If you thought the best graphics cards already drew a ton of power, you’re in for a rude awakening. A series of claims surrounding Nvidia’s upcoming RTX 50-series GPUs say that the next-gen cards will push power limits even further, with a flagship card like the RTX 5090 drawing as much as 600 watts.
Nvidia has yet to even announce RTX 50-series GPUs, but we’ve already seen some troubles with the Blackwell architecture the cards will use in the data center. Official details on the cards are few and far between, but a handful of sources now claim the RTX 5090 will push power limits beyond the 450W we saw with the RTX 4090 in the previous generation. The most recent speculation comes with well-known leaker kopite7kimi, who claimed on X (formerly Twitter) that the RTX 5090 will go up to 600W, while the RTX 5080 will require 400W.
I know you someone got the details of GeForce of Blackwell recently.
Both of them all have some increase in power consumption, with higher SKUs increasing more.— kopite7kimi (@kopite7kimi) September 3, 2024
Neither figure is out of the question. The 16-pin power connector available on current Nvidia GPUs is capable of delivering up to 600W, and the RTX 4080 Super already claims 320W of your system’s power. Although not out of the question, neither figure is set in stone, either. A spec like power draw is very easy for Nvidia to adjust, even up to the moment before the GPUs launch.
Things like power and clock speed are dictated by the firmware that’s flashed onto a graphics card before it leaves the factory. Nvidia will need to define a power range to its partners like Asus, MSI, and Gigabyte, but it could very easily adjust the rated power for its RTX 50-series GPUs before release. Even if the figures kopite7kimi is saying are accurate now, they’re still subject to change.
It’s hard to nail down a single figure for power draw, as well. Nvidia uses TDP, or Thermal Design Power, for its graphics cards, but there are other metrics you can look at. Total Graphics Power, or TGP, normally shows up for laptop GPUs, for example, while Total Board Power, or TBP, is used to talk about what the board is capable of handling when elements like the VRAM are brought into the mix. The figures quoted by kopite7kimi don’t have an acronym attached, so it’s tough to say that the leaker is specifically referring to TDP.
Even so, other sources claim that Nvidia is indeed increasing the power requirements for its RTX 50-series GPUs. For instance, Seasonic briefly listed RTX 50-series GPUs in its power supply calculator, claiming that the RTX 5090 would require 500W and the RTX 5080 would require 350W. On the other hand, we’ve seen some companies claim weaker cards like the RTX 5060 will come with a power reduction.
Nvidia hasn’t said when RTX 50-series GPUs will show up. However, the company typically launches new generations every two years, placing the launch window some time at the end of 2024. Some leakers claim the launch could slip to 2025, but given what we know now, a window between later this year and early next year seems reasonable.
