A 14-Way Comparison Of NVIDIA vs. Nouveau Drivers
The system power consumption was measured by an external USB-based WattsUp AC power meter, which interfaces with the Phoronix Test Suite system monitoring module and measures the overall system power consumption. When idling, the power consumption between the NVIDIA and Nouveau drivers was close to the same. For several of the NVIDIA GPUs the power consumption was even slightly less than the binary driver.