I don't blog much about graphics cards, primarily because I consider the entire industry a lost cause, in terms of clean, energy efficient computing. While Intel, AMD, and Via have made tremendous strides towards reducing wasted energy and improving the efficiency of their CPUs, today's graphics chip manufacturers couldn't give a hoot about power consumption. And the forthcoming GPUs from nVidia are proof.
Consider the nVidia 8800 Ultra chip, popular among gamers: Its thermal design power (TDP, basically the most energy the card will ever suck--a worst case scenario) was 185W. This is approximately three times as much as the Intel Core 2 Duo line of processors. Go back and read that again. That's right, the graphics chip draws potentially three times as much energy as the CPU. The forthcoming GTX 280 chip, due out sometime this month if the rumors are true, may draw as much 236W.
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*Source: GoodCleanTech (
http://www.goodcleantech.com/2008/06...e_antigr.php)*
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