Asus ENGTX285 TOP overclocked graphics card

We saw this effect both with nTune and the Asus Smart Doctor utility, and feel that the likeliest explanation is that overclocking helps the graphics cards to settle down into the low-power state when the workload diminishes. Whatever the explanation may be, this is a strange phenomenon to observe.

Adding a second GTX 280 in SLI made the performance jump by 80 per cent which is impressively efficient and it raised the power draw to 500W under load.

Power Draw Results

Power draw in Watts (W)