Power and Temp
To test the power and temperature we perform a manual run-through in Cyberpunk 2077 at “Ultra” settings for real-world in-game data. We use HWiNFO64 sensor data to record the results. We report on the HWiNFO64 sensor data for “Total Board Power” for our Wattage data. For temperature data, we report the GPU (Edge Temp of the GPU or Package Temp) as well as Hot Spot (Junction Temperature) when available for our temperature data.
Power
By default, the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX peaked at a Total Board Power of 348.3W according to our HWiNFO64 test in Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K and “Ultra” settings. This coincides with and is close to AMD’s claim of 355W TDP. When we overclocked the video card on both GPU and memory, the Total Board Power rose to 400.4W. This is a 52W increase or a 15% power increase from overclocking. That power percentage increase is higher than the actual performance increase we got from overclocking. Therefore, the power exceeds the performance benefit from overclocking, and therefore the video card doesn’t appear entirely power efficient when GPU clock speed and memory clock speed are raised together.
When we tested only overclocking the GPU frequency, with no memory overclock, we also experienced a 400W Total Board Power. Therefore, even just overclocking the GPU alone increases the Total Board Power excessively, and is higher, than the actual performance increase, again showing that it is not very efficient in power utilization versus performance increase when overclocking. It takes a higher offset of power to get smaller increments of performance.
Temperature
By default, the GPU temp was 68c according to HWiNFO64 and the Hot Spot was 88c. When we overclocked the video card on GPU and memory we had the fans set at 100%. We got a decrease, therefore, in temps on the GPU down to 58c so that was good. However, we had a high Hot Spot temperature hit 108c while overclocked. According to HWiNFO64 the minimum overclocked Hot Spot temperature was 94c, and the average was 103c. This seems mighty hot to us, and we can also see that in the GPU Hotspots sensor it also hit 106.1c.
The situation was even worse when we were only overclocking the GPU and not the memory. With the higher GPU frequency with only the GPU overclocked the Hot Spot Temperature hit 109c maximum, with a 96c minimum and 104.5c average. Yeoch.
The memory Junction temperature actually went down with the overclock, because we had the fans at 100%. By default the GPU Memory Junction Temperature was 88c, but with both overclocks it was only 82c, so the memory was definitely not thermally limited.
HWiNFO64 Screenshots
On the left is HWiNFO64 showing Default settings, and on the right is HWiNFO64 showing our Overclocked settings on GPU and memory.
Discussion (9 replies)
Join Discussion →Thanks, @Brent_Justice for the OC review. Wow! A lot to unpack with this one with the new overclocking method that was needed. It's so awesome seeing the 7900 XTX really trading blows with the RTX 4080 and 4090. It definitely puts up a heck of a fight. Interesting too to see how they all share in the diminishing returns of extra power used vs performance gains. Still, though, my hat is off to AMD for such a nice card and I can't wait to see what they surpass it with.
Nice job. I don't tend to push my hardware much - thanks to you if a 7900xtx is ever in stock at msrpi can push it if I need to.
You would think a circa 2005 game at 4k wouldn't strain my 6900xt. The 7900xtx should do much better.
Same here... I just upgraded from a 6900xt to 7900xtx to try and keep my framerate locked at 160fps on my 3840x1600 ultrawide on the only game I really play, Path of Exile. 1% CPU utilization, 99% GPU utilization. ?♂️ Still can't lock it 100% of the time. The quest continues.
Depends on the game - a lot of them aren't terribly well optimized and can make anything struggle a bit, especially if you are a stickler about maintaining 60/120FPS rock solid
I play Rift a lot, it's 10+ years old now. 60% of the time it sits at 144Hz, but if I'm in a hub area or in a raid my 3080 can struggles to maintain 60, and I see it dip into the 40's on occasion. Not because the card is slow, just because the game isn't terribly well optimized (most MMOs aren't, especially when you get a lot of people in one area). Thankfully, MMOs aren't nearly so sensitive to dips in FPS, and with VRR I tend to not even notice any more unless it gets really bad.
I have a feeling that certain games are just going to be that way until the hardware is ludicrously overpowered for the software (and I would argue an Ampere card certainly qualifies as much faster than anything the developers intended to be running the game in my example)
Anyone have thoughts on pushing the best 4k fps with City of Heroes? I was lagging and down to 30-35 fps in a recent itrial. My monitor only does 60hz so I don't ask for much.
Wow you're running COH on a 5950 off of NVME with 128 gig of ram and a 6900xt and you are dipping down to 35 fps. I'm thinking it's a game engine limitation at this point rather than a hardware limitation. If I remember correctly isn't COH a 32 bit process so it can't use more than 4 gig of ram? And I'm betting it's only hitting a few of your cores. Honestly other than more straight light single threaded speed I don't think you're going to eek more out of that engine than what you have? Maybe with one of the new intel procs able to hit 6ghz?
Pretty much, just to ensure I am clearly communicating, under most circumstances COH is ay 60 fps. I get the drops when on a melee character in league (more than 1 team of 8) situations. COH has a lot of flashy powers with their own visuals and sounds. I recall some discussion, a few years back, about updating the code to x64, I dont recall if that actually happened. Hmmm just launched it and see it is x64 in task manager. You are correct about it doing most of the work on one thread with 2 more that get some use and a few more that get minor use. (according to a forum post on the homecoming site by a dev). Its hard to tell if I am running into a CPU (single core) wall or GPU wall.
CoH is ancient and maintained by volunteers who reverse engineered the engine. It’s a minor miracle that it runs at all, let alone as well as it does
Does undervolting help in increasing clock speeds ?