Gtx 980 ti power consumption: Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB Power Consumption

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The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti ReviewMeet The GeForce GTX 980 TiNVIDIA’s Computex Announcements & The TestBattlefield 4Crysis 3Middle Earth: Shadow of MordorCivilization: Beyond EarthDragon Age: InquisitionThe Talos PrincipleFar Cry 4Total War: AttilaGRID AutosportGrand Theft Auto VSyntheticsComputePower, Temperature, & NoiseOverclockingFinal Words

As always, last but not least is our look at power, temperature, and noise. Next to price and performance of course, these are some of the most important aspects of a GPU, due in large part to the impact of noise. All things considered, a loud card is undesirable unless there’s a sufficiently good reason – or sufficiently good performance – to ignore the noise.

As the GM200 flagship card, GTX Titan X gets the pick of the litter as far as GM200 GPUs go. GTX Titan X needed fully-functional GM200 GPUs, and even then needed GPUs that were good enough to meet NVIDIA’s power requirements. GTX 980 Ti on the other hand, as a cut-down/salvage card, gets second pick. So we expect to see these chips be just a bit worse; to have either functional units that came out of the fab damaged, or have functional units that have been turned off due to power reasons.

GeForce GTX Titan X/980 Voltages
GTX Titan X Boost Voltage	GTX 980 Ti Boost Voltage	GTX 980 Boost Voltage
1. 162v	1.187v	1.225v

Looking at voltages, we can see just that in our samples. GTX 980 Ti has a slightly higher boost voltage – 1.187v – than our GTX Titan X. NVIDIA sometimes bins their second-tier cards for lower voltage, but this isn’t something we’re seeing here. Nor is there necessarily a need to bin in such a manner since the 250W TDP is unchanged from GTX Titan X.

The far more interesting story here is GTX 980 Ti’s clockspeeds. As we have pointed out time and time again, GTX 980 Ti’s gaming performance trails GTX Titan X by just a few percent, this despite the fact that GTX 980 Ti is down by 2 SMMs and is clocked identically. On paper there is a 9% performance difference that in the real world we’re not seeing. So what’s going on?

The answer to that is that what GTX 980 Ti lacks in SMMs it’s making up in clockspeeds. The card’s average clockspeeds are frequently two or more bins ahead of GTX Titan X, topping out at a 64MHz advantage under Crysis 3. All of this comes despite the fact that GTX 980 Ti has a lower maximum boost clock than GTX Titan X, topping out one bin lower at 1202MHz to GTX Titan X’s 1215MHz.

Ultimately the higher clockspeeds are a result of the increased power and thermal headroom the GTX 980 Ti picks up from halving the number of VRAM chips along with disabling two SMMs. With those components no longer consuming power or generating heat, and yet the TDP staying at 250W, GTX 980 Ti can spend its power savings to boost just a bit higher. This in turn compresses the performance gap between the two cards (despite what the specs say), which coupled with the fact that performance doesn’t scale lineraly with SMM count or clockspeed (you rarely lose the full theoretical performance amount when shedding frequency or functional units) leads to the GTX 980 Ti trailing the GTX Titan X by an average of just 3%.

Starting off with idle power consumption, there’s nothing new to report here. GTX 980 Ti performs just like the GTX Titan X, which at 74W is second only to the GTX 980 by a single watt.

Meanwhile load power consumption is also practically identical to the GTX Titan X. With the same GPU on the same board operating at the same TDP, GTX 980 Ti ends up right where we expect it, next to GTX Titan X. GTX Titan X did very well as far as energy efficiency is concerned – setting a new bar for 250W cards – and GTX 980 Ti in turn does just as well.

As was the case with power consumption, video card temperatures are similarly unchanged. NVIDIA’s metal cooler does a great job here, keeping temperatures low at idle while NVIDIA’s GPU Boost mechanism keeps temperatures from exceeding 83C under full load.

Finally for noise, the situation is much the same. Unexpected but not all that surprising, the GTX 980 Ti ends up doing a hair worse than the GTX Titan X here. NVIDIA has not changed the fan curves or TDP, so this ultimately comes down to manufacturing variability in NVIDIA’s metal cooler, with our GTX 980 Ti faring ever so slightly worse than the Titan. Which is to say that it’s still right at the sweet spot for noise versus power consumption, dissipating 250W at no more than 53dB, and once again proving the mettle of NVIDIA’s metal cooler.

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The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti ReviewMeet The GeForce GTX 980 TiNVIDIA’s Computex Announcements & The TestBattlefield 4Crysis 3Middle Earth: Shadow of MordorCivilization: Beyond EarthDragon Age: InquisitionThe Talos PrincipleFar Cry 4Total War: AttilaGRID AutosportGrand Theft Auto VSyntheticsComputePower, Temperature, & NoiseOverclockingFinal Words

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Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti video card review and testing (page 3)

Cooling system test results

No video recording of the cooler was made due to identical settings of the GeForce GTX Titan X cooling system.

Here we need to digress and explain why the GeForce GTX 980 Ti turned out to be a little hotter than Nvidia video cards using the same cooling system.

Very successful low power GPUs are selected for the GeForce GTX Titan X. And the younger model gets those GPUs that are available, and it’s not certain that you will get a good one.

This happened with the test sample of the video card. It accelerates well, but it consumes energy beyond what we are used to seeing. Therefore, the cooling system raised the fan speed from the usual 2300-2350 rpm to 2750 rpm.

Electricity consumption level

recommendations

Detailed data and overclocking

To assess the behavior of the reviewers in the nominal mode and overclocking, we turn to the Metro: Last Light test, conducted six times, and in parallel collect data that affects the graphics core, memory, power consumption and temperatures. After combining the results in single graphs, you can see how closely the factory specifications correspond to the real numbers and what happens to important indicators during overclocking.

GPU Boost core clock and stability.

GPU Boost technology on video cards with GPU GM200 works quite stably, no sharp jumps are visible. The frequency changes smoothly and predictably, thanks to which the cooling system functions in a balanced way. Most of the time, the graphics processor of the novelty operates at a frequency of up to 1193 MHz. And adding 10% to the TDP made it possible to reach an average of 1420 MHz.

Let me tell you a little secret: after removing the TDP limit, the graphics processor easily conquers a frequency of 1450 MHz and even more, but the howl of the fan at 3100-3300 rpm is not very pleasant. That’s when models with original cooling appear, you can safely unlock TDP and enjoy the GPU frequency of 1.5 GHz.

Memory frequency.

Despite the presence of a large amount of memory, it is easily overclocked to the frequencies familiar to the Maxwell generation — 1950-2000 MHz. Personally, I was a little unlucky — I managed to fix overclocking only at a frequency of 1950 MHz.

vGPU voltage.

You can clearly see that the GeForce GTX Titan X uses a higher quality GPU and runs at lower voltage because of this. To keep the GeForce GTX 980 Ti high, GPU Boost technology has to push it higher. As a result, energy efficiency suffers. In general, it turns out that the GeForce GTX 980 Ti voltage is more like the behavior of GM204. The latter has nominal values ​​in the range of 1.18-1.2 V.

GPU temperature.

The fan control algorithm is now equipped with an adaptive setting, just like the GeForce GTX Titan X. And now the graphics core is allowed to briefly overcome the threshold of 85?C. Then the speed gradually increases and lowers the temperature below 83? C.

Energy consumption.

The average power consumption of a new graphics card is 285W. This is slightly higher than the declared 250 watts. Pushing the limit up by 10% brought it up to a peak of 311 watts. Now the fastest gaming solution has even exceeded the power consumption of AMD Radeon R9290X.

Fan speed.

The evaporator chamber is built into the base of the CO and it does a great job of distributing the heat, but the heatsink area is still limited by the shroud. Therefore, when heated, the only effective way to cool the GPU is through the fan speed. In stock, its speed reaches 2500 rpm. Acceleration also affects heat dissipation, it grows, and with it, the speed also grows, rising to 2750 rpm.

Test results

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