NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980: The Best GPU For Linux Gamers

Now let's look at the GPU thermal numbers and system power consumption / power efficiency.

For Counter-Strike: Global Offensive the GTX 980 in the open air test setup had an average GPU core temp of 69°C with a peak of 80 -- not very different from the GTX 780 Ti.

The average system power consumption while running CS:GO at 4K was 218 Watts for this Core i7 5960X Haswell-E rig with a peak of 272 Watts. The GTX 980 result was terrific considering the 280 / 356 Watts of the GTX 780 Ti or 247 / 331 Watts of the R9 290.

The performance-per-Watt with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was 27% better than the GTX 780 Ti and 49% better than the Radeon R9 290.