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Nvidia RTX 4000 GPUs might draw more power in gaming laptops and PCs

The Nvidia RTX 4090 may pull up to 800W from your PC's power supply, with other GeForce RTX 40 GPUs similarly asking for more watts in laptops and desktops

A gaming laptop powered by Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics

The Nvidia RTX 4000 rumour mill has been swirling for months now, with countless reports that upcoming GPUs likely won’t so much sip power as they will gorge on it. This increased consumption apparently isn’t limited to gaming PCs either, with team green’s gaming laptop graphics cards seemingly having a larger appetite for watts too.

The flagship GPU of the Nvidia RTX 4000 series, the AD102 which will likely be used in the RTX 4090, will be capable of drawing up to a staggering 800W according to hardware leaker kopite7kimi. This is almost double the 450W power limit found in the company’s current best graphics card, the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti.

Moving down the stack, this trend continues with AD103, AD104, and AD106 GPUs, with a floor of 260W and ceiling of 450W. All of this means that picking up an RTX 4080, RTX 4070, or RTX 4060 could result in you needing to pick up one of the best power supplies on the market.

Power limits don’t seem to be so dire on the mobile side of things, with most RTX 4000 gaming laptop graphics cards drawing the same amount of power as their current RTX 3000 equivalents. However, any portable PC packing an AD104 pixel pusher will need to find an additional 10W versus a GA103 GPU.

How much these increased power limits will help or hinder Nvidia’s ability to compete with AMD RDNA 3 graphics cards remains to be seen, but it looks like team green will be the first to market, despite reports of a delay. Although, it’ll be longer still before we’re able to buy RTX 4000 laptops.