Power Consumption & Temperatures
We expected the GeForce GTX 1080 to be efficient, but damn this is impressive!
Testing with The Witcher 3 saw the GTX 1080 match the power consumption of the GTX 980, a card that it beat on average by 60% at both 1440p and 4K. This also means that the GTX 1080 consumed 14% less power than the Fury X and 21% less than the Titan X.
The GTX 1080 consumed 10% more power than the GTX 980 in CoD Black Ops III, however it was still less power hungry than the Fury X and the Titan X, both slower cards.
This time when testing with Just Cause 3 the GTX 1080 managed to consume slightly less power than the GTX 980 and only slightly more than the GTX 970, which is incredible. The GTX 1080 consumed 16% less power than the Fury X and 26% less than the Titan X here.
The thermal performance of the GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition isn't anything special as we saw a similar 80+ degree load temperature to that of the reference design Titan X and GTX 980 Ti.
For those wondering the operating volume is pretty much the same, though we didn't record any scientific data to support that statement. Overall the GTX 1080 Founders Edition runs at reasonable temperatures, but unless you crank the fan right up you won't be seeing those 67 degree load temps Nvidia showed at their press events.
We wonder if this will get better with partner cards that will sell for less than the Founders Edition eventually.