NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Now Rumored to Feature 16,128 CUDA Cores, 450-Watt TDP

[Peter_Brosdahl]

The latest rumors suggest the GeForce RTX 4090 could be almost twice as powerful as the GeForce RTX 3090, featuring 16,128 CUDA cores and a TDP of 450 watts.

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[Brian_B]

9 billion watts or gtfo

 

[Elf_Boy]

1.21 Gigawatts/frame and a Delorean - it renders the frames in the future and uses time travel to get them back in time for vsync.

On a slightly more serious note - at what point does the power consumption become (in a consumer setting) too expensive? Well pre-fusion anyways.

Even if we crack fusion tomorrow it'll be (imo) 10-20 years to build the power plants.

 

[Brian_B]

at what point does the power consumption become (in a consumer setting) too expensive?

Not sure about "too expensive" in respect to cost of the card or cost of electricity, but I can definitely point to a level where it's too inconvenient - via cooler noise, heat rise in the room, physical size: some combination thereof.

My 3080 is rated at 320W peak, but most things I play only push it at about 50-60%. My 6970 was 265W, but had poorer power management, and it drew more power under my typical use case than the 3080 did. Both of those can heat up my room about 1F an hour if I don't open a window or start another fan or something. Both of those cards were fairly large / long, partially by virtue that both of them were water cooled -- but in doing so I did bypass any noise issues I could have otherwise had with a cooler.

My 980 that I had between those two was much more behaved power-wise. I didn't overclock it significantly, and it peaked around 165W. I never noticed a rise in room temperature while using that card.

I can also say, at some point, I did run a lot of F@H and Seti@Home on the 6970 - I had full solar array for my house, and so long as I had surplus I had no problem using the extra electricity for DC projects. That has changed, I have since moved. I do have solar at the new house, but I'm no where near having a surplus, and electricity is way to expensive to have a GPU cranking at 100% full time.

In that vein, I don't think that has as much to do with the GPU TDP as it does just the price of power: yeah it would cost more to run a hungrier card, but I wouldn't do it even with a less demanding card, and there would be the matter of looking at performance per watt that I'm ignoring, and for the sake of DC projects, don't really consider to be a factor in my purchasing of a GPU.

 

[Grimlakin]

Let's be real for many gamers in our segment the limiter for TDP will be the circuit and the need for a secondary distinct circuit to support your pc. Having to have an electrician run a dedicated 220 watt outlet to your office will be too much trouble/cost for many.

 

[Brian_B]

Let's be real for many gamers in our segment the limiter for TDP will be the circuit and the need for a secondary distinct circuit to support your pc. Having to have an electrician run a dedicated 220 watt outlet to your office will be too much trouble/cost for many.

I predict a lot of extension cords running from down the hall.

That said, it still takes a beefy computer to trip a typical US 15A residential circuit by itself- in theory you could get up to 1800W out of that, in practice it will be closer to 1600W just due to power factor and line losses. European residential standards vary quite a bit - most run higher voltages, some run ring circuits: they will likely have fewer problems with it than we will in North America.

But that's ... for the entire circuit. The computer, your monitors, lights, sound system, printers, fans, peripherals, back massagers, desk clocks, etc -- anything plugged into any outlet that is on that same circuit breaker. And don't forget UPSes - they have efficiency losses, and they draw extra power when they need to charge up. I'm sure we've all tripped a circuit when we did something like run the microwave and the toaster at the same time. It will be just like that with computers soon.

In my current setup, my home office has 3 computers in it. 5 monitors. 2 audio monitor setups. A laser printer. A small ethernet switch. And a few small fans and lamps. All 3 computers are on UPSes -- so if the computer is on ~and~ the UPS is charging, that's even more load. I've not tripped the breaker in this room yet, but I'm running pretty close, maybe over the line if I were to happen to have all 3 computers gaming and someone tried to print something.

Now, some homes have 20A 120V circuits -- those are usually just in kitchens and garages, but there's nothing preventing one from having been run into a home office or bedroom. A 220V circuit like Grimalkin is common in a house for electric dryers, stoves, and hot water heaters, and occasionally a garage/shop drop for a big air compressor or welder -- but they do exist for indoor non-appliance equipment use and can be run, and yeah, that will be fairly pricey to get installed. You could do it outside of code on the cheap, DIY - but when something catches on fire be ready for the insurance company to throw you under the bus for lack of code compliance.

Easier to drop an extension cord down the hall and branch stuff off different breakers. But I don't know many wives that would allow that to fly semi-permanently - maybe if I were still a bachelor and renting a pad. Today I take too much pride in my house to want to rig crap up like that anymore.

 

[LazyGamer]

On a slightly more serious note - at what point does the power consumption become (in a consumer setting) too expensive? Well pre-fusion anyways.

As others have hinted too, it's really down to tolerance for noise and heat. If my office door is shut - which happens without my intervention when reviewing an especially noisy mouse or keyboard - I can last about two hours before it's too uncomfortable. I don't really track it to that level, but I do have a semi-portable A/C unit needing to be installed.

Right now, it looks like ~1200W for GPU surge power consumption and ~300W for CPU surge power consumption. Lower for steady-state, and the rest of the system can be counted on for another 75W to 150W of power consumption. Let's call it 1500W for steady-state.

And probably custom watercooling to handle it, as CPUs been limited by AIO cooling for at least three generations now and GPUs most certainly will be at 600W+.

 

[Brian_B]

but I do have a semi-portable A/C unit needing to be installed.

Those take roughly 1,000W per ton (12,000 BTU)

So mind where you plug it in when you do install it.

 

[Ditchinit]

Probably won't be long before home PC units will require a vent fan ducted to the outdoors. And for added luxury, a make up air vent to reduce negative pressure. A custom PC build might require an HVAC renovation.

 

[LazyGamer]

Probably won't be long before home PC units will require a vent fan ducted to the outdoors. And for added luxury, a make up air vent to reduce negative pressure. A custom PC build might require an HVAC renovation.

I'm not opposed to this timeline.

 

[MadMummy76]

My PC despite only having a "measly" 250W GPU raises the floor temperature of my room by around 2-4C° depending on the load, which is great during the winter, bad during the summer.

 

[Endgame]

Probably won't be long before home PC units will require a vent fan ducted to the outdoors. And for added luxury, a make up air vent to reduce negative pressure. A custom PC build might require an HVAC renovation.

Forget that - dig up the basement and put in a 200’ geothermal loop under the house. That should cover any number of PCs you want to cool and all you need to pay for after the fact is the pump electricity.