NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 Affordable DX11 GPU

Name: NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 Affordable DX11 GPU - Page 11
Brand: NVIDIA

by Marco Chiappetta — Monday, September 13, 2010, 12:00 AM EDT

Before bringing this article to a close, we'd like to cover a few final data points--namely power consumption and noise. Throughout all of our benchmarking and testing, we monitored how much power our test system was consuming using a power meter. Our goal was to give you all an idea as to how much power each configuration used while idling and while 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 graphics cards alone.

Total System Power Consumption

Tested at the Outlet

The total system power consumption of our test rig shows that the new GeForce GTS 450 sips power while idling at the Windows desktop and under load the reference card consumes about the same power as the Radeon HD 5770. The overclocked Asus and EVGA GeForce GTS 450 cards consume a bit more power while idling than the reference card, but while under load they consume about 24-30 more watts. Nevertheless, the GeForce GTS 450's power consumption isn't bad at all. The cards remained quiet throughout testing and were only warm to the touch after hours of benchmarking. We could handle them without a problem immediately after testing. Temps won't be an issue for anyone, provided you've got decent airflow within your system.

Tags: Nvidia, GeForce, PhysX, Gaming, graphics, GPU, 3D Vision

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com