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.
The TDP of the AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE is quoted by AMD at around 260W. You can see that with our factory overclocked SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 7900 GRE 16GB NITRO+, it exceeds this power draw and is around 291W. This is 14% more power than the Radeon RX 7800 XT and 7% under the Radeon RX 7900 XT. When we overclocked the video card, the power draw rose by 13%, but of course, we did not see that level of performance improvement. At this power draw, the SAPPHIRE 7900 GRE NITRO+ uses 48% more power than the GeForce RTX 4070 and 31% more power than the GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER.
First looking at the GPU temperature, the SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 7900 GRE 16GB NITRO+ is the coolest running video card, despite it drawing almost the most power. At 61c, it’s cooler than the 7900 XT, 4070/SUPER, and 7800 XT. When we overclocked it, with automatic fans, the fans automatically spun faster and kept it even cooler at 52c by default, which is pretty amazing. These great temps are a testament to SAPPHIRE’s Tri-X cooling.
The Hot Spot temperatures, however, are a bit warmer, but nowhere near as hot as the 7800 XT. Still, it is warmer than the 7900 XT by a fair margin.
Default is on the left, and Overclocked on the right. You can see that when overclocked, the fan speed doubles automatically. When it was overclocked, the fan noise was audible, it wasn’t screeching, or whining, but it was the normal air-rushing sound. At default, however, the fans could not be heard, it was very quiet. We do see the GPU Voltage slightly go up when overclocking, which would account for the higher power usage we experienced.