What is the biggest Videocard that can work fine with XFX 550W without risk?

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davidka0811

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Nov 7, 2013
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MY PC:
Windows 10
CPU: Intel i5 4690k 3.5Ghz
PSU: XFX TS Series 550W Bronze
CPU COOLER: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
MoBO: Gigabyte z97x Gaming 5
GPU: Asus GTX660 Direct CU II OC edition 2Gb
MEMORY: Kingmax 2*4GB 1600Mhz
SSD: OCZ Agility 4 128GB
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB
 
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http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2311121/power-supply-requirements-nvidia-gpus.html#14243229


nVidia recommends 500 watts for the 980, 600 for the 980 Ti (at stock settings)

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-980/specifications
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-980-ti/specifications
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-970/specifications

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/nvidia_geforce_gtx_970_and_980_reference_review,7.html

ote:
Subjective obtained GPU power consumption (970) = ~ 164 Watts
Subjective obtained GPU power consumption (980 )= ~ 171 Watts

Here is Guru3D's power supply recommendation:

GeForce GTX 970 or 980 - On your average system the card requires you to have a 500 Watt power supply unit.
GeForce GTX 970 or 980 in 2-way SLI - On your average system the cards require you to have an 800 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.
Click to expand...
 
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The 980 Ti can pull 359 watts before overclocking (+20%)

power_maximum.gif


 
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Yes, you right. :)
 
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Of course....just about every non reference 900 series exceeds it's TDP in testing. Reference card below.... draw under Metro 2033 on reference card was 238 watts, 277 max draw .... Gigabyte was 293 in Metro .... before overclocking.

power_maximum.gif


The reason Gigabyte does so well with it's boost clocks / overclocks is their custom PCB / VRM design. MSI is able to get within a percent or 2 of Gigglebyte with a gaoing (Metro) load of 281 watts . And overclocked.... when ya slide the bar over to 120% in Afterburner, expect at least 20% more power at the card.... more at the wall.

It's not about how much power the PSU can deliver on day 1 .... it's how much it can deliver after years of use due to capacitor aging. It's also about how voltage stability and ripple affect your CPU / GPU OC stability. As you approach rated wattage, both can climb to levels which can bring system down.

Personally, for warranty purposes, I would never use a product with less than the recommended amount specified by the manufacturer. Relying on tier lists can also be very misleading as an entire series of PSUs can undeservedly be lumped into a tier based upon one model review. For example:

Corsair HX 650-850 were great PSUs
Corsair HX 1000-1050 were dogs
 
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Because the games you play probably don't push your card to the max.,,,


Theoretically

8 pin = 150 watts
6 pin = 75 watts
pci express 75 watts

The max the card can use is 300 however with the stock bios 275 + because of the bios restrictions.
I've seen an extra 5% usage in my testing with a Titan x.

 
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You can read a nice comparison of 3 of the "Big 4" cards here.... pay attention to the bottom third of pages 2 - 4 to get the nitty gritty on the physical differences between the components used, power delivery, VRM and memory cooling which explains why each card performs differently.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2014/09/19/nvidia-geforce-gtx-970-review/2




Just to clarify ...

1. Those are "rated" voltages and have been known to be slightly exceeded.
2. The VRM may limit the card's consumption below that
3. Not every 980 Ti vendor used 8 + 6

Gigabyte uses 8+6

So while the power delivery system is rated for 375, max recorded in the test was 359 .... before overclocking.
 
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The 5% figure above is slightly higher however still way below 300 watts for the Titan X.

The reference card can easily hit 250 watts at some point when gaming.

Example: AC unity 1440p max settings plus fxaa

Average usage with moderate OC using the Titan X 260 watts, Max usage 287.5 watts.

Every reference 980- ti reference card uses 6+8, non reference cards such as The Kingpin or other non reference cards are totally different.

375 is the total system usage.

 
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It doesn't take a Lightning or Classified to break the TDP even in normal gaming

MSI 980 Ti Gaming draws 281 watts playing Metro 2033 (all by itself)
Asus 980 Ti Stric draws 263 watts playing Metro 2033 (all by itself)
EVGA 980 Ti SC draws 263 watts playing Metro 2033 (all by itself)
Gigabyte 980 Ti G1 draws 293 watts playing Metro 2033 (all by itself)

375 is most certainly not system usage, it's the wattage for the card at maximum power draw measured at the card's DC input:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Gigabyte/GTX_980_Ti_G1_Gaming/28.html

For this test, we measure the power consumption of only the graphics card via the PCI-Express power connector(s) and PCI-Express bus slot. A Keithley Integra 2700 digital multimeter with 6.5-digit resolution is used for all measurements. Again, the values here only reflect the card's power consumption as measured at its DC inputs, not that of the whole system.
Click to expand...
 
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I added those 4 cards because I already posted a pic of the reference card showing 277 watts. Every 980 Ti exceeds its TDP of 250 watts by more than 10%....every 900 series card (well at least the 970, 980, 980 Ti) exceeds it's TDP, have no use for the others.

Tho I am not sure why you are trying to steer the discussion to being just about reference cards. These 4 cards are by no means "special", they are just the non-reference cards that everyone buys. Looking at newegg and the number of reviews for each, the non-reference cards outsell the reference versions by 10 to 20 to 1 depending on brand.

The OPs current build includes and Asus DCII which certainly is not a "reference card so we can see what the past preference has been. The OPS build includes a 3rd party cooler, so I can only assume he has no aversion to overclocking. The OPs question and the thread's title is "What is the biggest Videocard that can work .."

The "biggest" with respect to either "performance" or "power draw" could in no way thought to be a reference card. But, again, it's immaterial as all 9xx series cards (970 - 980 Ti) .... both reference and non-reference, every one of them exceed their TDPs by at least 10% just playing games and not the most demanding games of today.

The 970's TDP is 145 watts but playing Metro LL:

Asus 970 Strix - 179 watts (23+% over TDP)
MSI 970 = 192 (32+% over TDP)
EVGA = 188 watts

The 980's TDP is 165 watts but playing Metro LL:

Reference = 184 watts (11+% over TDP)
Asus = 194 watts
MSI = 205 watts (24+% over TDP)
Gigabyte = 204 watts

And those numbers are just playing Metro LL at factory settings ....

1. Not what I would call one of today's most demanding games.
2. Not the highest load one can pull from the PSU.
3. Not with the up to 20% power increase we can expect via Afterburner.




Thank you.


System in IDLE = 109 Watts
System Wattage with GPU in FULL Stress = 381 Watts
Difference (GPU load) = 272 Watts
Add average IDLE wattage ~10 Watts
Subjective obtained GPU power consumption = ~ 282 Watts

Almost 13% above 980 Ti's rated TDP and danged close to TechPowerUps measured 277 watts.

The definition of TDP has varied over time and isn't even the same between manufacturers. The generally accepted definition however is here:

http://compreviews.about.com/od/PC-Gaming/a/What-is-TDP.htm'

TDP stands for Thermal Design Power. And while many computer users may think it equates to the maximum amount of power a component can run at, that isn't the case. TDP is technically the max amount of power the cooling system needs to dissipate in order to keep the chip at or below its maximum temperature.
Click to expand...

Clearly, the amount of heat removed by the cooler from the GPU is less than the total amount of heat generated by the entire card.

Clearly, unlike power, the cooling system needs to sustain an average of xxx watts to keep the system cool as while we see power needs fluctuating in response to load / Boost algorithms, temps do not. If you run Furmark, the temp curve will remain fairly constant whereas we see the "% of TDP" ranging from below 100% to 120% and higher even.

So while the cooling system need not respond to these variations, the power delivery system must. Otherwise performance will be diminished.

Back in 2010 or so, nVidia shook up the industry be releasing their own definition in a blurb to reviewers for the 5xx series cards. In it, they said something to the effect that "TDP is the maximum power draw over time in real world applications".

That clearly is not the case with the 9xx series as the actual measured results well prove.... but then again, how do we factor in "over time" ? Does over time mean playing the game over the course of an hour or playing the game over the course of an intense 5 minutes ?

The thing is, if you want the boost clock to work, you need the power headroom for the card to grab the power when it wants to boost; no power headroom = no boost.

But most importantly, if ya card dies and ya have to send in the receipt for the card, I wouldn't want to be sending in my newegg receipt that included a PSU less than the manufacturer's published / written recommendations:

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-980-ti/specifications

Thermal and Power Specs:

Maximum GPU Tempurature (in C) = 92 C
Graphics Card Power (W) = 250 W
Minimum System Power Requirement (W) = 600 W
Supplementary Power Connectors = 6-pin + 8-pin
Click to expand...






 
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The bottom line is that the OP is getting the 970 so reference or non reference our current conversation is meaningless to him...

I haven't done testing on an non reference 980 ti's so I can't comment. These websites have typo's sometimes.

My 980 strix was staying within the 170 watt power limit with the stock OC.
 
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The "bottom line" is that the 970 is capable of pulling well over it's supposed 145 watt TDP; even the reference card pulls 182 watts under gaming conditions .... with no overclocking.

power_peak.gif


Take the Afterburner utility and slide the power limiter to 112% and you are looking at, at least a 215 watt draw .... that increase of 70 watts (+48%) over your recommended 145 TDP, should certainly factor into PSU size.

And, as has already been explained, different manufacturers use their own custom PCBs so the discussion about the 980 and 980 Ti is most certainly not meaningless. TPU did not test the Gigabyte 970. However, tests on the Gigabyte 980 and 980 Ti conclusively show that the Gigabyte G1 series consistenly draws more power, a lot more power, than the MSI Gaming, EVGA SC or Asus Strix series .... across the board. Therefore:

1. When picking a PSU, what model numbers are among the possible choices must be considered. An allowance must be made to recognize the fact that the G1 pulls way, way more than the all the others.

2. You can not take test results from the reference model or the Asus Strix which has just a single 8 pin power connector (150 watt capacity) and a rather weak (by comparison) 6 phase VRM and compare it with say the 8+6 connectors (225 watt capacity) and 6+2 VRM design of MSI ..... or Gigabyte's which is even more beefy.
 
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