GeForce GT 220 And 210: DirectX 10.1 And 40nm Under $80

Power And Temperature

Let's have a look at the power-usage benchmarks first.

The first thing we notice is that the new GeForce 210 and GT 220 use the least amount of power in each of their respective market segments. Even though the differences are not huge, the advantage of 40nm manufacturing is there.

The Radeon HD 4670 isn't quite as frugal as the new GeForce GT 220 when it comes to power consumption. But as we can see from the benchmarks, it does offer a lot more performance in most instances, so it's likely to be at least as efficient.

We also see that the GeForce 9600 GSO betrays its roots as a high-end GPU forced into a low-end space. It becomes obvious why this is the only card in this segment that requires a dedicated PCIe power connector. Compared to the rest of the cards in this price range, the 9600 GSO might be the fastest, but it is also far less efficient from a power-usage standpoint.

Now let's have a look at the GPU-temperature benchmarks:

This chart is incredibly inconsistent, and the culprit here is the fact that all of the Gigabyte GeForce models have unique aftermarket coolers. While we won't get a clear idea of how hot these GPUs run relative to one another, we can see that the cooler on Gigabyte's new GeForce GT 220 does a fantastic job.