With the advent of a new generation of graphics cards, the power consumption of PC components could jump sharply if the leaks we’ve seen are true. This increase in consumption has been linked to an increase in performance and is something we have seen in previous generations, though it did not always occur at the same level.

For example, the GeForce GTX 1080 was much more powerful than the GTX 980 Ti, however had much lower consumption thanks to its advances in architecture and manufacturing process (166 watts vs. 211 watts). The GeForce RTX 2080 also surpassed the GTX 1080, but did with higher power consumption (215 watts vs. 166 watts), despite advances on both fronts.

This progressive increase in power consumption, which we have seen with graphics cards launched in the latest generations, has not only been motivated by an increase in performance, but also introduction of specialized hardware. The RTX 2080 had two basic blocks that were not present in the GTX 1080, RT cores and tensor coreswhich accelerate ray tracing and AI, resp.

As is logical, the introduction of new core blocks in the GPU increases its performance, but also the consumption and heat generated. AMD did not have to solve the problem with the Radeon RX 5000, because it did not introduce specialized kernels, but With the Radeon RX 6000, the situation has completely changed and only what I have just explained to you has been confirmed. The simple fact that the introduction of ray tracing accelerators caused the Radeon RX 6700 XT to consume more than the Radeon RX 5700 XT (221 watts vs. 217 watts), despite the efficiency optimization it received.

Metro Exodus performance with active beam tracking. The GeForce RTX 2060 beats the GTX 1080 Ti. Source: DigitalFoundry.

Higher energy consumption: what does this mean for users?

Well, increasing your electricity bill, although its impact will depend a lot on the components we use and the hours we spend at the computer, because of course the same electricity consumption is not produced play two hours a day than play eight hours a day.

For example, a PC configured with a Core i9-12900K, a GeForce RTX 3090 Ti, 32 GB RAM, nine fans, an AIO liquid cooler and two PCIe SSDs in M.2 format would have a load consumption of 831 watts, which would be left with average annual costs. 580.59 EUR (if we pay 0.26 euros per kilowatt hour).

The same device configured with the Core i5-12600K and GeForce RTX 3080 would consume 606 watts under load, which would cost a year of € 440.66, following the same pattern as in the previous example. The difference between the two would be 139.33 euros per year, 11.66 euros per month. Both examples are calculated based on an average of four hours of gaming per day. You can use this tool to perform additional calculations.

Higher energy consumption means higher electricity costs, however also represents more heat generatedwhich requires use increasingly powerful cooling solutions. As a result, some components, such as graphics cards, are getting bigger and heavier, with all that this can mean for users with small chassis. On the other hand, we may also need to buy a new source if the one we have starts to outgrow this increase in consumption.

Personally, the increase in energy consumption that is happening right now I’m not afraid because I understand why this is happeningand because it is normal that it is necessary to achieve a certain level of performance, especially now that we have hardware that is able to do what seemed impossible to us five years ago. Try running any current ray traced game using GTX 1080 Ti and see what happens, then try GeForce RTX 2060. The first consumes 231 watts, the second remains at 164 watts. And what do you think about this topic? We read in the comments.