New purported details have emerged about the power requirements of Nvidia"s GeForce RTX 50 series. If one rather well-known hardware leaker, Kopite7kimi, is to be believed, then the power consumption of NVIDIA"s Blackwell lineup could go through the roof compared to the current RTX 40 series.
The flagship RTX 5090 is rumored to consume a 600 watts of power, a full 150-watt increase over the RTX 4090. To provide such power, the 5090 is said to be fitted with one 16-pin power connector. Further down the stack, the RTX 5080 reportedly requires a 400-watt draw, 80 watts over the RTX 4080, and also carries a single 16-pin input.
I know you someone got the details of GeForce of Blackwell recently.
— kopite7kimi (@kopite7kimi) September 3, 2024
Both of them all have some increase in power consumption, with higher SKUs increasing more.
Interestingly, Kopite7kimi claims the RTX 5080 should see around a 10-15% overall performance boost compared to the RTX 4090. However, it"s still unclear if this refers to rasterization, ray tracing, or a combination of metrics.
Meanwhile, the power consumption figures for the remaining members of the RTX 50 series have also surfaced. The RTX 5070 is expected to run at a 220 watts, while the RTX 5060 is supposedly rated at 170 watts-55 watts more than the RTX 4060. The entry-level RTX 5050 is said to have a 100 watts.
Leaker did not specify whether the power figures quoted here are for TGP or TDP. and can vary depending on the various SKUs, not to mention manual adjustments. In other words, quoted wattages can be altered by using whatever designs the different board partners develop.
In addition to soaring power demands, next-generation models may also come packed with the unprecedented amount of VRAM. Earlier, the leaker did suggest that the RTX 5090 and 5090 Ti could come with a whopping 32GB of VRAM.
The RTX 50 series is rumored to be unveiled by the end of this year, although several reports do suggest the actual launch may slip into 2025.