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Rated power consumption (GPU) over time

Power consumption a device was designed or specified to draw, stated without a reproducible workload. This is the usual historic power figure, the Apollo Guidance Computer’s 70 W, a console power-supply rating, and it is neither a cooling-design target nor a measured wall draw, so it is reported but never turned into a multiplier.

Device scope
gpu
Method
Rated power
Plotted in
watt

Chart

4 figures from 4 machines, spanning 2013 to 2025. The lowest rated power consumption here is 250 W (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti, 2013) and the highest is 575 W (NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090, 2025). The two are not divided into a multiple: rated power consumption is not a metric where a ratio means anything. The figures are plotted in W. Points use the release date of the machine the figure belongs to. The table below lists absent figures with their recorded reasons.

Data

One row per figure, in date order. Figures with no value stay in the table. The chart omits them because an unpublished figure is not a low one.

provisional A figure marked provisional is recorded but not accepted: its evidence is unsettled. It may rely on one source, an unconfirmed announcement, or a digit read from a damaged scan. The reason appears under the figure. The catalog shows the figure but never uses it in a multiplier. How records are judged.

Machine Released Figure Confidence Sources
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti NVIDIA Kepler (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti) November 2013 250 W Vendor-rated provisional
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 NVIDIA Ada Lovelace (NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090) October 2022 450 W Vendor-rated
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX AMD RDNA 3 (AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX) December 2022 355 W Vendor-rated
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 NVIDIA GB202 (GeForce RTX 5090) January 2025 575 W Vendor-rated
3dfx Voodoo Graphics 3dfx Interactive Voodoo (3dfx Voodoo Graphics) November 1996 unknown No reviewed source establishes this figure for a Voodoo Graphics board. not plotted —
NVIDIA GeForce 256 NVIDIA GeForce 256 (NVIDIA GeForce 256) October 1999 unknown No checked source, including the VisionTek product brief, states a board-power rating for either reference configuration. not plotted —
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro ATI Technologies R300 (ATI Radeon 9700 Pro) August 2002 unknown The cited vendor material does not state a board-power rating for this accelerator. not plotted —

Why this chart holds one group only

Every point on a chart is implicitly compared with every other point on it. This chart uses one comparability group: one metric, one device scope, one method . There is no chart of all clock frequencies over time because they are not one quantity.

Points use the release date of the machine a figure belongs to, including figures recorded against a part. A release date applies only to a machine that shipped. What this metric measures.