AMD introduces a consumer-level graphics card that uses more power than a Mac Pro!

Introducing a consumer-level graphics card that uses more power than a Mac Pro!

When rumors of a dual-Hawaii GPU from AMD started floating around, some people wondered how AMD was going to squeeze two Hawaii chips into any reasonable TDP. Well, here is the Radeon R9 295X2, which aims to reach a Crossfire 290X in terms of performance.



AMD is using water cooling, similar to some custom cards in the past, but AFAIK this is the first stock card to have closed loop liquid cooling in addition to air cooling. The 295X2 is a dual-slot card unlike a certain other recently announced dual-GPU card, so you can place more cards in a case as long as you can find the room to place the pipes and radiators.

Now to the numbers:



First notice that the 295X2 has a slightly higher boost core clock than the 290X, even if its only by 18 MHz. AMD has done this before with the 3870 X2 vs. the 3870 (825 MHz vs. 775 MHz).

The power consumption is very high—AMD doubled the 290X's typical board power of 250 W to get 500 W (it is similar to some custom cards though). And yes, it can actually use that much power in a game. For comparison, the whole Mac Pro tops out at "only" 463 W under a power virus. (P.S. Did you know that the D700 Tahiti GPUs in the Mac Pro have a TDP of 108 W each?) In contrast, the noise level is very low, at least under load, comparable to the TITAN Black and the 7990.

The price is higher than two 290Xs as well as the 7990, but I suppose that's to be expected given the water cooling.

A curious point about this GPU is its 2x 8-pin connectors. Normally, a card can draw up to 75 W from the PCIe slot and 150 W from each 8-pin connector. But that totals up to 375 W, not 500 W. Instead, AMD is assuming that any power supply that you would use with this card is good enough to provide ≥ 213 W to each 8-pin connector. Why didn't they just add a third connector? Because almost all power supplies have no more than four 8-pin power connectors, and a decent proportion of buyers of this card may use two of them in Crossfire.

I think the performance results speak for themselves:



I'm curious as to whether or not this level of TDP is here to stay, not just restricted to custom models. AMD and NVIDIA have both released graphics cards with more than 300 W TDP, although I bet that if we had 20 nm in the late 2013 - early 2014 generation then we wouldn't have seen a 500 W 295X2. I don't think single-GPU cards will go 300 W or more anytime soon (they all meet the PCIe specs for now), and so we probably won't see much higher than 500 W on a dual-GPU card.

Source: AnandTech.

 

I didn't know that the Mac pro only used up to ~463W of power. I expected more like 600W.

Don't psus also often have 6pin connectors? An 8+8+6 config would be a little more forgiving. I can't remember what connectors my old 750w psu had.

Also, stock clc in a gpu? Sploooooooooooge.

I can't wait until we get socketed gpus on the mobo. So hawt.

EDIT checked and most psus have 6+2 pin connectors, so 8+8+6 is a nope.avi.

 

Its power supply appears to be 450 W (see step 22 here).

Knights Landing is supposed to have a socketed version (200 W TDP or so). If a socketed GPU shows up I doubt it'll be from Intel, since they are pushing their integrated GPUs.

 

I swear I heard an article that takes about Nvidia eventually wanting to get their gpus on the main logic board for power and bandwidth reasons.

Obviously Intel and amd couldn't care less because they are already on the mobo.

 

> Not using a 1Kw+ PSU

 

Please tell me you aren't one of those schmucks that uses a 1000W PSU.

 

he needs something to power his LED and florescence filled case.

 

you really dont need that much for even the most high end consumer pc

 

But he really needs it for penis compensation.

 

I probably don't have a single LED in my PC. I do however have a huge fucking radiator, a large-ish pump, 2 GTX 480s which are overclocked, an overclocked i5 2500k and a billion hard drives.

I'm sure I could work it out and get a smaller PSU, but that's far more effort than just having a shit load of power to work with.

 

Hard drives start to add up. The pump probably slurps its share of juice as well. And of course, overlooking is disgustingly inefficient. It couldn't get much worse unless you exchanged that pump for a phase change cooler (i.e. mini refrigerator) and overclocked further, but I don't think people do that anymore.

So yes Trickster, your penis machine probably needs close to 1000W on loss. But owning such a wasteful machine in the first place already earns you the schmuck title. There's no escape.

 

Oh, I forgot to share the awesomeness of watercooled GPUs:


Cooler...


Quieter...


For the same power consumption...


And the same performance.


The water cooling is simply unbeatable. I wonder how much it adds to the BoM.

 

tricky needs a 1kw psu to heat the room a bit since his house AC is too strong.

 

I'm rich bitch, computer edition.

 

Looks ugly as shit, though.



ASUS knows how to design cards.

 

Fooshi, you're better than that. I just threw up in my mouth.

 

It's ok to feel sick when seeing such a sick looking card.