Nvidia have been hard at work trying to tame the thermals and power consumption of their Fermi based GPUs. GF104 was the first step and proved to be quite efficient in the mainstream market. The GTX460, in which the GPU was first used, was still no match for AMD’s Barts core. Nonetheless, it was a step in the right direction. With the GTX580, Nvidia have made some architectural tweaks to prevent leakage and they have implemented power saving features to keep the TDP in line. From the results, it appears that Nvidia have been very successful on that front, resolving the shortcomings of the GF100 core on the GTX480. Not only does it draw less power than the GTX480 by a significant 70-80W but it is also more efficient that the ASUS HD6970, delivering better performance with much lower power draw. Overclocking doesn’t appear to increase load power consumption significantly, despite raised voltages and a 17% core clock boost. It leads me to think that Nvidia’s power saving feature was kicking in to limit the TDP during stress testing.