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Is my GTX 580 really pulling 72A?

qubit

qubit

Overclocked quantum bit
Joined
Dec 6, 2007
Messages
17,865 (2.80/day)
Location
Quantum Well UK
System Specs
System Name Quantumville™
Processor Intel Core i7-2700K @ 4GHz
Motherboard Asus P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3
Cooling Noctua NH-D14
Memory 16GB (2 x 8GB Corsair Vengeance Black DDR3 PC3-12800 C9 1600MHz)
Video Card(s) MSI RTX 2080 SUPER Gaming X Trio
Storage Samsung 850 Pro 256GB | WD Black 4TB | WD Blue 6TB
Display(s) ASUS ROG Strix XG27UQR (4K, 144Hz, G-SYNC compatible) | Asus MG28UQ (4K, 60Hz, FreeSync compatible)
Case Cooler Master HAF 922
Audio Device(s) Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty PCIe
Power Supply Corsair AX1600i
Mouse Microsoft Intellimouse Pro - Black Shadow
Keyboard Yes
Software Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
Look at the screenshot below. VDDC current is showing a whopping 72A! :eek: Is this for real, or is it a bum reading like my enthusiast friend told me? It's really important I know, because I want to add back my GTX 285 to run with and without PhysX benchies and this current draw is on my PSUs limit. Gonna run FluidMark for the PhysX tests.

The PSU is rated for 70A on the 12V line, yet this is easily crossing it and don't forget all the other components such as the CPU and mobo are also drawing significant current from the 12V rail.

I get this current draw by running the latest Unigine Heaven 2.5 benchmark with the following settings:

Windows 7 64-bit
Windowed at 1680x1050
vsync off
DX11 with extreme tessellation
AF 16x
AA off

The current draw, heat and fan speed all vary depending on what it's rendering. Oddly it consumes far more when looking straight down at the clouds with nothing else visible (free camera mode). The fan really spins up and is quite noisy when it's doing this. Looking over the village actually reduces it's workload for some reason. It's then pulling only 55-60A.

I've tried looking at nvidia's site, but it doesn't specify current draw and googling doesn't reveal the max current draw either.

Card: Zotac GTX 580 Amp! Edition. I've not overclocked or modified it in any way.
PSU: Corsair HX850W. This is an incredible PSU which can handle significant overcurrent.


GTX 580 current.png
 
if the card is WAS pulling 72 amps something would be smoking ...... O WAIT ...
 
0.957v * 72a = 68w something is not right ... ignore it
 
68W is more believable than 864W, but either way I would disregard it.
 
Agreed.. I would ignore it
 
W1z has explained VDDC here before- it is off of the gpu voltage but it doesn't represent total power draw of the card (mem, etc not part of power figure).
 
theonedub said:
W1z has explained VDDC here before- it is off of the gpu voltage but it doesn't represent total power draw of the card (mem, etc not part of power figure).
Click to expand...

Yeah plus some cards have a couple of VDDC sensors. Yours seems to have just 1 revealed to gpu-z
 
Thanks for the advice everybody. :toast:

I was a bit suspicious of it, because I know that an 850W PSU is more than enough to run this card, but I thought it best to ask.
 
Yes the PSU is more than decent for that card. No need to worry about.:)
 
GTX580 has 3× VGPU phases (each made composed of 2 "channels"). The 72A GPU-Z reports is the amperage going through each of these three phases. That is, the GPU die is drawing around 0.957V × 72A × 3 ≈ 200W.
 
largon said:
GTX580 has 3× VGPU phases (each made composed of 2 "channels"). The 72A GPU-Z reports is the amperage going through each of these three phases. That is, the GPU die is drawing around 0.957V × 72A × 3 ≈ 200W.
Click to expand...

Thanks, that makes sense. With that much current flowing, no wonder it gets so hot, eh?
 
That information on GPUZ is misleading, you should ignore it. No way your card is pulling 72A x 12v = 864w
 
claylomax said:
That information on GPUZ is misleading, you should ignore it. No way your card is pulling 72A x 12v = 864w
Click to expand...
Indeed, it's not drawing 72A. More like triple that, so something around 200A.
At 0.957V.
 
largon said:
Indeed, it's not drawing 72A. More like triple that, so something around 200A.
At 0.957V.
Click to expand...

That's scary, isn't it? Seriously, once it's running flat out you can't touch it for the heat.
 
largon said:
Indeed, it's not drawing 72A. More like triple that, so something around 200A.
At 0.957V.
Click to expand...

200A ?
lolno :banghead:
you mean 200WATT
 
How are you finding the card Qubit? Really, really having to stop myself from getting one on my credit card :)
 
cheesy999 said:
you obviously don't get electricity watts=volts x amps so 200a x 0.957v = 191.4 watts
Click to expand...

??? I rounded up sorry its still to early for precise math
and if you factor in the efficiency of the psu it would be about 200 :)
 
OneMoar said:
??? I rounded up sorry its still to early for precise math
and if you factor in the efficiency of the psu it would be about 200
Click to expand...

its actually my fault, the way i read it i thought you were saying it wans't 200a

the full maths 0.957*72*3 works out at 206.712 watts

Maths and stuff said:
psu efficiency effects the input not the output so if your going to factor in efficency the hx 850 has a near 90% efficency so its 206.712/230 (uk voltage) =0.89874782608695652173913043478261
0.89874782608695652173913043478261/(divide as we're working out input voltage)0.9 (90% efficiency) means that the full usage of the gpu at the wall is 0.99860869565217391304347826086889 (not including the memory and other card features)
Click to expand...

basically put the processing cores on his gtx580 are using 1 amp at 230v when used with his psu

therefor gf110 uses 206w at full load which increases to 230w when psu efficency is involved

therefor we can find out that because w1zz review card uses 306w we now know that 206.7w in a gtx 580 is the gpu and 99.3w is the memory and other components

i've gone of bit off point but there's a lot of information in there

In summary your gtx 580 processing core is using just over 206w and the rest of your card is adding on another 100 meaning your psu can easily power that and your card is perfectly normal
 
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the numberrrrrrrrrrrrss theyeee burnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
the only thing that matters to me is how much my machine is drawing from the wall
~400 dollar power bills are suck
/me needs to get a 85+% psu
 
OneMoar said:
me needs to get a 85 % psu
Click to expand...

i need to get a psu where the rated amps arn't smaller then the demand for the system, i'm running a quad core cpu and a gts 250 both overclocked off a unbranded power supply rated for 20amps

luckily for the past year and a half i've only had one incident with the psu - smoke started to come out of it and the surge protector it was attached to became liquid on the inside
 
cheesy999 said:
therefor we can find out that because w1zz review card uses 306w we now know that 206.7w in a gtx 580 is the gpu and 99.3w is the memory and other components
Click to expand...
It's not that straightforward.
As you can see from the GPU-Z shot in 1st post that the GPU memory controller is not running anywhere near 100% utilization and as a matter of a fact GDDR5 mem controllers are very power hungry (GDDR5 memory chips are not) so the core definitely is not at full tilt. Anyways, it's not useful to compare two different cards in two different systems using two different test apps and trying to draw conclusions based on the data.
 
Last edited:
OneMoar said:
the numberrrrrrrrrrrrss theyeee burnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
the only thing that matters to me is how much my machine is drawing from the wall
~400 dollar power bills are suck
/me needs to get a 85+% psu
Click to expand...

$400/how long time? Running a computer on 500W 24/7 would cost me about €480 for an entire year. Unless you fold or something that will not happen.
 
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