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Power Consumption
Our graphics card test setup and methodology are detailed in How We Test Graphics Cards.
At idle, the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition’s power consumption lands exactly where we'd expect: right around 13W.
One result that really stands out is the >30W difference in our gaming workload between the cold and fully-exercised card. We see power drop a bunch once the 1080 Ti reaches its full operating temperature, which means it's hitting a thermal limit and being slowed down by GPU Boost.
To back our claim, we recorded the temperature and clock rate during warm-up and plotted them in the same graph:
Our stress test yields the same drop in frequency, though it's less pronounced due to the much higher load.
How do these results compare to Nvidia's Titan X (Pascal)? A look at our library of data yields some interesting findings.
The GeForce GTX 1080 Ti's average clock rate is a tad higher than the Titan X's once both cards reach their peak operating temperature. However, the 1080 Ti gets there faster, giving the Titan X a boost early on.
Also interesting is that the Titan X's curve is a lot smoother than the 1080 Ti's, which behaves somewhat frenetically.
The power consumption curves as graphs are provided below, and we start by comparing the cold and warmed-up cards:
Notice the same large difference in power consumption between the cards' temperature levels.
We documented the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti's power consumption and current exclusively at its operating temperature because the two maximum values ended up being almost identical. This is due to the power target of 250W imposing a hard limit, which Nvidia manages to hit very well.
Adherence To Specifications
Ever since the launch of AMD's Radeon RX 480, we look closely at every new card's adherence to the PCI-SIG’s specifications. Nvidia's GeForce 1080 Ti Founders Edition is no exception, and it passes our test with flying colors. It doesn't use the 3.3V rail at all; only the 12V rail.
Our readings put the motherboard slot's 12V rail at approximately 4.4A. Given a ceiling of 5.5A, the card has plenty of room to spare.
