Power, Temperatures, & Noise

Last, but not least of course, is our look at power, temperatures, and noise levels. While a high performing card is good in its own right, an excellent card can deliver great performance while also keeping power consumption and the resulting noise levels in check.

GeForce Video Card Voltages
RTX 2070S Boost RTX 2070 Boost RTX 2060S Boost RTX 2060 Boost
1.043v 1.05v 1.043v 1.043v

Looking quickly at boost voltages, there aren’t any big surprises. Like the non-Super cards they’re based on, both of the new Super cards will max out at either 1.043v or 1.05v at their highest boost bin. In reality, these cards are typically not boosting quite so high due to TDP limits, in which case power consumption is often under a volt(a).

GeForce Video Card Average Clockspeeds
Game RTX 2080 RTX 2070S RTX 2070 RTX 2060S
Max Boost Clock 1900MHz 1950MHz 1875MHz 1950MHz
Boost Clock 1710MHz 1770MHz 1620MHz 1650MHz
Tomb Raider 1785MHz 1875MHz 1725MHz 1800MHz
F1 2019 1785MHz 1875MHz 1770MHz 1815MHz
Assassin's Creed 1815MHz 1890MHz 1785MHz 1860MHz
Metro Exodus 1785MHz 1875MHz 1725MHz 1815MHz
Strange Brigade 1770MHz 1875MHz 1725MHz 1800MHz
Total War: TK 1785MHz 1875MHz 1725MHz 1815MHz
The Division 2 1740MHz 1845MHz 1680MHz 1755MHz
Grand Theft Auto V 1815MHz 1890MHz 1785MHz 1860MHz
Forza Horizon 4 1800MHz 1890MHz 1785MHz 1875MHz

Meanwhile the average in-game clockspeeds largely echo NVIDIA’s official claims. The new Super cards tend to have higher clockspeeds, owing to their higher starting points within NVIDIA’s specifications. These higher clockspeeds allow these cards to punch a bit harder than they otherwise would, narrowing the gap with their RTX 2080/2070 analogs. The trade-off for this is that TDP becomes a very careful balancing act, as these higher clockspeeds are farther up on the voltage/frequency curve where the underlying GPUs aren’t quite as efficient.

Idle Power Consumption

Load Power Consumption - Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Load Power Consumption - FurMark

Idle GPU Temperature

Load GPU Temperature - Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Load GPU Temperature - FurMark

Idle Noise Levels

Load Noise Levels - Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Load Noise Levels - FurMark

Synthetics Closing Thoughts
Comments Locked

281 Comments

View All Comments

  • eva02langley - Tuesday, July 2, 2019 - link

    At this point, until a GPU overhaul is made like Zen was for the CPU space, we are not going to see much changes. AMD will need to introduce chiplet design gpus for things to really change.
  • sing_electric - Tuesday, July 2, 2019 - link

    How would a chiplet design really help GPUs, though? You don't have nearly the kind of I/O requirements on-chip for a GPU as you do a CPU. You're already massively parallel, and you can just shut off defective "cores" and put those parts in a lower bin; going to a 2 (or more) chip setup would probably just hurt performance.
  • eva02langley - Tuesday, July 2, 2019 - link

    By making smaller chips, better yield, better binning, reducing waste... on multiple product.

    It is like designing a frame for multiple car model assembly. You are cutting cost and end up with better quality products...

    Why chiplets? It is obvious as a business strategy.
  • jordanclock - Tuesday, July 2, 2019 - link

    If it's obvious, then I'm sure AMD has considered it and decided it doesn't make sense.

    Why does everyone in the comments act like they know better than entire teams of the world's best engineers?
  • Kevin G - Tuesday, July 2, 2019 - link

    Chiplets require more expensive packaging and to really scale, you have to design with that concept in mind. Previously the cost-benefit from an engineering standpoint was simply to eat the cost going with larger dies and release harvested products due to the rarity of fully functional chips. The costs to migrate to newer nodes is increasing and the necessity of using multi-patterning have put tighter limits on how big chips can be. Chiplets are the way forward as they solve the current issues in manufacturing and the packaging doesn't carry the same premium as before.
  • Gastec - Wednesday, July 17, 2019 - link

    Chiplets and multi-GPU configs FTW! Also convince the electric companies to reduce the electricity bill by 50% :)
  • Yojimbo - Tuesday, July 2, 2019 - link

    I don't think a chiplet would help a consumer GPU much. Chiplets allow you to put more transistors than you otherwise would be able to. But consumer GPUs don't reach the reticle limit. More transistors would also increase the price of the GPUs. The cost per transistor isn't going down as much from node to node as it used to. So if AMD tried to boost performance by building a big chip with multiple chiplets it would be very expensive not only because of the complexity of chiplet technology but also because of the cost of all those transistors.

    What AMD needs to do is to continue to modify their architecture. The RDNA is a good first step. It's still behind NVIDIA in memory bandwidth, energy, and workload efficiency, but it looks like it makes a good jump over GCN in those areas.
  • eva02langley - Tuesday, July 2, 2019 - link

    Seriously... everything you are saying is only your opinion. Chiplet is bringing better yield, better binning, reduce waste and end up giving more margins due to modularity.

    As of now, we have no clue what RDNA can provide, the reviews are not even out yet and it is the first kick at the can. If all the game industry is backing up AMD, guess what, there must be a reason for it.
  • Yojimbo - Wednesday, July 3, 2019 - link

    Chiplets bring better yields, yes, but at the expense of worse power efficiency. If you put the chiplets on silicon interposers it's very expensive, too. So you must put them on less expensive subtrate and that affects the communication speed. Maybe when the technology is more mature it could make sense, but there's no sense to introduce the complexity now. In any case, AMD fans talk about chiplets as if AMD is the only one pursuing them. The whole industry is. Intel, AMD, NVIDIA,TSMC, everybody.

    Why do you say the game industry is "backing up AMD"? What does that mean?
  • Meteor2 - Saturday, July 6, 2019 - link

    Everything Yojimbo says is fact; eva02 you're clearly very poorly informed.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now