Power consumption, temperature and noise
Taking a look at system-wide mains power draw, we note that the pre-overclocked KFA2 card is understandably more hungry than a reference GTX 460.
During a session of Crysis, the card pulled an additional 34 Watts.
As expected, the increase in core and memory frequencies is reflected in GPU temperature. During a gaming session, we found the card to be in the region of 6ºC hotter than NVIDIA's reference design.
The card remains well within acceptable levels, though, and taking into account the elevated speeds, temperatures are good.
A word on noise
Only time will tell whether or not KFA2's detachable fan will prove to be useful in terms of maintenance, but we can share our immediate thoughts on fan noise.
Unfortunately, it isn't good. The card's 80mm fan is clearly audible when idle, and frankly noisy when under load.
We liked the fact that NVIDIA's reference GTX 460 design - in both 768MB and 1GB flavours - managed to dispel the noise associated with all previous GTX 400-series products.
With that in mind, the acoustic performance of KFA2's GTX 460 1GB LTD OC is a big step backward. It's unlikely to disturb a hardcore gaming session, but if you enjoy the idea of quiet computing, this quite simply isn't the graphics card for you.
