RTX 4080 and RTX 4070 Power Consumption Dropped By Up to 30%

Resident Twitter leaker @kopite7 you has released new power consumption estimates for the upcoming RTX 4080 and RTX 4070. The RTX 4070’s wattage has dropped slightly from the previously predicted 300W to 285W. Meanwhile, the RTX 4080’s power consumption target has plummeted to just 320W, which is in line with the RTX 3080’s official TBP. Previous rumors suggested that the xx80 series GPUs could have a 450W TBP.

I’m not sure why the power expectations dropped unexpectedly, especially on the RTX 4080.However, Kopite posted another tweet At the same time, he said the high power consumption of the 40 series became a problem, dropping the output to ampere levels. Perhaps the clock speed and performance have also been tuned.

We don’t have direct access to Kopite’s source, but the data suggests that Nvidia engineers have worked desperately to get these rumored ultra-high power figures to work for the RTX 4080 and RTX 4090. We can only assume that they discovered that TSMC 5nm silicon doesn’t work. At these extreme wattages and amps it just doesn’t work as expected.

As usual, there’s no official word on this yet, so apply salt’s liberal aid. I had a leak that it was running for hours. Some of that may be speculation thanks to the introduction of a new 600W 16-pin power connector, but it’s still possible that Nvidia’s 40-series GPUs will see power draw back.

Lower power consumption can be good or bad news for gamers. Heat and noise levels are also reduced.

On the other hand, reducing the RTX 4080’s power consumption by 29% can significantly reduce GPU performance. That’s the problem with early rumors and leaks. Nvidia is also working to determine the optimal clock speeds, voltages and power levels for its new Ada architecture, so everything is still in a state of flux.

This is one of the reasons we’ve long been skeptical of claims that Nvidia’s Ada Lovelace GPUs can draw up to 600W of power. This is a significant increase compared to Ampere.No doubt there are some custom designs pushing the new GPUs to the limit, but the new PCIe 5.0 12VHPWR 16 pin connector can Pulling up to 600W doesn’t mean the card uses it intention draw out that much power. Judging by the increasing rate of leaks that are happening now, we should see official confirmation in the near future once the specs for the RTX 40-series GPUs are officially announced.