Power Consumption & Temperatures
The idle consumption figures are where we were expecting them to be at 69 watts each.
The GTX 980 allowed for a total system power consumption of 274 watts, which is 6% less than the GTX 780 Ti and 12% less than the R9 290X. It's also less than 1% more than the GTX 780 and 13% more power than the GTX 770. The GTX 970 consumed 7% less than the GTX 980 and 11% less than the R9 290.
This time we see that the GTX 970 and GTX 980 used roughly the same amount of power when testing Metro: Last Light, the GTX 980 consumed just 4% more. This meant that the GTX 980 consumed 13% less power than the R9 290X and 8% less than the GTX 780 Ti.
The GeForce GTX 980 allowed for a system consumption of 281 watts in Tomb Raider which was just 1% more than the Radeon R9 290 but 11% less than the R9 290X. The GTX 970 consumed just 5% less than the GTX 980 but that meant it also consumed 4% less than the R9 290.
The Gigabyte G1 Gaming Maxwell cards have amazing thermal performance, running at just over 60 degrees under full load, more than 20% cooler than similar GTX 780 and GTX 780 Ti cards.