Both GeForce GTX cards draw much lesser power compared to their Radeon HD counterparts on idle.

 

 

The GeForce GTX 260 draws slightly lesser power than the Radeon HD 4870. The GeForce GTX 280 draws about 50W more than the Radeon HD 4870, but the Radeon HD 4850 CrossFire setup draws even more power. The Radeon HD 4870 CrossFire setup is the ultimate power guzzler in our roundup, registering a wee bit over half a kilowatt on our trusty power meter.

 

 

 

 

Not only do the GeForce GTX cards consume much less power during idle, they also run very cool - a whopping 30ºC cooler than the Radeon HD cards. It is believed that the drivers for the Radeon cards need some fixing to reduce power draw and temperatures.

 

 

NVIDIA still has the cooler cards even on full load. The largest difference comes from the GeForce GTX 260 when compared to the Radeon HD 4870 - 15ºC lower on the GTX 260. A single Radeon HD 4870 card in CrossFire runs at 87ºC, having two of those in your system gives you a free room warmer for the cool seasons.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX cards can be touched all round during our load testing. Yes they are warm, but we are still able to hold our fingers on the card. It might be due to the added plastic shroud behind (it actually also comes in contact with the rear GDDR3 chips) which acts as some form of a mini-barrier. However, it was a totally different story on the ATI cards - even the shroud covering the heatsink was scorching hot. We could not hold our fingers on the plastic shroud for more than a second. The back of the PCB was almost untouchable.

 

 

 Noise Levels

 

HD 4850 CF Automatic Cannot be heard over the rest of our system.
Audible Fan speed at 30% produces noticeable whirl which is of a slight high-pitch nature.
50% Very noticeable.
100% Loud!
HD 4870 Automatic Cannot be heard over the rest of our system.
Audible Fan speed at 30% starts to produce noticeable fan noise.
50% Noise level scales exponentially with this card, almost as loud as HD 4850 CF at 100%.
100% Mini hairdryer. The pitch is not as high as the HD 4850.
HD 4870 CF Automatic Cannot be heard over the rest of our system.
Audible Similar to a single HD 4870, fan noise is noticeable once we cross 30%, just that it is louder now since we're on two cards.
50% Wow.
100% Mini hairdryer's big brother.
GTX 280 Automatic Cannot be heard over the rest of our system.
Audible Fan speed at 45% starts to produce noticeable fan noise.
50% Pretty noticeable fan noise if you are in front of the card.
100% The rush of air can be heard, but not obtrusive because the pitch is low.
GTX 260 Automatic Similar to GTX 280. It's the same unit.
Audible
50%
100%