Arriving on June 17, the GeForce GTX 280 will be Nvidia's highest-end discrete graphics offer and that means both top notch performance and high power requirements. Equipped with 1GB of GDDR3 memory and a 65nm G(T)200 chip, the upcoming card needs additional power from two PCIe connectors - one 6- and one 8-pin. This unfortunately paints a grim picture when it comes to power consumption but as recently revealed by a not at all shy box, the official requirements of the GeForce GTX 280 are not (too) over the top.

To use one GeForce GTX 280 in your system a power supply of at least 550W will be needed and this requirement is actually a little lower that of a GeForce 9800 GX2 (which has two G92 GPUs). Of course, a SLI or triple-SLI setup with the GTX 280 will need a higher-power PSU but that's why shops are selling 1kW - 1.2kW units.