Power and Temp
System power is measured at the wall in Watts and represents the total system load. Our power supply is a Seasonic Prime 1000W Titanium. Temperature is measured via GPUz and room temperature of the testing rig was at 70F while testing.
In terms of power, it is no surprise the AMD video cards do utilize the most power to get the job done. The XFX Radeon RX 5700 XT THICC III Ultra pulls 401W at the wall peak power Wattage, this is about 45 more Watts than the AMD Reference Radeon RX 5700 XT. The extra voltage of 1.200V and the higher GPU frequency accounts for this extra Wattage. We did see positive faster performance because of it, so it is warranted.
Overclocking the video card, we saw a further peak upwards at 422W, again the higher and more consistent clock speed makes this happen. We did also see further performance improvements, so it is warranted.
In terms of power efficiency though, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER FE wins here, as it is just as fast as the XFX Radeon RX 5700 XT THICC III Ultra, but at 50+ less power. That’s very efficient.
In terms of temperature, the XFX Radeon RX 5700 XT THICC III Ultra is impressive. With the extra voltage and clock speed, it still runs cooler than the reference Radeon RX 5700 XT, by a wide margin. Overclocked we had the fans at 75% and temps were even cooler at a high overclock.
We wanted to drill down on the temperature a bit more, to show you how good the XFX THICC III cooling really is. A reference AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT has a Package Temp of 83c and a Hot Spot temp of 102c. With a factory overclock and with a higher voltage the XFX Radeon RX 5700 XT THICC III Ultra is still cooler with a package temp of 70c and a Hot Spot temp of 98c. Impressive.
In this graph we are now comparing memory temperature and VRM temp. The AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT reference video card has a memory temp of 82c and VRM temp of 67c. Our factory overclocked and higher voltage XFX Radeon RX 5700 XT THICC III Ultra has a memory temp of 76c, much cooler, and a slightly higher VRM temp of 69c. Remember though, voltage is higher, and so is clock speed, by a lot. The fact the VRMs don’t get way hotter is a good thing. Also, the memory temp really comes down, showing the improvement of the direct contact memory heatsinks.
Kudos to XFX on the cooling of this video card, really, kudos.