New drivers for RDNA 3 GPUs reduce power consumption in select scenarios

It's been widely reported that Radeon RX 7900 series GPUs are not as efficient initially hoped, with the GPUs consuming more power than expected while playing videos and games with an unlocked framerate. AMD has been aware of that fact for some time and has since released a graphics driver to improve overall efficiency of its RDNA 3 GPUs.

The release notes of the graphics drivers in question, Adrenalin 22.12.2, only mention improvements in power consumption during video playback. However, according to ComputerBase testing, the driver also makes a difference in power consumption while playing videos and playing games with an FPS limit. Unfortunately, it seems there no optimisations  have been made for idle efficiency.

Using previous drivers,  power consumption recorded while watching videos on YouTube was 71W with the Radeon RX 7900 XT and 81W with the Radeon RX 7900 XTX. With the new drivers, power usage on both GPUs has decreased to 46W and 54W, respectively. Even then, the power consumption of GPUs such as the RTX 4080 (30W) and Radeon RX 6900 XT (34W) are considerably lower.

While gaming, the German media outlet also registered some improvements in power consumption, but only when the framerate was limited. While testing Doom Eternal at 1440p and 4K without setting a limit to the framerate, power consumption proved the same regardless of the driver. However, once the FPS limit is set to 144, the power consumption on the Radeon RX 7900 XT reduces by 25% and on the Radeon RX 7900 TX by 36%.

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KitGuru says: Do you own a Radeon RX 7900 series GPU? Have you already installed the latest Adrenalin graphics driver for your GPU? Did you notice the improvements in power consumption?

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