Most power hungry single-GPU ever from AMD/ATI and from NVIDIA

For AMD undoubtedly AMD RX VEGA.

Nvidia.. well.. they have remained in the 250W range for too much years for the highest end GPUs.. but just to mention any, Overclocked gtx 980Ti with edited BIOS take that spot. At stock settings, AIB Factory OC'd1080TIs.
 
I think in practice for Nvidia, the GTX480 probably takes the cake. The 40nm TSMC was probably very different from what Nvidia expected, and they lost a lot of time trying to get one of the biggest chips (at the time) through a very immature node. Couple that failure with Nvidia's unwillingness to lose any more face when they were already 6 months late and we were going to see spectacular power draw. The GTX480 had only one card left to play against the cheaper, more efficient, and much timelier AMD 5000 series, so the GTX480 had to be fastest card, come hell or high water.

Nvidia would very quickly start work on reducing power consumption, starting with stopgap measures with the Fermi refresh (GTX580), and culminating in what we see today. Nvidia would bifurcate compute and graphics cards after Fermi, too.
 
For single GPU...

Nvidia - GTX480. 250watts (approx.)
AMD - Vega 64. 300 watts (approx.)
These don't include overclocked or other manufacturer variants.


For the GTX480, there was supposedly one that had the full 512sp and sucked down over 100 more watts. It never got released for obvious reasons. Nvidia scrapped it and just made the GTX580 instead.
 
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i went through all the halo/top end nvidia cards as far back as possible on techpowerup and i didn't see one that went over 300 W or really even came close to that number, in fact i think all of them were under 250 and interestingly enough the GTX 480 was in line with all the others. it seems that the GTX 280 is actually the worst of all at 249 W.

vega 64 is, as far as i can tell, the most power hungry card ever at over 300 W average consumption during gaming with the turbo BIOS, surprisingly even worse than the 290X. the 2900 XT is very close at 295 W.
 
Radeon RX 64 Air uses almost as much power as Geforce GTX 1080 SLI

Radeon RX 64 Liquid probably surpasses it
 
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jologskyblues said:
I would like to know what is the most inefficient GPU ever made in terms of perf per watt.
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Probably the first GPU. Generational performance gains have been tremendous, so even the most inefficient modern GPU is much more efficient than earlier models.
 
bigyellocup said:
God, the GTX 480 was certainly hungry, and pumped out a shiz ton of heat.
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By comparable to the time yes. An RX580 uses about the same today.

power_average.gif


2900XT for example:
power_average.gif
 
Yeah the gtx 480 is nothing special by today's standards. But it was hot (poor stock cooling so IIRC nvidia had it running at 94c or something) & grossly inefficient compared to AMD at the time (although at least it was a hair faster).
 
_mockingbird said:
What is the most power hungry single-GPU (not dual-GPUs) ever from AMD/ATI and from NVIDIA?
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RX Vega 64 and gtx 480/580

Nothing compares to the RX Vega 64 air or liquid cooled though at stock, but the gtx 480 and 580 overclocked did get up to or just passed 300 watts though.
 
GTX480/580 doesn't belong on the list as such. It would be some Titan card or so that may have reached 250W and above on average. If the GTX480/580 was there, so would the 780TI, 980TI, 1080TI etc too.

390X is a close second to Vega 64.
 
I still have my GTX285. I sold it to a friend in 2011 so I could upgrade to an AMD HD5850, and 2 years ago he bought a Dell 34" Ultrawide and had to upgrade cards so he got a GTX750ti, he doesn't game and was using the GTX285 for Premiere Pro.
I asked him a few months ago if he still had my old GTX285 and if he did, could I have it back, he had it and gave it back to me.
It still has a lifetime Advanced RMA warranty from EVGA, I wonder what they would give me if I had to RMA the card?

17799388_1476000795752223_9133837135532960953_n.jpg
 
Pretty mch every 1080ti consumes 300w if you overclock it, just like they all consume 250w at stock.

A Fury X *starts* around 280w before adjusting the power limit. The most mine ever consumed under load (where I was actually paying attention) was around 370w.

Some *80ti products have higher power limits though. The lightning line usually consumes another 50w over a regular overclock wuen maxed out.
 
Hrmmm my radeon 6990 was pretty damn power hungry. Two GPUs on one card....

now my two 1080ti's at 2012mhz OC on water are pretty power hungry but no where near what older 32 and 28nm process cards used to draw.
 
tangoseal said:
Hrmmm my radeon 6990 was pretty damn power hungry. Two GPUs on one card....

now my two 1080ti's at 2012mhz OC on water are pretty power hungry but no where near what older 32 and 28nm process cards used to draw.
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We are talking about video cards with single GPUs.
 
I guess I haven't paid much attention to the power numbers of Vega, good grief that sucker is drinking down the juice. What does AMD recommend for a PSU on that bad boy?
 
jologskyblues said:
1000W
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I hope AMD is referring to a CFX system needing that many watts - I am using a 600w power supply with a Vega 64 LC edition. The most I've seen it at the wall was slightly less than 500w with a +15% powertune setting in the drivers.
 
noko said:
I hope AMD is referring to a CFX system needing that many watts - I am using a 600w power supply with a Vega 64 LC edition. The most I've seen it at the wall was slightly less than 500w with a +15% powertune setting in the drivers.
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That means you are running close to 80% rated spec. (Depending on how good your power supply is and it's efficiency) You're really at the edge of the acceptable limit. I would think you will shorten your life of your PSU if you keep that up. Remember PSU's sustained output degrades over time. I would at least put a good quality 750W (Seasonic) in there. But then again, I never scrimped on what I consider backbone components...power supplies (seasonic)/motherboards (ASUS TUF)/Fans&Coolers (Never stock)
 
jbc029 said:
No.
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That is the recommended power supply for Vega, granted you don't need that much, but for those crappy power supply makers out there, kinda need 1000 watts. AMD recommended 1000 watts at launch, but you don't need a 1000 watt if its a good power supply, 750 is probably enough.
 
razor1 said:
That is the recommended power supply for Vega, granted you don't need that much, but for those crappy power supply makers out there, kinda need 1000 watts. AMD recommended 1000 watts at launch, but you don't need a 1000 watt if its a good power supply, 750 is probably enough.
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That's the recommended for the liquid 64. Air 64 is 750w and vega56 is 650w.
 
jbc029 said:
That's the recommended for the liquid 64. Air 64 is 750w and vega56 is 650w.
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Ah ok, couple of reviews that I read they just mentioned the 1000 watts, so assumed.... and yeah assumption is the Mother of all F' ups lol.
 
razor1 said:
Ah ok, couple of reviews that I read they just mentioned the 1000 watts, so assumed.... and yeah assumption is the Mother of all F' ups lol.
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No worries. :)

Although, after the reveal that you can flash a vega56 with air vega64 bios, I certainly wouldn't still try to use a 650w power supply with it.
 
DigitalGriffin said:
That means you are running close to 80% rated spec. (Depending on how good your power supply is and it's efficiency) You're really at the edge of the acceptable limit. I would think you will shorten your life of your PSU if you keep that up. Remember PSU's sustained output degrades over time. I would at least put a good quality 750W (Seasonic) in there. But then again, I never scrimped on what I consider backbone components...power supplies (seasonic)/motherboards (ASUS TUF)/Fans&Coolers (Never stock)
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600w power supply is not at the wall watts, basically take rating divided by efficiency 600w/.9 = 667w. 500w/667w = .75 of rating. So getting close to 80%. With balance mode it runs around 430w -> 65% capacity of the power supply, Powersaver 390w -> 58%. Power supply is Corsair SF600 reviewed here:
I don't see need to get another power supply. If I was really pushing the Powertune above 15%-20% then maybe prudent to get something like a good 750w PS like Razor1 indicated. 1000w if CFX.
 
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