Techtesters, a Dutch online publication and YouTube channel, took the time to investigate whether AMD's Radeon RX 7800 XT 16 GB GPU can compete with NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4070 12 GB GPU in power efficiency stakes. Naturally, Team Red loses with their new mid-ranger running under normal conditions when lined up against its main rival - ranging from 252 W to 286 W versus 200 W (sometimes 196 W during gaming sessions) respectively. Nada Overbeeke (of Techtesters) chose to set a 90% power limit for their main subject matter—Gigabyte's custom design Navi 32-based Gaming OC model—through AMD software adjustments.

Its "aggressive" 200 W undervolted state was compared to stock performance in a number of modern game environments (refer to the charts below). The Gigabyte RX 7800 XT Gaming OC—using stock settings—consumed around 40% more power while managing only a 9% performance increase over its 200 W undervolted guise. VideoCardz notes that AMD's reference model requires 24% more power at stock: "As mentioned, a 9% performance boost should not be underestimated, but the substantial reduction in power consumption also resulted in quieter GPU operation and lower temperatures." It would have been interesting to see Techtesters undervolt their RTX 4070 FE candidate as well, but emphasis seemed to be placed on the newer card.

The monstrous NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 "Ada" graphics card has the potential to be a very efficient high-end graphics card with a daily-use undervolt, and with its power-limit halved, finds an undervolting adventure review by Korean tech publication Quasar Zone. The reviewer tested the RTX 4090 with a number of GPU core voltage settings, and lowered software-level power-limits (down from its 450 W default).

It's important to note that 450 W is a very arbitrary number for the RTX 4090's power limit, the GPU rarely draws that much power in typical gaming workloads. Our own testing at stock settings sees its gaming power draw around the 340 W-mark. Quasar Zone tested the RTX 4090 with a power limit as low as 60% (270 W). With its most aggressive power management they could muster (i.e. 270 W PL), the card was found to lose just around 8% of performance at 4K UHD, averaged across five AAA games at maxed out settings. The story is similar with undervolting the GPU down to 850 mV, down from its 1 V stock. In both cases, the performance loss appear well contained, while providing a reduction in power-draw (in turn heat and noise).

Following the Intel versions of the high-end laptops from the NEO model series, XMG is also revamping the CORE 15 and CORE 17 from the upper mid-range performance sector. The discreetly elegant gaming notebooks combine Intel's Core i7-11800H with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 with maximum TGP. But the upgrade to the new Tiger Lake processors is not only accompanied by the transition to PCI Express 4.0 connections to the graphics card and M.2 SSD. The M21 model generation of the CORE laptops also integrates a Thunderbolt 4 connection for the first time and introduces extended options for CPU undervolting and memory tuning.

Just this January, XMG introduced the E21 model generation of its CORE laptops with NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3060 and either AMD or Intel processors. Following the launch of the new 11th generation Core processors, the Intel-based versions of the XMG CORE 15 and CORE 17 (M21) now receive an update to the latest eight-core CPU i7-11800H. This is still accompanied by a GeForce RTX 3060 in the maximum configuration with a TGP of up to 130 watts, including 15 watts Dynamic Boost 2.0. A MUX switch allows NVIDIA Optimus to be disabled via the BIOS.

AMD has announced they will be introducing Adaptive Undervolting tools for their precision Boost Overdrive software, available for the latest Ryzen 5000 series CPUs. This feature will be made available come launch of AGESA 1180 on 400-series and 500-series motherboards (estimated availability in early December), and will require a BIOS update to enable at the software level. According to AMD, this tool will dynamically calculate the precise amount of voltage required for a given task, analyzing internal sensors (such as workload, temperature, socket limits) and adapting voltage values on the fly at up to 1000 times a second.

This approach by AMD will bring a new age for CPU undervolting, which usually only allows for users to undervolt their CPU on the basis of the worst-case scenario: usually, the way undervolters work is by incrementally reducing the CPU's voltage and testing for stability via stress applications, gaming, or other specialized applications. This means that the CPU will have adequate juice so as not to fail in these scenarios - but of course, your CPU isn't always (in fact, it's almost never, depending on your specific use-case) using the full CPU processing power; this means that all other workloads where the CPU isn't under 100% utilization still have room for voltage reductions. With AMD's Adaptive Undervolting, this will now become possible.