Board partners often have to differentiate themselves from the NVIDIA Founders Edition products for several reasons. First, NVIDIA products have a very unique design, such as the two-slot GeForce RTX 5090 with its highly-engineered approach to cooling. Secondly, NVIDIA sells its models for the base MSRP, which puts some pressure on board partners. NVIDIA GPUs are also typically some of the best quality PCBs used, so they have another advantage there.
For these reasons, board partners have to turn to overclocked and customized models to attract attention from consumers. Zotac has long done this with success, with popular models from its Amp family pushing beyond the typical specs. It is likely the stock TDP is still 575W on these models, but they feature a mode or dual BIOS that allows for greater power consumption.
Performance numbers and reviews are not released yet for the GeForce RTX 50 series, the first likely being the GeForce RTX 5090. More power should mean more performance, although GPUs have already been producing performance near their limits from the factory. Power numbers can only get so high before it starts to affect consumers and power supplies in homes.
This is why NVIDIA is also pushing AI, such as its DLSS 4 technology with multi frame generation. These technologies can allow GPUs to function in a more efficient manner in terms of power draw, all while putting out the frames per second that gamers expect. Zotac is one of the many board partners to release GPUs for RTX 50 series, and 600W models may end up being more commonplace than we’d initially expect.
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 will release on January 30th, with reviews going out sometime before that date.