Next-gen nVidia and ATI GPUs to require 200 watts?

So we've got CPUs moving towards more efficient designs, a (somewhat) general consensus that there should be energy-saving methods applied wherever possible, and yet somehow we see a steady increase in power usage from graphics processing units each time they're updated. It doesn't take a circuitry engineer (although that qualification could be helpful) to understand that higher clock speeds lead to higher frame rates, at least generally speaking, and companies like nVidia and ATI have apparently been taking the high road in order to boost those FPS figures. Current top-end graphic cards can easily suck down 100 watts (or more) when under full load, but it appears that requirement could nearly double -- the two graphical big shots are reportedly looking to offer powerhouse cards that almost need to be wired straight in to the power station to function. Japan's PC Watch has reported that the forthcoming G80 from nVidia may consume up to 175 watts, while ATI's R600 could demand an unprecedented 200 watts to produce its eye-candy. While these figures may be a bit staggering, they aren't exactly shocking -- we've already heard rumors that ATI's next major chipset may be released in an external form, at least partially for power-related reasons. While we can't say for sure what's happening behind the tightly-sealed doors at nVidia or ATI AMD, we hope someone in there is paying attention to these concerns, because we're not exactly cool with needing a separate power strip (and an additional occupation) to feed our gaming habits.

[Rick @ Aug 20th 2006 3:29PM]

it's retarded... my next card will be energy efficient rather than a contributing factor of Global Warming.

[cornmeaL @ Aug 20th 2006 3:32PM]

This is dumb. Lets put hthings into perspective. 1 KW/h = 1 Pound of Coal. For each pound of coal taken out of the earth, 24 pounds of dirt must be moved. How many pounds of coal does your PC burn?

[cornmeaL @ Aug 20th 2006 3:34PM]

This is dumb. Lets put things into perspective. 1 KW/h = 1 Pound of Coal. For each pound of coal taken out of the earth, 24 pounds of dirt must be moved. How many pounds of coal does your PC burn?

Thats a lot of energy, a lot of heat, for what? Eye candy? That's silly. I'll stick with an efficient card.

[dextro @ Aug 20th 2006 3:35PM]

I just hope I can get a current-gen card on the cheap to use for a couple of years like I used my 9600pro :P

[Josh @ Aug 20th 2006 3:42PM]

Just hook it up to a home wind-turbine or solar panel if you're concerned about global warming (as we all should be, yadda yadda).

[Shadyman @ Aug 20th 2006 3:45PM]

Why not just use a wall power adapter to plug into the video card, instead of the card being partially external?

[XiozTzu @ Aug 20th 2006 3:53PM]

I stopped caring about high-end video cards, the minute that they started taking 2 slots and requiring a direct connection to the power supply. They took the easy route, rather than optimize their designs they went for brute force.

I prefer working in a quiet and clutter free environment; I don't want to have the sound of fans and wires flying all over the place. I just want to play an entertaining game.

[Spike @ Aug 20th 2006 3:53PM]

MaxSMoke, Antec power supplies are well known for blowing up, what do you expect from a power supply that contains mostly Fuhjyyu capacitors?

GPU designs keep getting more and more worse IMO, they keep shrinking the design process, yet the wattage keeps increasing. It really reminds me of what Intel has done with the Prescott core.

Surely there is a way to make the GPU silicon more efficient yet be powerful. AMD and Intel have already proved this.

Maybe its just sheer laziness.

[K MAN @ Aug 20th 2006 4:01PM]

this is ri-god-damn-diculous.

we need apple to make GPUs as well.

Then we'll see a GPU maker talk about "Performance Per Watt" at every keynote like they should.

[pubeless @ Aug 20th 2006 4:25PM]

what is this? are they crazy, i mean this is really getting outa control i mean look intel just made the "fastest" cpu out there and it takes no power to run it. arnt ati and nvida lowering there nm? shouldnt it be doing the same thing i mean the 7900 gtx proved this a little but not really... these cards are just crazy and just wait till we have ummm 8 sli. and a external card will suck unless it can some how still keep the same bandwidth.

now that amd bought ati "AtiMD" i am sure ati might get smacked around for a while untill everything is better, but nvidia being who they are will just make a 4 sloted card just to prove they can :-/

[Shaun @ Aug 20th 2006 5:10PM]

Just ban gamers. You know it makes sense. They're ruining the planet.

[Juaquin @ Aug 20th 2006 5:43PM]

The current emphasis on multiple video cards is a poor band-aid for the fact that GPU manufacturers can't keep up with game programmers. Software is ready for the challenge, but chip design isn't evolving fast enough so we just throw more chips and more memory at the problem rather than building a better chip. And for every extra chip you throw in, you only add about 50% more performance (depening on the application), and more GPU memory has almost no noticeable difference in most applications. It's not an economically sound solution.

At some point this is going to get out of hand, if it isn't already.

External graphics is very poor solution given that any time you take something out of the case, without a direct trace to the motherboard, you lose speed and bandwidth. If by going external they solve the problems of heat and power, they'll be creating an even worse problem with performance.

Gamer's will be very skeptical of an external card, so the manufacturers are going to have a hell of time trying to sell these things if they ever come to fruition.

The only true solution is to light a fire under the R&D department and start producing chips with better designs.

[Jeremy @ Aug 20th 2006 5:47PM]

A GPU that requires more power than my computer..... ick

[SL @ Aug 20th 2006 6:55PM]

This is being taken over the top. Nvidia and ATI will make midrange and low end solutions that won't require this. It's only been the highend halo cards that always require the extreme. I don't know what the big fuss is about.

[ECM @ Aug 20th 2006 7:42PM]

"The current emphasis on multiple video cards is a poor band-aid for the fact that GPU manufacturers can't keep up with game programmers."

Or perhaps the programmers aren't up to the job and their laziness breeds insane hardware reqs? This has been going on in the PC arena for going on a decade (or more if you remember good ol' Origin and how they'd practically force you to upgrade to play their games.) Console programmers manage to squeeze far, far more out of 5 year old hardware than the average PC programmer can get out of a 6 month old video card despite working on the same API for years on end. Hell, if programmers, artists and devs et al scaled *back* on their system reqs, they'd get their games done *much* quicker and *much* cheaper. Does anyone honestly believe that we *need* Unreal Engine 3 (and its requisite hardware requirements) to run another, standard issue, FPS?

The root 'evil' in vid card design is this: numbers mean everything. If ATI is going to double the tranistors on their card for a marketing/performance edge, NV is forced to follow suit (and vice versa) until it spirals into the completely out-of-control situation we find ourselves in today. And *nobody* at ATI/NV is going to step back and think, "yeah, let's sacrifice a gen or two to our comp to make our tech more efficient and cleaner-running" as it would amount to corporate suicide.

[Raider @ Aug 20th 2006 8:13PM]

"we need apple to make GPUs as well.

Then we'll see a GPU maker talk about "Performance Per Watt" at every keynote like they should."

K-MAN, Apple doesn't make any of its hardware. It may integrate them into a box, but they don't produce any of the hardware (except AirPort/Bluetooth cards) which still everything is manufactured by another company anyways.

[Pc_Madness @ Aug 20th 2006 8:38PM]

I'm sure after this generation AMD will make ATI look at more power efficient designs. :)

[Juaquin @ Aug 20th 2006 8:57PM]

"Does anyone honestly believe that we *need* Unreal Engine 3?"

Yes.

I'm a sucker for eye candy, what can I say.

And while I agree that game programmers should take more time to make their code more efficient rather than shoving it out the door half-done, there's no doubt that the hardware isn't progressing as fast as the software. Current games can bring most sub-$3000 systems to their knees - F.E.A.R. is unplayable at moderate quality setting on all but the most expensive single video cards.

If you're not in to eye candy and are fine with last generation graphics and games, then you'll be glad to know that when the new GPUs come out, you can get a nice last-generation GPU for a sweet deal.

And sure, we could get games quicker and cheaper. But they won't look or play as well. And that's really the point, isn't it?

[Alex @ Aug 20th 2006 9:04PM]

Just keep making a new form factors CTX, DTX, ETX.. etc, so it can hold multiple power supplies, many graphic cards, etc. etc.

With 32 power supplies, 64 graphic cards, and 48 hard drives inside, our computers will be much bigger than it is now... (change the numbers to something bigger if you like)

[SR @ Aug 20th 2006 11:04PM]

Yeah I like my eyecandy too. As a computer enthusiast games are one of those things that maxes out my machine and shows me what it is capable of and relates it to me in a very pleasing visual manner. Sure SuperPi scores and other benchmarks are nice for a good ego boost, but games just lay it out there.

In fact I often just buy a game and play for a couple of minutes and that's it, just so I can see what it looks like on my computer and what my computer can handle. Very few PC games have actually drawn me in, because IMHO most of the them suck, and the better PC games are actually the ones with mediocre graphics. Of course there are a few exceptions.

Anyhow, look, Intel have learned their lesson. They made a mistake and admitted it before sitting down and fixing the problem and doing it in style. What these two jokers ATI and NVidia need to do is sit down and rethink everything. I mean they really need to pull a Conroe on us, higher performance and lower power. I still think dual-core CPUs are a bullshit solution, but they will work out in time when programmers learn to multi-thread. With GPUs they really could try two cores on the same die since they've been pushing two cards for so long. I doubt that it is optimal, but it could be a short term fix for fundamental problems in architecture.

[Atro @ Aug 21st 2006 12:21AM]

quote "Current games can bring most sub-$3000 systems to their knees - F.E.A.R. is unplayable at moderate quality setting on all but the most expensive single video cards."
Totally Wrong. I built a system for $1200 and I can play F.E.A.R. at high setting with 50fps. You have it backwards really. Software has come nowhere near the capabilities of hardware. i.e. amd64 running a a 32bit OS......

[Andrew @ Aug 21st 2006 12:27AM]

Another potential for external vid cards is they may be able to be used with laptops. It would be great to get a cheap energy efficient laptop and then come home and connect it to an external video card and a external LCD monitor. Maybe the ExpressCard/34 would have enough bandwidth?

[K MAN @ Aug 21st 2006 12:45AM]

Raider,

that was meant as a joke. but you knew that already...

[Aaron @ Aug 21st 2006 2:38AM]

I totally agree with what ECM posted. Console games get better and better on hardware that doesn't change, while PC games need faster and more powerful hardware to run games that don't always look better than earlier titles. Developers should start with a less-powerful system in mind and OPTIMIZE the game. Don't sacrifice the quality, but make it a priority to make your game playable on more systems! I played World of Warcraft for a few months (never again, ugh) and it was one of the biggest offenders of inefficient programming that I have ever seen. It looks like crap AND runs like crap on decent hardware (note: if you disagree, you're wrong).

Anyway, it's true, this is getting out of hand. I'm tired of having to upgrade so much. I don't have a lot of money to put in to stuff like this and it seems like what I have is never enough.

[Jason @ Aug 21st 2006 2:52AM]

"I stopped caring about high-end video cards, the minute that they started taking 2 slots and requiring a direct connection to the power supply. They took the easy route, rather than optimize their designs they went for brute force."

Ok, this guy and everyone else saying that ATI and Nvidia need "optimize" their designs don't have a clue. The current GPU technology is actually ahead of CPU technology. GPU transistor counts dwarf those of CPUs. The Nvidia vs. ATI battle has put the AMD vs. Intel battle to shame in recent years. The truth is: ATI and Nvidia have some of the best hardware engineers in the world and bust their butts to make the best possible designs. They just rack up the power and clock speeds to the limit on the high-end stuff in order to one-up the opposition.
Describing either ATI or Nvidia as taking the "easy route" is just ignorant.

[gilo @ Aug 21st 2006 6:16AM]

GPUs are going the way of the r.i.p P4 and we all know what happened to it .

At some time point if not already someone will revert the design thinking and will create a core duo like GPU .

If Intel could do so to the P4 why can't they do it the Nvidia current gpus ?

[Nick @ Aug 21st 2006 7:02AM]

Game play is much more important to me than eye-candy. If the frame rate drops to unbearable, I'll upgrade my video card (currently an ATI 9700 low-profile), but I got a more than decent frame rate on Prey and Tomb Raider Legend with most of the special effects in place (obviously not the next-gen side of the effects on TRL).

Right now, the problem is the regular "bigger and better" fad that hits every market eventually......and after a time of that, you'll see a move to efficiency over flare just like the auto industry and the CPU chip industry.

Just my HO.

[Dan @ Aug 21st 2006 11:30AM]

ATRO

First off you cant look at an operating system like you can video games, an OS come out in years and you will have an update here and there. Games come out daily, and windows is not the best example for the latest and greatest. Truth is programming is ready for a much bigger challenge, one that hardware is not ready for. The only other point worth arguing is cost, is the eyecandy worth the cost your going to spend on the games, b/c as we all know the better a game looks, the more money it cost to produce it.

[joe @ Aug 21st 2006 11:39AM]

would the GPU come with a temperature controller so i could use it as climate control in the winter?

[Nick @ Aug 21st 2006 12:08PM]

Those who expect AMD/nVidia to market performance per watt any time soon are crazy.
In a corporate server farm performance per watt is the most important metric for total cost of ownership since power for the servers and power for the AC is the most significant cost over the 5 year life of a chip.
However, the 200W power hungry next gen GPUs you are all complaining about are bought by high-end GAMERS not CORPORATES. A high-end gamer is paying over $1000 for his graphics card set up (SLI or Crossfire presumably) so do you think he really cares about whether the card consumes 100 or 200 or 2000W? At 10 cents per KWh (kilowatt hour = one hour of running at 1000W) he is currently paying 2 cents for every hour of gameplay with a 200W system. Or a difference of 1 cent per hour compared to a 100W system. "You know what? I won't upgrade my graphics and spend $1000 on the next gen because 10,000 hours of gameplay is going to cost me $100 more than my current system."

[AMD4400 @ Aug 21st 2006 3:31PM]

Here, a game that fits this topic, Its all about the story, not graphics. So all you really need is a cpu to do the work.

Features

* Over 14 hours of gameplay
* Involving, non-traditional story
* 256 colors @ 320x240 resolution
* 5 graphics layers
* 5 member party support
* 30 group items support
* over 50 art cels
* Player Skills and monster Special Attacks
* Save anywhere

grenideer"DOT"com/diverdown/index.htm

[Gio - NYC @ Aug 21st 2006 5:07PM]

PC Games are dying, go to GameStop or EB Games it all game consoles and a small corner shelf of pc games thats it. Back to power: Even new powerful Processors are requiring more power supply power anyway!

[CJ @ Aug 22nd 2006 12:16AM]

way too much power... my electric bills are high enough as is ill be passing on these power hungry cards

[Tabascork @ Sep 8th 2006 12:31AM]

Hardware Acceleration is just a different architechture to simplify predetermined formulas (alpha and 3d) in one step instead of several on a generic CPU. They need to optimize their chips, yes, because I don't want a laptop that only gets 2 hours of battery life because the freaking GPU takes 200w that a battery isn't capable of supplying. Core 2 is rated at 65w and I would like my graphics card to do the same.

[hoochie @ Sep 14th 2006 7:07AM]

exsqueeze me but you people are fools! after a year down the road microsoft will pay programers to make an ultimate must have game so bloated again, it will make your video card obsolete AGAIN, so that you run out and buy an other faster 500$ ati card! (ati is microsoft's teachers pet btw!)anyways we dont need faster hardware, we need faster software! we actualy should benchmark games for how slow and worthless they are istead of feeding millionaires for 10% 500$ speed boosts, all this money wasted money on pc parts that will become obsolete over and over again, while letting life pass you buy sitting in front of a monitor all the time is not much of a good investment in my opinion ..go play video games at the arcade on weekends, at least youll meet chicks!

[mert @ Oct 18th 2006 3:45AM]

Gas guzzling SUV's are heavily taxed. Why not do the same for power guzzling electronics?

[OSPingy @ Nov 7th 2006 4:18PM]

wouldnt ATI be getting some nice insider info from AMD about cool cpus etc...? its kinda like the 6800 nvidias, they where hot and needed loads leckie, but the 7900 cards where a lot more energy efficient after they had been refiened, possibly the same with this 8800 shocking, 9900 more efficient? (asuming they werent next gen then i could imagine they would be power hundry) after all you seen how mad CRYSIS looks on 2xGPUs :p