Quote Originally Posted by oohms View Post
The missing hardware (mosfets, capacitors) will make 0 difference, unless you are running LN2 and you absolutely need to run 1.6v through the card
I agree but overclocking isn't the only thing that is being addressed here. A "dumbed down" voltage regulation section can lead to higher power consumption very easily. A good example of this is how Gigabyte has been able to increase efficiency on some of their GPUs by using their "Ultra Durable" approach. Them adding higher quality components (or in some cases just using additional caps and VRMs to clean up power distribution) has led to some pretty good results in power consumption tests.

I know that a point about that was already brought up but nearly every site seems to test power conumption differently so drawing parallels between two tests is very hard.