Noise levels
Noise levels were measured using an Extech Model 407727 Digital Sound Level Meter placed 1" from each graphics card's PCI back-plate and out of the path of direct airflow. Measurements were taken after 10 minutes idling on the Windows Vista desktop and after an additional 10 minutes in Crysis with a view of the sunrise. All testing was conducted on an open test bench.

So much for fancy aftermarket coolers. While most of the field settles in between 45 and 46 decibels at idle, a number of cards are quite a bit louder, presumably because they make no use of temperature-based fan speed control. Palit and VisionTek tie for the lead here, although everything up to the Alpha Dog's 46.6 decibels is reasonable.

Things start getting louder when we hit the Asus cards, and louder still with the Sapphire and Gigabytes. The PowerColors are just a joke, though. There's just no way the Radeon HD 3800 series needs 56 decibels of fan noise to keep cool at idle.

The pack starts to spread out when we put the cards under load. Here, it's the HIS 3850 taking top honors with a noise level that's barely louder than idle. Early reference coolers on the Gigabyte and MSI 8800 GTs take the number two and three spots followed by the Asus and Palit cards with custom cooling solutions.

What's really striking to me is the fact that the GeForce cards are generally quieter than their Radeon counterparts—four of the top five are 8800 GTs. They're not all that quiet, of course. The XFX cards and custom-cooled Gigabyte are six to sever decibels louder than the quietest GTs. However, those cards still make less noise than our loudest Radeons, whose noise levels eclipse 57 decibels.

Power consumption
Power consumption was measured at the wall socket for the entire system, sans monitor or speakers, using a Watts Up? Pro meter. We used the same idle and load conditions as in our noise level tests.

Finally, the Radeons get a spot in the sun. The 3800-series cards consume less power at idle than the 8800 GTs, by as much as 20W in some cases. You'd expect the factory overclocked cards to consume more power, but that's not always the case. HIS's IceQ3 has the lowest power consumption of the lot, yet it also sports the highest 3850 clock speeds.

Between the GeForce 8800 GTs, Zotac and Palit are surprising low-power leaders. One packs higher-than-stock core and memory clock speeds, while the other has to power twice the memory of its competitors, but both consume less power than the 8800 GT 512MB pack at idle.

Firing up Crysis changes the picture dramatically. In the top seven, we have all three of our 3850s peppered with a quartet of 8800 GTs. The 3870s have to settle for the middle and back of the field, where they're joined by the rest of the GeForce crowd.

Interestingly, while 30W separated our single-card configurations at idle, the spread shrinks to 24W under load. SLI isn't as huge of a power drain as one might expect, either. Adding a second card only increases system power consumption by 52 watts.