Since launch, AMD’s RX 7000s have had to deal with a problem that’s more annoying than anything else: idle power consumption. Indeed, if you have a high-resolution screen with a high refresh rate, your card can consume quite a lot of power. It’s a well-known problem that AMD has tried to solve with its drivers, but to no avail.
However, it seems that by enabling VRR, you can drastically reduce your card’s idle power consumption. That’s the conclusion drawn by our colleagues at ComputerBase!
VRR: the solution for reducing idle power consumption on your RX 7000 (and RX 6000)?
Computer Base made this discovery while updating their way of measuring idle power consumption. Indeed, when changing screens, now VRR(Variable Refresh Rate) compatible, the driver activated FreeSync by default, which drastically reduced the power consumption of the RX 7900 XTX used.
In idle, in UHD at 144 Hz, power consumption fell from 104W to just 20W. With a second screen sharing the same characteristics, the same constant: 105W -> 30W. This drop in power consumption is then present in all scenarios: YouTube SDR/HDR video as well as with movements on the desktop.
Further investigation reveals that older generation boards (RX 6000) also seem to be affected by this phenomenon… But to a lesser extent.
For the moment, there’s no clear-cut explanation for this phenomenon. Nor should this case be generalized. As our colleagues themselves say, we shouldn’t draw any conclusions in terms of trends, since the sample tested was too small. Nevertheless, if you also have a FreeSync screen, it would be interesting to see if there is a noticeable difference with and without VRR on the Windows desktop.