Rumour control: Nvidia ‘Green Edition’ GPUs on the way

Posted at: 10:38am 15th January 2009 by Ben Hardwidge

GeForce 9600 GT core voltage reduced to 1V

Lower power consumption can only be a good thing when we’re faced with high electricity prices, as well as a nagging need to fork out for new power supplies from time to time. This isn’t easy when graphics cards are increasingly demanding more power, but the word is that Nvidia is working on a ‘Green Edition’ series of GPUs with a reduced core voltage, which would result in lower power consumption.

Tech gossip site VR-Zone reports that Nvidia is going to attempt to jump on the environmentalism bandwagon with a GeForce 9600 GT Green Edition. According to the site, the 55nm GPU will be based on Nvidia’s revised G94-350-B1 core, as opposed to the standard G94 core found in a usual GeForce 9600 GT.

The site claims that the GPU will use 0.1V less than a standard GeForce 9600 GT, with a total voltage of 1V, give or take two per cent. Meanwhile, the core will apparently be clocked at 600MHz with the GDDR3 memory clocked at 900MHz (1.8GHz effective). The memory has the same speed as a standard 9600 GT, although the GPU core clock will have been reduced from the 650MHz core clock of standard 9600 GT cards.

Although a drop of 0.1V might not look like much, this is almost a ten per cent drop from a total voltage of 1.1V. As such, this could reduce the total power consumption by a noticeable amount depending on the current. The first generation of GeForce 9600 GT cards were fabricated on a 65nm process, but the shrink to a 55nm process could enable Nvidia to reduce the current and thus the power consumption of the GPU further.

Either way, we’re probably only talking about somewhere between 10-20W, so it’s not going to be a massive difference. Would this be enough to justify the ‘Green Edition’ tag? Are a product’s green-credentials and power consumption an important factor when you’re making a buying decision? Let us know your thoughts.