900 series power consumption

[Dawelio]

Hey guys,

This will probably be a very dumb question, but I keep going on about it and want to ask you guys about it. To hopefully bring some light over it...

The 900 series card are on the Maxwell architecture, which are known to be power efficient.

Now the 970 I can kinda see it, with the single 8 pin... but on the 980 however, I find it a bit harder to believe, when it requires 8 + 6 pins.

Like the R9 290 are power hungy cards and not efficient at all really, uses 8+6 pins and sometimes dual 8 pins (Vapor-X).

Now, I know that the power connectors aren't everything... but I hope you sort of get my thoughts here?...

Thanks,
Chrazey

 

[MadShadow]

Just because it has "ALL THE PIIINS" doesnt mean that it is going to consume that much power. The card will consume as much power as it needs, not as much as the pins can supply. Remember that the 980 is a top tier card and if it only had a single 8 pin, some might question its credibility.

 

[SieB]

Just because the cards have X amount of pins doesn't mean they will need or use all the power they provide, but when you throw overclocking in the mix the cards will use more power.

Here is a graph from Guru3D which shows cards being stressed at 100% GPU usage and how much power in watts they are pulling.

 

[JR23]

The 980's are more overclocking orientated too, when you start increasing voltage power draw goes up fast. So not only does it need that bit more power because it's bigger but also they will want bigger overheads.

It's worth mentioning a lot of 980's have significantly more power phases than the 970 too, the Strix for example goes from 6 to 10. Don't read too much into the stock power consumption.

JR

 

[Doomslayer]

Not all GTX970 have a single 8 pin as far as i know the ASUS one is the only one

 

[NeverBackDown]

Well the PCI bus provides 75watts of power.
A 6 pin cable provides 75watts of power.
An 8 pin cable provides 150 watts of power.
So in total it provides 300watts of power. A 970(reference) only needs 145watts. So in theory a 6pin cable is all the is required. A GTX 980 however needs 165watts, So it needs A single 6 and 8 pin. It could use a single 8 pin/2x6pin as 150+75 would still = 225watts of power, but i would assume Nvidia's engineers have a reason for specifying a single 6 and 8 pin. I would assume using both to provide up to 300 watts is for OC'ing and oem's.

 

[Dicehunter]

Now the 970 I can kinda see it, with the single 8 pin... but on the 980 however, I find it a bit harder to believe, when it requires 8 + 6 pins.

The reference Titan style 980 uses 2 x 6 pins, It's only really the after market variations that use 6+8 or the bleeding edge versions like the Matrix that use 8+8 but as others have pointed out just because they have these cable requirements doesn't mean they'll pull that type of wattage.

To give you an idea of wattage used this is everything in my system that draws power from the power supply -

CPU - *Overclocked*
Motherboard
RAM - *Overclocked*
GPU - *Overclocked*
Soundcard
SSD
HDD x 2
10 x fans *9 x 120mm - 1 x 140mm*
2 x LED Strips
Mouse
Keyboard
Game Controller
Headset

At 100% load on the whole system according to my killawatt I'm just shy of 400w, Not really a lot when you think about it.

 

[Dawelio]

The reference Titan style 980 uses 2 x 6 pins, It's only really the after market variations that use 6+8 or the bleeding edge versions like the Matrix that use 8+8 but as others have pointed out just because they have these cable requirements doesn't mean they'll pull that type of wattage.

To give you an idea of wattage used this is everything in my system that draws power from the power supply -

CPU - *Overclocked*
Motherboard
RAM - *Overclocked*
GPU - *Overclocked*
Soundcard
SSD
HDD x 2
10 x fans *9 x 120mm - 1 x 140mm*
2 x LED Strips
Mouse
Keyboard
Game Controller
Headset

At 100% load on the whole system according to my killawatt I'm just shy of 400w, Not really a lot when you think about it.

Is it like that during extended time?...

 

[Dicehunter]

Is it like that during extended time?...

During normal gaming the whole system hovers around 300w max usage.

 

[Dawelio]

During normal gaming the whole system hovers around 300w max usage.

Not really for this subject, but isn't your 1200W PSU quite overkill in that aspect then?...

 

[Dicehunter]

Not really for this subject, but isn't your 1200W PSU quite overkill in that aspect then?...

Yep but I plan to go 3 way SLI in the future so got the PSU ahead of time, Also I might get the next version of Intels "X" platform so having some good headroom is never a bad thing

 

[Dawelio]

Yep but I plan to go 3 way SLI in the future so got the PSU ahead of time, Also I might get the next version of Intels "X" platform so having some good headroom is never a bad thing

So you're planning on going triple 980's? O_O... Lord...

 

[Dicehunter]

So you're planning on going triple 980's? O_O... Lord...

Maybe, I might just get a 2nd and see if I really want to go the Tri-SLI route.

 

[Warchild]

Maybe, I might just get a 2nd and see if I really want to go the Tri-SLI route.

Didnt you ditch that idea after deciding to stick to 1 1080p monitor?

 

[barnsley]

Maybe, I might just get a 2nd and see if I really want to go the Tri-SLI route.

4gb vram though.

I thought 8gb vram would be a better bet for three or more cards?

 

[Dicehunter]

Didnt you ditch that idea after deciding to stick to 1 1080p monitor?

Sure did but I love the look of the Nvidia SLI bridge you can now buy ^_^