1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,360 Pointless! That's how a lot of people these days would describe high wattage power supplies that 2 00:00:05,360 --> 00:00:10,160 promise you a thousand watts or more of power with an unreasonably high price tag. 3 00:00:10,160 --> 00:00:14,040 They used to be more common when people rocked multiple graphics cards in their rig, but 4 00:00:14,040 --> 00:00:19,080 as SLI and Crossfire fell out of favor due to stability and performance issues, so did 5 00:00:19,080 --> 00:00:24,640 those hefty power supplies. But are the days coming where they might be relevant once again? 6 00:00:24,720 --> 00:00:30,200 Yeah, they very well may be, if trends in graphics card power continue the way they're 7 00:00:30,200 --> 00:00:35,320 going. And if you haven't paid super close attention to exactly what's going on in GPU land, 8 00:00:35,320 --> 00:00:40,200 this might seem surprising, considering power efficiency has been a huge trend across electronics. 9 00:00:40,200 --> 00:00:44,280 I mean, we're getting to the point where it's disappointing if a high-end smartphone 10 00:00:44,280 --> 00:00:49,280 only gives you one day of battery life, and the latest Apple Silicon-equipped MacBook 11 00:00:49,280 --> 00:00:56,560 Pros boast over twenty hours. And although we don't run our desktop gaming rigs off of batteries, graphics cards have 12 00:00:56,560 --> 00:01:02,160 been getting more efficient. But the issue is that although the number of frames you get per watt of power has been 13 00:01:02,160 --> 00:01:06,160 increasing, the total power has also been increasing. 14 00:01:06,160 --> 00:01:09,920 Not to mention the fact that both chip makers and game developers keep pushing the boundaries 15 00:01:09,920 --> 00:01:13,600 of visual fidelity. It's just always more photorealistic. 16 00:01:13,600 --> 00:01:22,080 Give me some block graphics, it's okay. Just a few years ago, NVIDIA's then-top-end Titan XP drew around 250 watts at load, with 17 00:01:22,080 --> 00:01:26,200 AMD's competing Radeon 7 weighing in at 300 watts. 18 00:01:26,200 --> 00:01:33,280 But now, Team Red's current best, the Radeon RX6950XT, has increased to 330 watts, while 19 00:01:33,280 --> 00:01:38,840 NVIDIA's 3090TI has a TDP of a whopping 450 watts. 20 00:01:38,840 --> 00:01:43,800 May as well have just come out of a flame broiler. Toasted GPU. 21 00:01:43,800 --> 00:01:48,880 And the expectation is that the upcoming RTX 4080, featuring NVIDIA's new Ada Lovelace 22 00:01:48,880 --> 00:01:54,920 architecture, could clock in at around 400 or 500 watts, while the 4090 could suck down 23 00:01:54,920 --> 00:01:58,160 as much as 600 watts of power on its own. 24 00:01:58,160 --> 00:02:02,080 Now, one big reason that manufacturers might not be paying too much attention to how much 25 00:02:02,080 --> 00:02:06,760 power their cards are guzzling is simply because they don't particularly have to. 26 00:02:06,760 --> 00:02:11,240 I mean, sure, you can advertise a desktop card as being power efficient or having a 27 00:02:11,240 --> 00:02:15,080 good cooling solution, but at the end of the day, the thing that's going to sell cards 28 00:02:15,080 --> 00:02:18,920 is performance. Vroom vroom. 29 00:02:18,920 --> 00:02:23,440 AMD and NVIDIA would much rather compete on FPS benchmarks than trying to one-up the 30 00:02:23,440 --> 00:02:28,640 other company by saying, hey, our GPU uses 15% less power. 31 00:02:28,640 --> 00:02:34,200 And this trend might continue due to the rise of chiplets in CPUs and GPUs instead of the 32 00:02:34,200 --> 00:02:37,440 use of one big monolithic chip die. 33 00:02:37,440 --> 00:02:41,680 If you don't know, chiplets are modular chip pieces that can be combined to act as 34 00:02:41,680 --> 00:02:46,520 a single processor and are gaining popularity in fabs because they have better yield, meaning 35 00:02:46,520 --> 00:02:51,120 a defect on the wafer will only affect one small chiplet rather than a whole complete 36 00:02:51,120 --> 00:02:57,160 processor. It's likely that chiplets will allow companies to build bigger GPUs more profitably, something 37 00:02:57,160 --> 00:03:01,760 that AMD in particular seems quite interested in, and we can't rule out that NVIDIA may 38 00:03:01,760 --> 00:03:08,320 move in that direction someday either. Of course, this doesn't mean there isn't an upper limit to how much power a card of 39 00:03:08,320 --> 00:03:15,400 the future will draw. High wattage power supplies are expensive, and expecting folks to save up for both an 40 00:03:15,400 --> 00:03:22,080 expensive GPU as well as a $200-plus dollar power supply might just be too much to ask. 41 00:03:22,080 --> 00:03:26,120 Not to mention companies that build pre-built PCs won't be too happy about having to spend 42 00:03:26,120 --> 00:03:31,480 extra money on nicer power supplies, which they've traditionally cheaped out on. 43 00:03:31,480 --> 00:03:36,440 And even though there are plenty of spacious gaming-oriented cases on the market, an insanely 44 00:03:36,440 --> 00:03:41,840 high wattage card means a super bulky cooling solution that would take up an unpalatable 45 00:03:41,840 --> 00:03:46,040 amount of space or spit out unacceptable amounts of heat. 46 00:03:46,040 --> 00:03:51,920 Not ideal if you're in a small, poorly ventilated room like you are right now. 47 00:03:51,920 --> 00:03:55,120 Hey, that's the end of this video, guys. Thanks for watching. 48 00:03:55,120 --> 00:04:00,400 Like it if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it. Check out our other videos, comment below with video suggestions, and don't forget 49 00:04:00,440 --> 00:04:04,360 to subscribe and follow. You got all that? I'm not going to repeat myself.