Shootouts

Power Efficient Gaming with GeForce 9800 GT Eco Cards

By Kenny Yeo - 15 Sep 2009

Temperature, Power Consumption & Overclocking

Temperature

With all three cards using different coolers, it's hard to say if the power-efficient models are any cooler by nature. But our results do seem to suggest that the power-efficient models are cooler, with the MSI N9800GT-MD1G running at a cool 54 degrees Celsius (thanks to its larger cooler) and the Zotac GeForce 9800 GT Eco clocking a respectable 60 degrees Celsius at the GPU core. In comparison, the stock card recorded 67 degrees Celsius at the GPU core.

Power Consumption

This is the big one. Are these power-efficient cards really less power-hungry? Well, we are happy to report that they are. At idle, both power-efficient cards recorded about 10W less power draw, and this difference is extended to a whopping 42W when measured at load, conclusively showing that the power-efficient cards do draw lesser power, while providing nearly similar performance.

Overclocking

The last test we did was overclocking. Without the extra PCIe power connector to draw power from, we expected the cards to perform poorly in this segment. Amazingly, the two power-efficient cards surprised us by achieving substantial improvement in clock speeds. Both cards could be clocked higher than a standard GeForce 9800 GT and the Zotac GeForce 9800 GT Eco even managed to achieve 650MHz at the core - a respectable 100MHz bump over its stock 550MHz. The can be attributed to the revised silicon used to fabricate the GPU of these newer GeForce 9800 GT cards.

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