We will finish our tests by a measurement of the power consumption of our Athlon 64 3800+’s basic configuration. This test should determine if the superiority of ATI cards when reading VC-1 encoded films translates into a real gain when it comes to electricity. As shown by the above table, this is actually the case.

The reading of the VC-1 increases the Geforce’s configuration consumption by 31% instead of 21.5% but only on the HD 2600 XT. The final difference is of 4 W. A 4W difference may seem negligible on a desktop but it isn’t on a laptop. The ATI cards are therefore capable of delivering better battery life to a laptop reading VC-1 or HD MPEG2 encoded HD films.

This is all well and good when taken alone, But in the case of a H.264 film, the phenomenon is reversed and it is the configuration equipped with the Geforce 8600 GT that consumes 4W less than the one equipped with the Radeon HD 2600 XT. So it’s a draw.