Power Consumption:

On top of our graphics performance testing, we have also measured the power consumption of Zotac's GeForce 8800 GTX AMP! Edition at both idle and load. For this we used our standard test system configuration listed earlier on in the review. In addition, we also tested the power consumption of the Radeon HD 2900 XT on our Asus Striker Extreme so that we could directly compare power consumption across all of the GPUs.

For our idle testing, we left the systems idling on the desktop for ten minutes, recording the average draw at the wall socket. For load testing, we used our benchmark routine from The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and measured the peak power consumption in this section of the title. We tested the cards in a number of other scenarios and this proved to be the most intensive in all cases, so you can consider this to be a worst-case scenario.

Bear in mind that we have disabled all CPU-related power management options in the motherboard's BIOS so that we can highlight exactly how well the GPU's power management features are working (or not).



Nvidia has definitely made some improvements to its manufacturing process over time, as the Zotac GeForce 8800 GTX AMP! Edition consumes 21 Watts less power than the EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GTX KO Superclocked ACS³ under full load. Not only that, but it also consumes 10W less power at load than a standard GeForce 8800 GTX that we've had since way back in October 2006 (i.e. before Nvidia's GeForce 8800-series was unveiled), even despite the 10 percent higher core and memory clock speeds.

At idle, the results are all the more impressive as the Zotac GeForce 8800 GTX AMP! Edition actually consumes the same amount of power as our BFGTech GeForce 8800 GTS OC video card and 15W less power than the reference GeForce 8800 GTX. These numbers are undoubtedly awesome and I'm sure many will welcome these power savings.

As always though, power consumption is a bit of a lottery because there are a large number of factors that can result in a higher power consumption - so much so that it's almost down to where the chip came from off the wafer and even then you cannot guarantee that a chip from the middle of the wafer will have a lower power consumption than a chip from right on the edge of a wafer. It's almost as random as overclocking can be; speaking of which...