NVIDIA Launches The GTX 980: The High-End Maxwell Beauty

[scottishduck]

Holy shit

TDP: 165W
Used power: 284W

That is a new low even for Nvidia. TDP is supposed to be the maximum power usage dammit.

This has to be a joke post, surely. Maxwell is a massive breakthrough in power efficiency and on top of that crushes the competition while using far less transistors and costing less.

[curaga]

TDP has never been maximum power usage.

It was, until Intel and Nvidia marketing depts unilaterally redefined it. "Thermal Design Power". If the heatsink-fan is designed for 165W like the number says, the gpu will burn up using 284W upon long periods.

Previously they only overshot by ~30%. This is over 70% more, which makes it absolutely horrible lying to customers.

@scottishduck

I'm not claiming Maxwell is bad. I'm claiming Nvidia's marketing dept is bad. If they were being truthful, they'd have "TDP: 284W, average gaming consumption: 165W".

[johnc]

Keep us up to date on the numbers of 970s and 980s being burned up.

I'm sure the AIB partners are going to be astonished at all these returns... and maybe even go bankrupt.

[tuke81]

It was, until Intel and Nvidia marketing depts unilaterally redefined it. "Thermal Design Power". If the heatsink-fan is designed for 165W like the number says, the gpu will burn up using 284W upon long periods.

Previously they only overshot by ~30%. This is over 70% more, which makes it absolutely horrible lying to customers.

@scottishduck

I'm not claiming Maxwell is bad. I'm claiming Nvidia's marketing dept is bad. If they were being truthful, they'd have "TDP: 284W, average gaming consumption: 165W".

Heh i would say they use too good cooler. If cooler would have been designed for 165W tdp, the card clocks would have been throttled way down before temps goes too high. I Don't really know how tomshardware tortured the card and how is temperatures kept cool enough, but I really doubt that you can get that much power of it in closed case and default fan profile without temperatures sky rocketing.

[fuzz]

Good reviews everywhere... none of them trying to use open-source drivers .