System Power Usage
We used a series power meter to measure the power used by our system. We also compared it to the reference system that we built two years ago. The results are surprising.
Power usage at idle:
2004 System: 1.04 amps Current system: 0.86 amps
Power usage while playing Quake 4:
2004 System: 1.61 amps Current system: 1.40 amps (Dual cards in SLI)
Power usage during Quake 2 (freeware, OpenGL engine)
2004 System: 1.83 amps Current system: 0.91 amps
Thus, our newer system uses a lot less power. This is surprising, considering it is much faster and has two higher-end graphics cards in an SLI configuration. This is fantastic news from the standpoint of heat and energy savings.