Power Consumption: GeForce RTX 2060 Super
The US Tom’s Hardware graphics lab continues utilizing Cybenetics’ Powenetics hardware/software solution for accurately measuring power consumption.
Powenetics, In Depth
For a closer look at our U.S. lab’s power consumption measurement platform, check out Powenetics: A Better Way To Measure Power Draw for CPUs, GPUs & Storage.
In brief, Powenetics utilizes Tinkerforge Master Bricks, to which Voltage/Current bricklets are attached. The bricklets are installed between the load and power supply, and they monitor consumption through each of the modified PSU’s auxiliary power connectors and through the PCIe slot by way of a PCIe riser. Custom software logs the readings, allowing us to dial in a sampling rate, pull that data into Excel, and very accurately chart everything from average power across a benchmark run to instantaneous spikes.
The software is set up to log the power consumption of graphics cards, storage devices, and CPUs. However, we’re only using the bricklets relevant to graphics card testing. Nvidia's GeForce RTX 2060 Super gets all of its power from the PCIe slot and one eight-pin PCIe connector, while the GeForce RTX 2070 Super gets all of its power from the PCIe slot, one eight-pin auxiliary connector, and one six-pin connector. Once the GeForce RTX 2080 Super shows up with its eight- and six-pin connectors, we'll run that card through this system as well.
Idle
Despite a more well-endowed TU106 processor that we’d expect to need extra power, GeForce RTX 2060 Super uses slightly less at idle compared to GeForce RTX 2060. Surely our gaming and stress tests will tell a different story…
Gaming
An average power measurement of 180W is five watts higher than Nvidia’s 175W specification for GeForce RTX 2060 Super.
Not surprisingly, most of that power is delivered over the 2060 Super’s single eight-pin auxiliary power connector.
But of course, TU106 with 2,176 CUDA cores and a higher base clock rate needs more power than TU106 with just 1,920 CUDA cores. The vanilla 2060’s 158W average is 22W lower than the new GeForce RTX 2060 Super.
We like to keep an eye on current draw, especially over the PCI Express x16 link. An average of 4.5A through our Metro benchmark sequence is far enough below the PCI-SIG’s 5.5A ceiling to keep us satisfied.
FurMark
Average consumption actually drops a bit under a more demanding FurMark workload, as does the peak power reading. Because FurMark is fairly consistent, there are no big spikes up or down.
This consistency is modeled in a tight line across more than 15 minutes of data collection.
Power consumption doesn’t change much under FurMark. The GeForce RTX 2060 Super still uses about 22W more than the existing 2060.
We also see just how close the new 2060 Super gets to Nvidia’s end-of-life GeForce RTX 2070 (with all of its on-die resources enabled).
After seeing power consumption match our gaming results fairly closely under FurMark, it’s no surprise that current draw is similar, too.
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