Word on power consumption?

[xbdestroya]

Well I can find plenty of information out there that states the vanilla 6800 draws less power than the 6600GT, but what I'm wondering is if there's anything out there that states how much the 6600 draws in relation to the GT. My theory is that it should be a good deal less, but at the moment I can't find anything out there to confirm.

 

[Matthias99]

Since they're the same card except for the clock speed differences, I would expect it to be basically a linear step down from the 6600GT. If it runs at 300Mhz core versus 500Mhz core (which I think is correct), it would use 300/500 = .6 times as much power. Roughly.

 

[xbdestroya]

Hmmm... I don't know if it's a linear function though - I feel liek there's something more too it. Probably the voltage the cards are set at in order to make the chosen core clocks stable. I think this theory is further backed up because individuals that have overclocked their GT's by over 20% on the core have only increased power draw by about 6%.

Normally any core taken to the 'GT' or 'XT' level produces significantly more heat than it's normal brethren, acroos both NVidia and ATI, seemingly due to the higher voltages used.
DR2 is a power hog for
Would GDDR3 vs regular DDR also play a role? I know GDDR3 has an impact on power consumption, but I forget whether that impact is upwards or downwards.

 

[gobucks]

I think the maximum power usage for a 6600GT is around 50W, which is why the AGP version (max power = 37W i think) needs a Molex connector, while the PCIe version (max power 75W) has plenty of power to support it.

And power usage is definitely not linear. For example, look at how much P4 prescotts ramp up power usage once you get past 3.2GHz or so. That is far from linear. Of course I doubt the 6600 is quite that skewed. If I had to guess, I'd say it uses 25W max, about half that of a 6600GT. Oh, and I forgot, GDDR3 is based off of DDR2, so it uses less power than DDR. Of course, it's almost twice as fast, (1GHz vs. 550MHz) so it probably evens out.