Tom's Hardware GTX 980 & 970 Review UP. 970 Matches 290X. 980 Beats 780 Ti at 200W.

[TechFan@ic]

Performance summary :

 

Power consumption overview & in detail.

 

 

Now before we procede I must point out that the Gigabyte GTX 980 OC uses a handpicked golden sample GM204 chip.Which is why it consumes less power than a reference GTX 980. It's also worthy to note that the reference 970 figures are "emulated". Tom's Hardware used the Gigabyte 970 card to make the measurements but underclocked it to match a reference 970.

 

These are power consumption measurements for the card alone and not the entire system which is why they're quite low. Tom's Hardware has quite an elaborate setup to isolate the power consumption of the card.

The reference GTX 980 consumes exactly 200W under load, exactly the same as an HD 7970.
Putting at 5W less than a GTX 780 and 44W less than a 780 Ti which actually coincides with Luke's results.
Also 42W under than 290X.

The GTX 970 is more impressive, coming in at 168W, 4W below the GTX 680 and very cool 37W below the GTX 780.

 

 

Again the handpicked GM204 in the Gigabyte GTX 980 tops the chart. What's interesting is that AMD isn't really far behind, especially with their Pitcarin GPU powering the R9 270X, 270, 265 & 7870.

[BloodWithIce]

I am really looking forward on seeing how these cards oc. They should be a dream

[aduman]

I don't get why the temps are still high though, isn't it like less the TDP less the heat output? If that's the case then these cards should easily go past 1300Mhz...

 

I'd love to step up to Hydrocopper 980s if possible

[jezza39]

Well we all overbuy our power supplies anyway so what's a few extra watts here and there?

 

OT: GTX 780Ti uses 4W less than an R9 290X? Wow, with all the shit the fanboys here say you'd think taht the 780Ti uses half the power

[helping]

I don't get why the temps are still high though, isn't it like less the TDP less the heat output? If that's the case then these cards should easily go past 1300Mhz...

 

I'd love to step up to Hydrocopper 980s if possible

TDP =/= temperature

200w dissipated over the surface of a car is much lower temperature than 200w dissipated from the point on a pin.

[SeanBond]

I have already seen the review from TTLY it only consumed 145W. I don't know how that review could be so massively different.

[TechFan@ic]

I have already seen the review from TTLY it only consumed 145W. I don't know how that review could be so massively different.

I don't either but Tom's Hardware has the most accurate power consumption figures bar none ever since they starting using the new measurement method.

Their results also match Luke's result, which is that the 980 consumes about 50W less than the 780 Ti.

 

[Briggsy]

keep in mind the power consumption is based on cooling as well. most custom 290's don't pull nearly as much power as the reference card. throw a water loop on and typical load is well under 200 watts with overclock.

 

I love Tom's Hardware though, always thorough.

 

 

With its shaders fully utilized, the new architecture's advantage over Kepler practically vanishes. So, Maxwell depends on its superior ability to adjust to changing loads, and, consequently, it’s able to tailor the power consumption even better to the needs of the application in question. The more variance there is, the better Maxwell fares.

[CarlosRex]

200W is much more believable than 165W.


Zotac lists 145 "Power Consumption" for the GTX 970. People will still tell you TDP isn't power consumption I bet... moronic really.

[EmmaLong]

Most games tested favor Nvidia except a couple of them. Still performance was good in the AMD optimized titles, not amazing but good.