Power Consumption

Cooling modern video cards is becoming more and more difficult, especially when users are asking for quiet cooling solutions. That's why the engineers are now paying much more attention to power consumption of new video card designs.


In order to characterize a video card's power consumption, the whole system's mains power draw was measured. This means that these numbers include CPU, Memory, HDD, Video card and PSU inefficiency.

The three result values are as following:

• Idle: Windows sitting at the desktop (1024x768 32-bit) all windows closed, drivers installed.
• Average: 3DMark03 Nature at 1280x1024, 6xAA, 16xAF. This results in the highest power consumption. Average of all readings (two per second) while the test was rendering (no title screen).
• Peak: 3DMark03 Nature at 1280x1024, 6xAA, 16xAF. This results in the highest power consumption. Highest single reading

The power consumption of the GeForce 9500 GT is extremely low, which means any PSU, no matter how ancient it is will be able to power it just fine. Compared to similar offerings in this performance class, the 9500 GT also delivers best-in-class performance per Watt.
Our card did not use distinct 2D/3D clocks, even though there is some info floating around that the reference design cards run at a lower clock speed when idle.