Power Consumption & Temperatures
The factory overclocked Asus ENGTX285 TOP uses 17% less power than the original GTX 280 when under full load and 11% less power at idle. The improvements inherent to the 55nm die shrink become evident in this test, having this high performance graphics card to be extremely power efficient.
The GTX 285 consumed considerably less power than the Radeon HD 4870 1GB at idle and slightly more under load, despite of the exhibited performance advantage of the GeForce board.
As we mentioned earlier, the Asus ENGTX285 TOP card uses Nvidia's reference cooling design, so we aren't looking at anything out of the ordinary for a high-end part. Along with the low power consumption, the GTX 285 generates little heat at idle, making it the coolest high-end graphics card tested in this review. Under load the ENGTX285 TOP was also impressive at 74 degrees which matches the GeForce GTX 260.