Desktop Power Consumption

Of course also normal power consumption is interesting. In idle mode the GTX480 clocks down to an insanely low 50/67.5/101MHz, but the power consumption is still much higher than on ATI's HD5850. Using a second display, which is quite standard in working environments, results with over 200W in idle for the GTX480. We must admit this is very high, as the HD4850 consumes this much while running games. MSI’s HD4850 does exceptionally well with two displays because it's custom PCB is able to beat even the HD5850. With only one display the MSI HD4850 does use more power, but it fares quite well, because it does not downclock the GPU.