Water resource shortage is not only a critical environmental problem, but also a limiting factor severely affecting growth and yield of wheat. How to increase the yield and water use efficiency (WUE) of wheat has become a stringent problem to be solved. The aim of this research is to study differences of water consumption characteristics and WUE between six winter wheat cultivars (J17, T23, J22, Z12, S12, and W8) in high yield field to elucidate water consumption characteristics of cultivars with high WUE. Three irrigation regimes were applied in the present experiment: no irrigation water applied during the whole growth season (repressed as W0); irrigated both before sowing and at jointing stage (W1); irrigated 3 times, before sowing, at jointing and anthesis stage (W2). The irrigation amount each time was 60mm. Based on the cluster analysis of grain yield and WUE, these six cultivars can be divided into three groups: high WUE group (GroupⅠ), middle WUE group (GroupⅡ), low WUE group (Group Ⅲ).The results showed that grain yield of GroupⅠwas significantly higher than those of other groups in the same irrigation treatment. However, there was no significant difference of grain yield between Group Ⅱ and Ⅲ in treatment W0, while grain yield of Group Ⅱwas higher than those of Group Ⅲ in treatment W1 and W2. Selecting T23, W8, S12 from groupⅠ, Ⅱ, Ⅲ respectively for further analysis, the results indicated that, in treatment W0 and W1, water consumption amount and water consumption percentage from anthesis to maturity were greatest, following by those from sowing to jointing, and from jointing to anthesis for T23 and W8, respectively; and for S12, the descending order of the two parameters was those from sowing to jointing, form anthesis to maturity, and from jointing to anthesis, respectively. In the condition of W2 treatment, water consumption amount and water consumption percentage from sowing to jointing of the three cultivars were all less than those of anthesis to maturity, but more than those of jointing to anthesis. Compared with W8 and S12, water consumption amount, water consumption percentage and water consumption amount per day from sowing to jointing and from jointing to anthesis for T23 were highest in treatment W2, whereas those from anthesis to maturity were lowest. Total water consumption amount of T23 was moderate between that of W8 and S12 in treatment W0 and W1 and the ratios of irrigation amount, precipitation and soil water consumption amount to total water consumption amount do the same. In treatment W2, the ratios of irrigation amount and precipitation to total water consumption amount for W8 were less than those of T23, but more than those of S12, whereas a opposite change occurred in the ratio of soil water consumption amount to total water consumption amount. However, total water consumption amount for T23 was lowest among three cultivars in treatment W2. Under the same condition of irrigation treatment, soil water consumption of 100-200cm soil layer of T23 was more than that of W8, showing that T23 could adequately use deep soil layer water. Soil water consumption of 100~200cm soil layer for S12 was more than those of T23 and W8 in treatment W0 and W2, but grain yield and WUE of S12 were significantly lower than those of other two cultivars. It is suggested that water consumption characteristics and water use efficiency in high yield wheat field may strongly depend on different cultivars.