AMD has been striving to catch up with Nvidia’s GeForce graphics cards in terms of performance, and with the launch of the Radeon RX 7900 and more recently the RX 7600, they have made significant progress. However, one area where AMD has struggled is idle power consumption. To address this issue, AMD has released a new driver called Radeon Software Adrenaline Edition 23.7.1, which aims to improve energy efficiency.
AMD’s Radeon graphics cards have been known for their energy-saving functions on simple Full HD screens, with both the graphics chip and GDDR6 memory clocked down. In our tests, the Radeon RX 7600 consumed only 6 watts when idling on a 1080p60 screen. However, when connected to a 4K display with a higher refresh rate, the power consumption increased significantly, reaching as high as 29 watts or even 73 watts for higher-end models.
This high power consumption during idle states has been a deterrent for some energy-conscious buyers, especially when compared to Nvidia’s GeForce cards. With the new driver update, AMD aims to address this issue and improve idle power consumption. Initial reports suggest that power consumption has dropped from 40 or more watts to as low as 10 watts for some users. However, there are also reports from users who have not noticed any change.
To verify these claims, further tests will be conducted on various Radeon RX and Radeon Pro cards in the c’t laboratory. These results will be updated in the future. In the meantime, users are encouraged to try out the new driver update for themselves, as it also brings other improvements such as fixing AV1 playback issues in DaVinci Resolve Studio and resolving game crashes in Nioh 2 on the Radeon RX 6800 XT.
