Power Consumption & Temperatures

The GeForce 8800 GTS 512 uses slightly more power than the 8800 GT at idle (~7 watts more). However due to its aggressive core and memory frequencies, under load we saw it consume as much as 37 extra watts when gaming.

As we suspected, although the GeForce 8800 GTS 512 features a nice big dual slot cooler, the fan never spins up when under load, so the temperatures keep climbing till they hit just over 80 degrees. The same problem was found when testing the Radeon HD 3870, which was also very quiet even under load.

While the 8800 GTS 512 was slightly cooler than the Radeon HD 3870, it still reached 83 degrees under load and never went below 55 degrees at idle.

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