.  Even after extended benchmarking sessions, the card's fan never spun up to full power and remained relatively inaudible over other system components.