GeForce RTX 50 Series Blackwell GPUs Rumored For A Power Draw Increase
In all likelihood, it will be another few months before NVIDIA unveils its GeForce RTX 50 series graphics cards based on its Blackwell GPU architecture. While we wait, the leaks and rumors are piling up, as are some events that could affect the eventual launch of NVIDIA's next-gen gaming GPUs. One of those events is said to result in a higher power draw than previously expected.
This is where things get a little murky because (A) we're dealing with a rumor (or series of rumors) and (B) no official specifications exist, so there's a dose of conjecture involved. Disclaimer(s) out of the way, the bump in power draw is something that kopite7kimi, a reliable leaker on X/Twitter, said is on the table, with higher end SKUs seeing more substantial jumps compared to the GeForce RTX 40 series.
"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 wrote.
For reference, NVIDIA's rated power draws on its current flagship graphics, the GeForce RTX 4090, look like this...
- Idle Power: 19W
- Video Playback Power: 25W
- Average Gaming Power: 315W
- Total Graphics Power: 450W
- Required System Power: 850W
Sitting right below the 4090 is the GeForce RTX 4080 Super, with the following rated power draws...
- Idle Power: 15W
- Video Playback Power: 22W
- Average Gaming Power: 246W
- Total Graphics Power: 320W
- Required System Power: 750W
An "increase in power consumption" could apply to any and/or all of those values, though kopite7kimi doesn't get into the specifics. However, in reply to someone commenting, "I saw 550W for 5090," the leaker simply responded, "More," which suggests a greater than 100W jump in the total graphics power for NVIDIA's next-generation flagship GPU.
He issued the same reply when someone asked if the 5070 would be "more than the rumored 220W." For reference, the rated TGP for the GeForce RTX 4070 is 200W. As for the other 4070 models, rated TGP values are 220 for the GeForce RTX 4070 Super and 285W for both the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti and GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super.
Coinciding with the rumored power consumption increases is an effort on NVIDIA's part to increase the yield with its Blackwell wafers. There's nothing inherently wrong with the functionality and/or performance of Blackwell, but according to MyDrivers, NVIDIA had to tweak the packaging technology to address a small issue that could affect yields (HotHardware site owner and Editor-in-Chief also recently touched on this topic on an Schwab Network appearance).
It's been suggested that this could be behind the increase in power draw, or part of the reason, though that's speculation. We'll find out in a few months if the GeForce RTX 50 series makes a CES debut as some are expecting.
