Power management of 7900XTX, to lower the power beyond 10%

[kvn864]

There is a slider in Adrenalin software to lower the power upto 10%.
Is there a way to lower more than that? MorePowerTools isn't working on Navi31, and in-game settings don't always acomplish anything.
Thank you

 

[kapone32]

You could also try the auto Undervolt.

 

[Gungar]

There is a slider in Adrenalin software to lower the power upto 10%.
Is there a way to lower more than that? MorePowerTools isn't working on Navi31, and in-game settings don't always acomplish anything.
Thank you

wow i hope there is another option because i want to have my card working at 50% power limit.

 

[AnotherReader]

wow i hope there is another option because i want to have my card working at 50% power limit.

Agreed! I lower the power limit to 50% to 60% on my Vega for folding.

 

[dont whant to set it"']

Maybe its analogous to 6900 series with the 15% +or- card power budget slider.
One can get it there. For example I've upgraded from a 5700XT to 6900XT not for performance, but for noise and power consumption reduction while still gaming at 1080p 120Hz/144Hz.

I got it there by lowering performance and power settings profiles below stock:
a) 1600MHz at min voltage available of 825mV, -15Power. Similar performance and way less power to 5700XT stock.
b) 1900MHz @ 1000mV , no power offset , for better performance at similar if not still less power usage.

 

[QuietBob]

Other than lowering it by 10%, you cannot set the power budget directly on Navi31 -- at least not with current drivers. As always, the best way to reduce power consumption is to cap the frame rate.

I play at 4K60 with everything maxed out and am seeing 190-240 W TBP in most games on a 7900XTX using default voltage and stock clocks. These are the measured average wattages, not just momentary values. The consumption is higher if the title makes heavy use of RT, to the point where a 60 fps cap won't make a difference to power usage at 4K. But then you'll be struggling with frame rate in general.

On the other hand, older games use even less, e.g. GTAV is about 140 W on average. And with classic games you can drag the min/max clock and voltage sliders in Adrenalin all the way down, making for some amazing power savings:

 

[kvn864]

Yea, I don't think there is a way, I have 120Hz 4k display, and slider to -10%, and yes, older titles will run at lower power with frames capped (freesync) but newer games are always at 310W. Card isn't getting hot, its just I know that if I had a choice to experiment with lowering power - summer life would be easier.
Remember with 6900XT I had power -30 to -50%, with amazinly, at the coast of just few frames, was getting around 160-170W, it was great. Got the slider to -50% with MorePowerTools.
Dissapointed with AMD for locking this with Navi31.

 

[HD64G]

Lowering max clocks and max voltage in driver suite does lower max power as much as you like. For RDNA2 that works wonders (for my 6750XT I lowered max power draw from 240W to 120W keeping 80% of max perrformance). Not sure of RDNA3 but why not?

 

[kvn864]

moral of this fable is this: dont get Navi31 if you want to set power more than -10%

 

[dont whant to set it"']

I also want my card to boost to 3GHz and stay there with only 1Watt total board power . Cant be done.

I'd start by observing my card's boosting behaviour tension/operating frequency, comparing notes with other samples around(reviews on the main page here),test,test,test all in one day's worth of work.

 

[ryzenmaster]

You could also try the auto Undervolt.

How you guys find auto undervolt and undervolt in general with XTX?
How much you manage to reduce in power/voltage and how much you gain in performance?

 

[Vayra86]

Lowering max clocks and max voltage in driver suite does lower max power as much as you like. For RDNA2 that works wonders (for my 6750XT I lowered max power draw from 240W to 120W keeping 80% of max perrformance). Not sure of RDNA3 but why not?

Yes this works can confirm on 7900XT.

What I did instead to limit power is drop core voltage to 1025mv, alongside a -10% limit. Now the card uses 260-280W max utilization, and still clocks north of 2600 mhz. Junction temp is a sweet sweet 70C tops, card is near silent.

 

[ryzenmaster]

Yes this works can confirm on 7900XT.

What I did instead to limit power is drop core voltage to 1025mv, alongside a -10% limit. Now the card uses 260-280W max utilization, and still clocks north of 2600 mhz. Junction temp is a sweet sweet 70C tops, card is near silent.

What was your stock mv? and clock in stock?

 

[Vayra86]

What was your stock mv? and clock in stock?

Stock clock varies highly per game. The highest I saw - with 2700mhz OC on vram on top - is 2850. Without mem OC Ive seen 2750+ in many more situations and a few occasions of 2890mhz. But most of the time you get that clock when the overall FPS is high - ergo the rendering is lighter on the GPU.

The more general scenario though is that you get 2600+ everywhere on stock and lower if the card isnt at 100% util.

Stock mV is 1100, but adrenalin says it can run at 1050. At 1025 its solid though.

 

[ryzenmaster]

Stock clock varies highly per game. The highest I saw - with 2700mhz OC on vram on top - is 2850. Without mem OC Ive seen 2750+ in many more situations and a few occasions of 2890mhz. But most of the time you get that clock when the overall FPS is high - ergo the rendering is lighter on the GPU.

The more general scenario though is that you get 2600+ everywhere on stock and lower if the card isnt at 100% util.

Stock mV is 1100, but adrenalin says it can run at 1050. At 1025 its solid though.

What do you think prevents from keep higher clocks in game?

 

[Vayra86]

What do you think prevents from keep higher clocks in game?

Utilization of the different parts of the GPU. 100% in our on screen display doesnt say much; it just means ONE aspect of the gpu/render pipeline is fully taxed so it cant deliver more perf, but underneath it are subsystems/blocks of the die that are doing varying amounts of work. For example, a tesselation engine; or RT cores.

 

[Lew Zealand]

Lowering max clocks and max voltage in driver suite does lower max power as much as you like. For RDNA2 that works wonders (for my 6750XT I lowered max power draw from 240W to 120W keeping 80% of max perrformance). Not sure of RDNA3 but why not?

Exactly this and look no further. Works this way on Navi and Navi 2 so it's reasonable to think Navi 3 is the same.

In Adrenaline, you set the voltage lower and test for stability (my 6600XT and 6800XT like 1075 and 1068 mV though they ship at 1150) and then simply set your core MHz slider to where you want it. That's it, quicker and easier than my Nvidia cards using Afterburner.

Slide the MHz lower and the clocks lower along with the voltage, same for sliding it higher.

Yes, you will never see that exact clock as it varies depending on the load as mentioned above. A general rule of thumb is the clock you see on a moderate load will be about 50 MHz lower than the one you've set. So if I want 2600 MHz, I set it to 2650. You'll see 2588 on a heavy load like CP2077 and 2620 on a light load, though too light (Rocket League) and it'll just clock down to whatever it needs (~750MHz for RL at 1440p/144Hz because it doesn't need any more).

I power limit my RDNA 2s all the time, just set the speed to 2250 or 2450 or 2750, depending on what you want to do. A single slider, it's very easy.

FWIW, I find the "sweet spot" to be very broad but about 2350 is closest, so 2300 game clocks. Huh, which is the exact speed the 6400 runs at.

 

[ryzenmaster]

What your thoughts on this btw?

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1657412328512528385

 

[Vayra86]

What your thoughts on this btw?

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1657412328512528385

Very old news we had a 4 Ghz rumor prior to RDNA3 release.

It is also completely irrelevant if those clocks are not achieved in real load

 

[ryzenmaster]

Very old news we had a 4 Ghz rumor prior to RDNA3 release.

It is also completely irrelevant if those clocks are not achieved in real load

Compbase said they indeed reached the loads just not in gaming if I under correctly their claim.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1615617811988074498

 

[Vayra86]

Compbase said they indeed reached the loads just not in gaming if I under correctly their claim.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1615617811988074498

Yeah. Blender just uses a very limited part of the GPU, it kinda underlines what I said a few posts earlier.
Games won't get to that level, obviously. Even 2900 in gaming is very optimistic, like I said, I only saw that in rare occasions. I also tried increasing the power limit to +10% (And 1100mv), and it really made no difference at all in peak clocks. I actually get better clocks with reduced power.

 

[ryzenmaster]

Yeah. Blender just uses a very limited part of the GPU, it kinda underlines what I said a few posts earlier.
Games won't get to that level, obviously. Even 2900 in gaming is very optimistic, like I said, I only saw that in rare occasions. I also tried increasing the power limit to +10% (And 1100mv), and it really made no difference at all in peak clocks. I actually get better clocks with reduced power.

I see, well I believe the untapped potential of XTX will be unlocked as software/game engines/APIs/drivers maturing... the clock is just one factor of many...in performance terms.

 

[Vayra86]

I see, well I believe the untapped potential of XTX will be unlocked as software/game engines/APIs/drivers maturing... the clock is just one factor of many...in performance terms.

Maybe it will... I think it'll be extremely gradual and might span several generations of chiplet GPU, or big bang, in the sense of AMD figuring out some finer points to remove bottlenecks. And... unfortunately, we can count on a really big bang to be postponed until RDNA4, to make a bigger impact...

 

[ryzenmaster]

Maybe it will... I think it'll be extremely gradual and might span several generations of chiplet GPU, or big bang, in the sense of AMD figuring out some finer points to remove bottlenecks. And... unfortunately, we can count on a really big bang to be postponed until RDNA4, to make a bigger impact...

"unfortunately, we can count on a really big bang to be postponed until RDNA4, to make a bigger impact..."

Yes and no... since if they show great untap of performance on Navi31, people might actually be even more excited on RDNA4 potential.
It works both ways....

To add - I think, AMD might bring one of the first major "uncap & fix performance related blocks" drivers with for this RDNA 3 generation with FSR 3 release. Could be a nice momentum, especially with those customers who still stall between upgrade or not upgrade from last gen or between going AMD / Nvidia doubt.

 

[Octopuss]

I bought one of these behemoths several days ago, specifically the even more ridiculous Sapphire Nitro+, and the power consumption is simply horrific. The OC BIOS that made the card eat 400W certainly didn't help either, lol. Even with the regular one it was a miniature oven installed inside the case, so I experimented for a while and realized the boost clocks were complete nonsense and had very little to none at all effect on frame rates. I limited the max frequency to 2300MHz while lowering the power limit to the max. allowable -10%, along with undervolting the card to 1080mV (from stock 1150 - is that the same on all cards?), and now the damn remains pretty tamed at 300W. And I still have 165fps most of the time in Delta Force on ultra details.