As we reported here, AMD continues to work on reducing the power consumption of its graphics cards. The latest AMD driver makes it possible to drastically reduce power consumption, especially on mid-range and entry-level cards. Tom’s Hardware takes a closer look!
Big reduction in idle power consumption with the latest AMD driver!
The tests were carried out with a monitor displaying in UHD, all at a frequency of 144 Hz.
As can be seen, with the old version of the driver, 23.11.1, the RTX 7600, RX 7700 XT and RX 7800 XT consume a lot of power… This is not the case with the RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT, the latter having benefited from an earlier summer patch.
However, a power consumption of 33W for the 7800 XT on a Windows desktop displaying a still image just doesn’t cut it. Ditto for the 27.5W of the RX 7700 XT, while the 7600 is on a par with the 7900 XTX, which boasts a much larger GPU.
Fortunately, version 23.12.1 is here to put things right. On the 7800 XT/7700 XT, power consumption is drastically reduced: to around -61% at best. However, go figure, the power consumption of the RX 7900 XT increases slightly, from 13.6W to 15.1W.
It’s worth noting that by reducing the frequency of their screens, our colleague managed to reduce the power consumption of his cards by a further 30%. However, as soon as the slightest mouse movement is made, power consumption rises again. Worse still, when opening chrome, power consumption rises again: between 30W and 90W.
This is one of the reasons why you need to keep your drivers up to date. Upgrades don’t just fix bugs or optimize games, they also change the way the hardware behaves.
