Power and Temperature
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 GPU-Z sensor data to record the results. We report on the GPU-Z sensor data for “Board Power” and “GPU Chip Power” when available 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.
Overall, AMD claims the Total Board Power of the Radeon RX 7800 XT is up to 263W. We included the reference made-by-AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT in the graph above so you can compare it with the power draw on the ASUS TUF Gaming Radeon RX 7800 XT OC Edition. The ASUS TUF Gaming Radeon RX 7800 XT OC Edition has a total board power draw of 274W, which exceeds the reference card power draw by 8%. The ASUS TUF Gaming Radeon RX 7800 XT OC Edition runs with a higher boost clock since it is factory overclocked, and that does boost the power demand as well.
When we overclocked it, the total board power rose to 314W, an increase of 15% more power from overclocking. However, we never saw this much performance increase from overclocking, so overall the overclock is not efficient, from a GPU power to performance perspective. We can also see that the GeForce RTX 4070 is much more power efficient. The ASUS TUF Gaming Radeon RX 7800 XT OC Edition consumes 39% more power than the GeForce RTX 4070 but was never that much performance percentage faster compared to it.
We also included the reference made-by-AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT in the temperature results above so you can compare the temperatures of the custom cooling on the ASUS TUF Gaming Radeon RX 7800 XT OC Edition with it. The reference Radeon RX 7800 XT runs quite hot, especially on the Hot Spot temperature of 94c.
The custom cooling of the ASUS TUF Gaming Radeon RX 7800 XT OC Edition does an impressive job keeping the Radeon RX 7800 XT GPU cool here. The ASUS TUF Gaming Radeon RX 7800 XT OC Edition has a much reduced Hot Spot temperature of just 75c. The package temperature is also a lot lower at 53c instead of 73c on the reference Radeon RX 7800 XT. In fact, the ASUS TUF Gaming Radeon RX 7800 XT OC Edition is the coolest running Radeon RX 7800 XT video card we have tested yet.
For overclocking, we did not have to manually increase the fan speed, we left the fan speeds on default. Even on default, and overclocked to 314W power, the ASUS TUF Gaming Radeon RX 7800 XT OC Edition remains cool at 53c package temp and Hot Spot temp only increased by 5 degrees to 80c, still cooler than the made-by-AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT. The ASUS TUF Gaming Radeon RX 7800 XT OC Edition is really a huge step up on cooling compared to the made-by-AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT video card, it’s really really cool, all puns intended.
GPU-Z Sensor Data
In the GPU-Z screenshots above you can compare the default readings (left) with the overclocked readings (right). We can see that the Board Power did increase from 274W to 314W when overclocked and that the GPU Voltage actually did increase also, automatically. It went from 1.021V to 1.100V giving us a little more stability automatically at the higher clock speed. Leaving the fans on default automatic settings, they operated at only 38% at default and rose up to 50% automatically when the video card was overclocked. It stayed very cool and very quiet.
Discussion (7 replies)
Join Discussion →I get comparing to it's closest competitor. But I feel like I must be remembering reviews with rose colored glasses. Didn't reviews compare new cards to one step up and one step down as well to see how they fit in the stack and if they were worth while?
I mean if you're constantly reading/watching reviews and ingesting data I suppose having just an review against the other teams price parity (or closest) makes sense. But as a consumer I would love to see if the 78000 XT card stacks well against another brands work with an same model, a 7900xt, and a 7600xt, as well as a 4080, and 4070ti/non ti.
Nice review, Brent.
Man I just about had my mind set on a 4070... this is $30 cheaper (than the $550 4070 Gigabyte I was looking at) and seems to be better in most cases. HMMMMMM.
You can look at what we've already reviewed and get a good idea of just that. We have already reviewed the XFX, Sapphire Nitro and reference AMD 7800XT cards. Thats real apples to apples. If you throw in a lesser or higher tier card, then you really don't get fair comparisons. What we try to do is show what is out there in the same price bracket or aimed at the same or similar gaming experience. TBH, right now the prices are all over the place, so that can be hard to do. That said, these reviews have always been pretty much about comparing cards that are closest in price and performance. We do throw in prior generation cards when a new gen is released. Also you have to consider the time it takes to run the data, graph it all out, compile the stats and then publish it. It takes about 4 or 5 days to knock out a polished review using an overclocked card, the out of box card and then the comparison card. If we did any more this stuff would be ancient history by the time you read it.
So why not include those in the chart? Or are we dealing with a like for like hardware issue between reviews. Since recreating the data doesn't make sense. Oh.. I get it with how intrisic driver versions are to performance improvements that wouldn't make sense.
Either you bench everything with an older driver, or you bench everything again with a newer one - and if you're doing it correctly and not over-automating reviews such that you miss things like artifacting and such, or using built-in benchmarks that do not represent gameplay (and perhaps favor one vendor over another, and that is different than gameplay) so that you wind up with results that are correct. At a minimum, really.
Benchmarking well is really a throughput problem that isn't easy to solve, unfortunately.
That has alot to do with it. Everything is tested on that day, using the latest most up to date everything.
Game updates can also make a difference - some games like Cyberpunk on GOG are easy enough to time machine into a specific version, but the more connected ones can force upgrade you.
There's a lot of variables to control for that we have a stack of internal documentation on to get things set up the same way every time. When looking at a single card, it's focused on 1-2 comparison options at that point in time. For a GPU level review, you'll see we run a much larger comparison dataset (usually limited by time before launch and who has what to ship to whom).