In the vehicle suspension system, an optimal compromise is necessary, between the ride comfort, the suspension working space and the change of force in tyre-road contact in order to control vehicle behaviour. In this paper, passive and various types of intelligent vehicle suspension systems are compared in terms of their relative performance capabilities and power requirements. These systems are, three-setting switchable damper, active and slow active suspension systems. The performance goal of these systems is to minimize the vehicle body accelerations under the constraint of the available suspension working space. The control gains of the intelligent systems are obtained using optimal control theory and adaptive control strategy is used for the system behaviour. Furthermore, the mean power dissipation within the suspensions is calculated. The results showed that the adaptive control strategy improves ride performance for all the types of suspension compared. The mean power demand and dissipation within the suspensions is also calculated