4080 vs 7900XTX power consumption - Optimum Tech

[dgianstefani]

It's clear some folks choose to hyper focus on the $ cost of higher power draw, maybe in an attempt to argue it's irrelevant, but ignore the other major reason more efficient cards are desirable, they output less heat into your system.

Every chip is power limited in some way or another, efficiency = performance. It's not hard to understand, even AMD marketing pushes their 50% gen over gen efficiency gains, although it's not quite that much.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Not that I'm a reference or anything, but I do tend to buy components with lower power draw. They're easier to keep cool and quiet (yeah, I know) using cheaper fans and heatsinks.

That's why I believe that CPU power draw is a much bigger deal than GPU power draw, the cost of the coolers can be crazy. I've always just used stock air coolers because they work just fine and they cost nothing.

My systems are silent enough that in a few cases I had my friends go "oh, you turned it on already"?

Yeah, my main rig is in my living room so I'm always sitting about 20' away and any noise is drowned out by the game I'm playing, video I'm watching, music I'm playing, etc.

Also worth noting, in the past, highest TDP on a GPU was much lower. Today, if you're looking at 100W difference, that's two thirds of what a mid range card used to draw. Or like 20 LED bulbs turned on at the same time...

Yeah, but you're not going to see a 100W difference between two GPUs in the same generation and performance tier. Even if I had a card that consumed 50W more than another at the same performance tier, it would cost me less than $10CAD extra per year. That's a nothingburger to me if the more efficient GPU costs an extra $50-$100 because it would take me longer than the useful life of the card to break even. Since the primary sources of electricity in my region are nuclear, hydro and wind (91% combined), it won't increase my carbon footprint either.

 

[ZoneDymo]

If you check you'll see that actually all of these GPUs have better efficiency than the previous generation.

Of course it is, if you're concerned about the price of electricity clearly you can afford an extra 10 bucks a month or if you're concerned about heat you can use the AC.

Yes...I never contested that?

you are the one suggesting it doesnt matter because "if you can afford to spend 1000 dollars on a gpu, the power bill will not be relevant".
Im trying to explain how that isnt the point of the argument, its not about the price of electricity or heat, its about the quality of a product.

just because you can afford it does not make it any less wasteful or poor engineering.


Thats why I mentioned formula 1, I hate this trend of gpu's performing better for the consumption....while also constantly consuming more power.

The most high end card of 20 years ago, the 8800 Ultra used 2 x 6pin connectors and that was crazy for the time, thats a combined 150 + pcie 75 watt, 225 watt for the most high end card.....

And now they need 600+ watts, while harping on how efficiency has improved......

Again I want the gpu to be limited by some governing body and then just have them get creative and innovate with what they have, 300 watts max, make due with it.

 

[Assimilator]

Roughly $75 more per year in power costs isn't a factor for people buying a GPU in this price range. It's an afterthought- it is not relevant.

Resorting to insults is low.

FFS... it's not about the cost, it's about the principle. Or are you going to tell me that that isn't relevant either?

 

[Vya Domus]

Im trying to explain how that isnt the point of the argument, its not about the price of electricity or heat, its about the quality of a product.

I don't know what you could possibly mean by "better quality" in this context, like I said all of these new GPUs have better efficiency compared to previous generations and are similar to each other anyway.

I don't think anyone ever picks a 4080 over a 7900XTX because it's 10% more efficient or whatever and it's therefore a "better quality product", sorry I don't believe it and I wont ever believe it. Real consumers simply do not care about that, these are made up reasons proposed by forum dwellers to argue which brand is better.

 

[ZoneDymo]

I don't know what you could possibly mean by "better quality" in this context, like I said all of these new GPUs have better efficiency compared to previous generations and are similar to each other anyway.

I don't think anyone ever picks a 4080 over a 7900XTX because it's 10% more efficient or whatever and it's therefore a "better quality product", sorry I don't believe it and I wont ever believe it. Real consumers simply do not care about that, these are made up reasons proposed by forum dwellers to argue which brand is better.

And again, I never claimed otherwise, never have I once suggested anyone buys a 4080 over a 7900xtx because of efficiency.
But it is, objectively, a better product in that sense.

 

[Vya Domus]

And again, I never claimed otherwise, never have I once suggested anyone buys a 4080 over a 7900xtx because of efficiency.

So what even is your argument then ? If you agree people don't care, why even debate this.

 

[Assimilator]

I don't think anyone ever picks a 4080 over a 7900XTX because it's 10% more efficient or whatever and it's therefore a "better quality product", sorry I don't believe it and I wont ever believe it. Real consumers simply do not care about that, these are made up reasons proposed by forum dwellers to argue which brand is better.

I was intending to pick up a new GPU this year around Black Friday, and AMD is effectively my only option because it's the only company making GPUs with USB-C ports (but only on the reference models because AIBs suck d**k), except that I have chosen not to buy their product because as an engineer their s**tty attitude to efficiency pisses me off.

If the 7700/7800 series have USB-C and are reasonably priced, then maybe I will be able to overcome my repugnance and buy one, but absolutely not on a product that's close to a thousand bucks. For that kind of money AMD simply needs to do better.

 

[dgianstefani]

I was intending to pick up a new GPU this year around Black Friday, and AMD is effectively my only option because it's the only company making GPUs with USB-C ports (but only on the reference models because AIBs suck d**k), except that I have chosen not to buy their product because as an engineer their s**tty attitude to efficiency pisses me off.

If the 7700/7800 series have USB-C and are reasonably priced, then maybe I will be able to overcome my repugnance and buy one, but absolutely not on a product that's close to a thousand bucks. For that kind of money AMD simply needs to do better.

Just pass through the signal and use the motherboard USB-C or a monitor with the connection.

 

[Avro Arrow]

If you check you'll see that actually all of these GPUs have better efficiency than the previous generation.

Of course it is, if you're concerned about the price of electricity clearly you can afford an extra 10 bucks a month or if you're concerned about heat you can use the AC.

It's not an extra $10 per month, it's more like an extra $10 per year. Unless you live in the UK where electricity is stupidly expensive and then it's an extra £22 per year. This is assuming an extra 50W for a GPU that's maxxed-out (like running 3DMark) for 4 hours a day, 365 days per year.

Here in Canada, I'm looking at less than $10 per year. Since I don't run 3DMark for 4 hours a day, for me, it would be probably more like an extra $5-$7 per year because gaming won't show the maximum wattage difference like running 3DMark would. It's a joke to me that anyone is willing to whine about it but it's clear that we don't have a dearth of know-nothing-know-it-alls.

We're never going to purchase them because they don't satisfy our criteria for being power-efficient. Why is this so difficult for you cretins to understand? Why do you continue to attempt to disregard this argument as if it's irrelevant? Is it because you're intellectually stunted and only capable of fanboyism?

It appears that most people didn't understand your humour. I thought that it was quite clever myself!

 

[Darkholm]

Yep, I couldn't care less about power usage of my PC during gaming. It is not like it is in game mode for 24/7. In my country with my gaming routine, it costs lets say maybe €15 per year.
But what really troubles me is heat that comes from GPU. So I never look on power draw on reviews, only heat.

 

[dgianstefani]

But what really troubles me is heat that comes from GPU. So I never look on power draw on reviews, only heat.

Lol.
You do realise the issue with that sentence right?

 

[Darkholm]

Lol.
You do realise the issue with that sentence right?

Sorry, english is not my native language. I know that is "more power = more heat", but what I meant to say is I do not care for electric bill at the end of the month

 

[gffermari]

Interesting that in less demanding games, the % difference is much higher.

I knew that the 4080 was a bit more efficient in general, but wasn't aware of how the efficiency changes when utilization isn't 100%.

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Were the nVidias GPUs the ones that had the driver overhead thingy? Meaning that they tend to need or use more the CPU resources in order to perform at their best while the radeons were capable of delivering most of their top performance without relying on the CPU speed.

So, in CS GO, the radeon can deliver 350fps at 213W and 67% GPU usage at unknown CPU usage.
While the 4080 delivers the same performance at 65W and 32% at unknown CPU usage.
It's obvious that the 4080 uses the CPU way more than the Radeon. But no matter what CPU, most of them consume way less power than a GPU.
So, it makes sense why the total power draw is that much lower in the 4080 system.

 

[wolf]

@nguyen It seems like the solution is plug your ears and ignore evidence to the contrary, oh well, all the other readers can see the evidence and make up their own mind. Some of the regular crop seem to agree despite it being factually incorrect, or at the very least debatable.

Then there's the matter of the RTX A2000, not that it's a consumer card, but was 'popular' with the SFF crowd as the most powerful low profile GPU for gaming. It's Ampere, on Samsung 8nm and blows RNDA2 right out of the water in efficiency. I'd be curious to see if RDNA2 (or CDNA2?) has cards that punch as efficient as this. My 2c, it counts. Although I suspect team Red won't agree.

 

[JustBenching]

Its becoming increasingly hard to take this joker staff member seriously. The bias is flowing freely. The pattern is clear.

In short, it is disgusting.

/thread

That's unwarranted. Guy just posted a review, from a reputable reviewer non the less. Ali from optimum tech is a very very good reviewer.

"Why aren't we seeing posts about the colossal difference between Raptor Lake and Zen?"

Because it doesn't exist

Umm, I don't know how to say this without making you look a bit ridiculous but....

It's not huge, but it's definitely an uncontested lead and it's also pretty recent. No biggie though, I had the same attitude towards it then that I do today.... "Who the hell cares?"

If people truly cared about efficiency and weren't just paying it empty lip-service, then nobody would've bought any of those insane Raptor Lake CPUs, but they did. There's nothing more ludicrous than someone complaining about the power use of a Radeon card while their rig is sporting an i9-13900K/S or i7-13700K with a 36mm AIO.

That graph is power draw, not efficiency. Both the 3080 and the 3090 were actually faster in that game, so it makes sense to draw more power. Furthermore, he was measuring total system power draw, which means, when the 3090 is delivering 210 fps vs 175 fps on the 6800xt, the whole system is pulling more power cause it's working harder. Even then the 3090 is at 0.39fps / watt and the 6800xt at 0.36 fps / watt.. The 3090 is more efficient, and the difference would have been bigger if he measured gpu power draw and not total system.

 

[Frick]

I don't think anyone ever picks a 4080 over a 7900XTX because it's 10% more efficient or whatever and it's therefore a "better quality product", sorry I don't believe it and I wont ever believe it. Real consumers simply do not care about that, these are made up reasons proposed by forum dwellers to argue which brand is better.

Effeciency no, but pure power draw (including transients, which aren't as bad on the 7900 as the 6900) is definitely a thing to consider, because it impacts what PSU you have to have. A decent 650W or unit is much cheaper than a decent 850W unit. The 6950's are coming down to decent prices, even to a point where I'm tempted, but I'd have to spend like €200 more just on a PSU. Better effeciency means more performance for less total money spent. Sure, if you have a good 1kW+ unit there are no problems, but most people don't have those.

ANYWAY, I'd love for w1z to do Vsync 60Hz power draw testing on 1440p and 4K in addition to 1080p, especially for the higher end cards.

 

[droopyRO]

ANYWAY, I'd love for w1z to do Vsync 60Hz power draw testing

That would be a cool article. Maybe even do it as a separate benchmark to the usual hardware review.

but I'd have to spend like €200 more just on a PSU

This was my major turn off regarding 4070 vs 6950 debate. I went for the former, because i did not need to change my 650W 5 year old Seasonic. I would have gotten a 6950 to test it but i only have two 8p cables. So the 6950 was about 100$ more expensive and i would have to add at least a 150$ 850W PSU to the mix just to get 15% more performace and 4GB more of vRAM. Time will tell if i made the right call with "only" 12GB of vRAM.

 

[Frick]

That would be a cool article. Maybe even do it as a separate benchmark to the usual hardware review.

I want it in all reviews. May not matter much on say a 4060 or the upcoming AMD lower end cards, but for something like a 4080/4090 or a 7900XT it would definitely be interesting to see. Maybe even 1080p/144FPS and 1440p/144FPS.

 

[dgianstefani]

We already do 60 Hz V-sync testing in GPU reviews.

 

[wolf]

We already do 60 Hz V-sync testing in GPU reviews.

What an interesting result, half of bloody Turing is more efficient than RDNA2 here.

 

[Super Firm Tofu]

And just for reference from the 60Hz testing:

V-Sync: If you don't need the highest framerate and want to conserve power, running at 60 FPS is a good option. In this test, we run Cyberpunk 2077 at 1920x1080, capped to 60 FPS. This test is also useful in testing a graphic card's ability to react to situations with only low power requirements. For graphics cards that can't reach 60 FPS at 1080p, we report the power draw at the highest achievable frame rate.

 

[dgianstefani]

Well, it's what I've been trying to say lol, these OT results aren't exactly out of line with what we already know, it's just TPU doesn't test low load at framerates higher than 60 (yet).

What an interesting result, half of bloody Turing is more efficient than RDNA2 here.

More efficient than RDNA3 you mean .

I'd like to also point out that people frequently ask me "why do you always recommend 4060/Ti over 6700 XT" or "muh 8 GB VRAM" (how's that working out now that 16 GB variant has no performance difference) this kind of chart is a big reason.

Twice or even three times the energy efficiency at frame capped games (of which there are many locked at 60 FPS, eg bethesda games or certain console ports etc.), or other associated low loads isn't irrelevant. People take 100% load efficiency and raw raster performance and compare the options, but there's a lot more states the GPU will be in, often more frequently. Another thing to remember is that TPU tests with maxed out CPU hardware, most people aren't rocking a 13900K, and I doubt their GPU is pegged at 100% all the time.

It's a whole other factor if you want to start comparing RT efficiency too, due to the dedicated hardware used in NV cards.

4070 and 6900 XT are roughly comparable in both price and performance, 6900 XT is 5-10% faster in raster, but 20% slower in RT.

Yet one peaks at 636 w, 130 w higher than a 4090, and the other is 235 w.

 

[nguyen]

Well, it's what I've been trying to say lol, these OT results aren't exactly out of line with what we already know, it's just TPU doesn't test low load at framerates higher than 60 (yet).


More efficient than RDNA3 you mean .

I'd like to also point out that people frequently ask me "why do you always recommend 4060/Ti over 6700 XT" or "muh 8 GB VRAM" (how's that working out now that 16 GB variant has no performance difference) this kind of chart is a big reason.

Twice or even three times the energy efficiency at frame capped games (of which there are many locked at 60 FPS, eg bethesda games or certain console ports etc.), or other associated low loads isn't irrelevant. People take 100% load efficiency and raw raster performance and compare the options, but there's a lot more states the GPU will be in, often more frequently. Another thing to remember is that TPU tests with maxed out CPU hardware, most people aren't rocking a 13900K, and I doubt their GPU is pegged at 100% all the time.

It's a whole other factor if you want to start comparing RT efficiency too, due to the dedicated hardware used in NV cards.

4070 and 6900 XT are roughly comparable in both price and performance, 6900 XT is 5-10% faster in raster, but 20% slower in RT.

Yet one peaks at 636 w, 130 w higher than a 4090, and the other is 235 w.

Yup, save some money on GPU only to spend more on PSU and electricity bill sounds good to some people I guess .

I just built a mini PC for friend with 13900K + 4080 and the entire PC draws maximum 380W at the wall (CP2077 and Last of US @ 4K Ultra settings). I'm pretty sure my friend wouldn't want to replace his aging AC just so he could use a 7900XTX in his PC .

 

[Bomby569]

I honestly dont think Radeons have been that bad over the last 2 gens. Seem like a bit more of a clichè market to me.

As someone that owned a rx5700 i laughed at this, it actually got much worst then the Polaris generation. The hardware is solid, the software is shit. This won't change for as much as some people would like it to. You can save money going AMD, i did it, but stop fooling yourselves and others.