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Graphics cards are apparently just getting bigger and bigger, and the Nvidia RTX 5090 might just be the most power-hungry mainstream graphics card of the last decade, at a reported 575 W TDP.
Over on X, leaker hongxing2020 reported the power consumption of the RTX 5090 in a cryptic tweet, and well-regarded leaker kopite7kimi replied to this with “and RTX 5080 360 W.” These tweets were originally spotted and reported on by Videocardz.
To put this power consumption into perspective, the RTX 4090 has a TDP of 450 W, so the 50 series iteration has an increase of 125W. That’s a power inflation of just shy of 30%. Interestingly, the 21,600 CUDA cores reported in the 5090 is also just over a 30% bump from the 16,000 present in the 4090 card. Previously, this was rumoured to be 600 W and the specific figure could suggest that Nvidia has finally locked in a number, perhaps for communication at CES 2025 next week.
For the RTX 5080, this would be an increase of just 40 W, from the 320 W seen in the RTX 4080 graphics card. This was previously rumoured to be 400 W so both cards are a little lower than expected.
Both cards use GDDR7, which is less power intensive than the GDDR6X seen in the 40 series, which suggests that extra power efficiency is being used elsewhere. However, there’s not much more we can say about the first outing of Nvidia’s Blackwell architecture as of right now, without getting the specifics of the cards. We know that extra power draw is indicative of more power from the cards themselves, and can expect a healthy bump in performance, as you would from any further iteration from Nvidia, but we can’t suggest fully what that looks like from just the TDP.
However, what we can say from this is that you may need a power supply upgrade if you haven’t had one in a few years. In November, Corsair announced that some of its PSU line supports next-generation graphics cards, which not only says something about the total power draw of next-generation rigs but that the connector will stay the same too.
At the start of the 40-series launch, 12VHPWR connectors were causing faults in the most powerful cards so Corsair’s confidence implies it will have tested out whatever Nvidia is cooking up with its power supplies. If you want a monstrous RTX 5090-equipped rig, you will likely need an equally monstrous power supply to support it, even if it’s a little less power-hungry than initially thought.
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Kurt Indovina
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