Quote Originally Posted by tajoh111 View Post
Its almost a certainty that the 4870 uses more power in idle, while its a certainty that the gt200 uses more power in peak.

However unless you game more than you actually use your computer or bench(which you don't care about power in the first place), then the energy usage cost is much higher to run a 4870.
I know that was the case when the 4870 first launched, but I would like to see recent power consumption figures.

At launch, PowerPlay was broken with the RV770 core only downclocking to 500MHz. Now, even RV790 downclocks to 240MHz and I assume that ATI made changes to idle state definitions through driver updates.