Intel’s head of graphics division Raja Koduri said at a recent event that one of his priorities is to create GPUs that are able to offer high performance with low power consumption. Running graphics solutions that consume 600 or 800 watts is a problem in itself, in his opinion, because ultimately limit the number of users who can use such a product.

According to the executive, when offering a high level of performance, it is normal that high-end limits are not set, but at the same time he questions what the definition of high-end is from a consumption point of view, and in this sense he stated that for Intel the sweet spot would be between 200 and 225 watts.

He reiterated the previous argument to make his point because he said that this level of consumption is within the reach of the vast majority of users and the truth is that it is not without reason. For an ordinary user, a graphics card with a consumption of 200 watts is not a problem, i.e. you won’t have to think about changing the power supply and the impact on the electricity bill will be much less than it would have with a higher consumption solution.

Koduri is not without reason, the consumption of the graphics card can be a problem for users when updating and in the end it can limit the real market share that the said graphics card is aiming for. It is very easy to understand, most of the users who are in the middle class profile they have sources between 500 and 600 wattsfor them a 200 watt graphics card wouldn’t be a problem, but a 600 watt+ model would be totally unaffordable unless they anticipate changing the power supply.

However, achieving this level of consumption is not easy. Intel management talks about a maximum consumption of 225 watts in the high range, but the truth is that Koduri failed to meet this goal either. The Intel Arc A770, which is the most powerful graphics card the chip giant has released so far, has a maximum consumption of 245 watts and it doesn’t offer peak performance, but it’s in the mid-range, outperforming the GeForce RTX 3060 by 16%. All in all, it offers higher efficiency as it has a maximum consumption of 176 watts.

What can I say, we’d all like to see a Radeon RX 7900 XTX or a GeForce RTX 4090 with a 225 watt consumption, but it’s clear that reaching the top performance level is impossible, at least for now actually. as I said even the Koduri couldn’t achieve that with mid-range performance. Maybe these giants will surprise us with future architectures, but I think that the trend will not change in the end and that higher performance will continue to be accompanied by high consumption.