BFG Tech GeForce GTS 250 Graphics Card Review

Power Consumption and Temperatures

For testing power consumption, we took our test system and plugged it into a Seasonic Power Angel. For idle numbers, we allowed the system to idle on the desktop for 15 minutes and took the reading. For load numbers, we measured the peak wattage used by the system while running the game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – Clear Sky at 1280×1024 resolutions with high image quality.

Power Consumption Results: The BFG Tech GeForce GTS 250 has great power consumption numbers and the idle score was much lower than the cards available at roughly the same price point. Even at load the BFG Tech GeForce GTS 250 has the lowest power consumption, which is impressive. The BFG Tech GeForce GTS 250 gets two thumbs up for power consumption as the revised PCB and die shrink helped big time. It looks like the GeForce GTS 250 1GB uses ~30W less power at idle and load when compared to the GeForce 9800 GTX+.

Since video card temperatures and the heat generated by next-generation cards have become an area of concern among enthusiasts and gamers, we want to take a closer look at how these cards generate heat under load. In order to get proper temperature readings of both the ATI and NVIDIA graphics cards I used GPU-Z to monitor and log the GPU temperature. As you can see from the screen shot above, the idle state of the BFG Tech GeForce GTS 250 drops the GPU frequency down to 300MHz and the memory down to just 100MHz. With this reduction the idle temperature of the BFG Tech GeForce GTS 250 is just 36 degrees Celsius!

Thermal Testing

Power Consumption Results: The BFG Tech GeForce GTS 250 has very impressive thermals, to say the least. It idles at 36C and runs at 61C when playing Stalker: Clear Sky! No other card can come close to these low temperatures and this is with the stock cooler! The GeForce GTS 250 might not be ground breaking on the performance front, but it shines when it comes to temperatures and power consumption!