Tom's Hardware - Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 And 980 Review: Maximum Maxwell
Stress Test Power Consumption
If the load is held constant, then the lower power consumption measurements vanish immediately. There’s nothing for GPU Boost to adjust, since the highest possible voltage is needed continuously. Nvidia's stated TDP becomes a distant dream. In fact, if you compare the GeForce GTX 980’s power consumption to an overclocked GeForce GTX Titan Black, there really aren’t any differences between them. This is further evidence supporting our assertion that the new graphics card’s increased efficiency is largely attributable to better load adjustment and matching.
The values above have potential consequences for the everyday operation of these graphics cards, as they represent what can be expected when running performance-hungry compute-oriented applications optimized for CUDA and OpenCL.
That's not the only offering that makes a good impression, though. Nvidia's reference GeForce GTX 980 does well too, as long as you don’t focus on the idle power measurement. This isn't the same result as custom models with higher power targets (up to 300 Watts for the GTX 980), though, when compute-based stress tests are run. A taxing load just doesn't give Maxwell room for its optimizations to shine.
Note that the GeForce GTX 980's stress test power consumption is actually a few watts lower than the gaming result. This is likely due to throttling that kicks in when we hit the thermal ceiling.
Finally, let’s take a look at the detailed measurements. The much smaller load adjustments are illustrated graphically below. Pay particular attention to the reference card’s small drops when it hits the thermal limit.
Just incase you didn't read it W1zzards test Peak and Average are done using a game
Performance will be better just that a game or program that uses more GPU will yield more power usage. DX11 vs DX12 hype. If a reference cooler cant handle the thermal load on a GTX 980, Nvidia will have to resort to the same limiting tricks it applied to the Titan/Black. Disable boost and lower clock rate lock power bios and maybe more.
lol
