GeForce GTX 980 2 and 3-way SLI review - Power Consumption

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 10/01/2014 07:38 AM [

Hardware Installation

Installation of any of the Nvidia GeForce cards is really easy. Once the card is seated into the PC make sure you hook up the monitor and of course any external power connectors like 6 and/or 8-pin PEG power connectors. Preferably get yourself a power supply that has these PCIe PEG connectors native (converting them from a Molex Peripheral connector anno 2014 we feel is a no-go).

Download new NVIDIA GeForce drivers here

Once done, we boot into Windows, install the latest drivers and after a reboot all should be working.

Load up the Nvidia control panel and check if SLI mode was successfully enabled, maximize 3D performance is the setting you are after, once applied properly you will see that green indicator line shopwing 2 or 3-way SLI.

Power Consumption

Let's have a look at how much power draw we measure with this graphics card installed. The methodology: We have a device constantly monitoring the power draw from the PC. We simply stress the GPU, not the processor. The before and after wattage will tell us roughly how much power a graphics card is consuming under load. Our test system is based on a power hungry six-core Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition Sandy Bridge-E based setup on the X79 chipset platform. This setup is overclocked to 4.60 GHz on all cores. Next to that we have energy saving functions disabled for this motherboard and processor (to ensure consistent benchmark results). We'll be calculating the GPU power consumption here, not the total PC power consumption.

Measured power consumption GTX 980

System in IDLE = 119 Watts
System Wattage with GPU in FULL Stress = 280 Watts
Difference (GPU load) = 161 Watts
Add average IDLE wattage ~10 Watts
Subjective obtained GPU power consumption = ~ 171 Watts

Measured power consumption GTX 980 2-way SLI

System in IDLE = 123 Watts
System Wattage with GPU in FULL Stress = 446 Watts
Difference (GPU load) = 316 Watts
Add average IDLE wattage ~10 Watts
Subjective obtained GPU power consumption = ~ 332 Watts

Measured power consumption GTX 980 3-way SLI

System in IDLE = 129 Watts
System Wattage with GPU in FULL Stress = 589 Watts
Difference (GPU load) = 460 Watts
Add average IDLE wattage ~10 Watts
Subjective obtained GPU power consumption = ~ 470 Watts

Mind you that the system wattage is measured at the wall socket side and there are other variables like PSU power efficiency. So this is a calculated value not a precise measurement, albeit a very good one. Above, we have a chart of relative power consumption. Again the Wattage shown is the card with the GPU(s) stressed 100%, showing only the peak GPU power draw, not the power consumption of the entire PC and not the average gaming power consumption.

GeForce GTX 980	TDP in KWh	KWh price	2 hrs day	4 hrs day
Graphics card measured TDP	0,171	0,23	0,08	0,16

Cost 5 days per week / 4 hrs day	€ 0,79
Cost per Month	€ 3,41
Cost per Year 5 days week / 4 hrs day / €	€ 40,90
Cost per Year 5 days week / 4 hrs day / $	$ 53,99

GeForce GTX 980 SLi x2	TDP in KWh	KWh price	2 hrs day	4 hrs day
Graphics card measured TDP	0,332	0,23	0,15	0,31

Cost 5 days per week / 4 hrs day	€ 1,53
Cost per Month	€ 6,62
Cost per Year 5 days week / 4 hrs day / €	€ 79,41
Cost per Year 5 days week / 4 hrs day / $	$ 104,83

GeForce GTX 980 SLi x3	TDP in KWh	KWh price	2 hrs day	4 hrs day
Graphics card measured TDP	0,470	0,23	0,22	0,43

Cost 5 days per week / 4 hrs day	€ 2,16
Cost per Month	€ 9,37
Cost per Year 5 days week / 4 hrs day / €	€ 112,42
Cost per Year 5 days week / 4 hrs day / $	$ 148,40

Here is Guru3D's power supply recommendation:

GeForce GTX 980 - On your average system the card requires you to have a 400~500 Watt power supply unit.
GeForce GTX 980 in 2-way SLI - On your average system the cards require you to have an 700~800 Watt power supply unit as minimum.
GeForce GTX 980 in 3-way SLI - On your average system the cards require you to have a 900~1000 Watt power supply unit as minimum.

If you are going to overclock your GPU or processor, then we do recommend you purchase something with some more stamina. There are many good PSUs out there, please do have a look at our many PSU reviews as we have loads of recommended PSUs for you to check out in there. What would happen if your PSU can't cope with the load:

Bad 3D performance
Crashing games
Spontaneous reset or imminent shutdown of the PC
Freezing during gameplay
PSU overload can cause it to break down

Let's move to the next page where we'll look into GPU heat levels and noise levels coming from this graphics card.

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