We first noticed AMD's problems with high idle power draw earlier this year, and it was (sort of, kind of) 'fixed' back in July. As the RDNA 3 GPUs are among the best graphics cards, an idle power draw of up to 90W on the RX 7900 XTX was not a good look. But after various driver updates over the intervening months, it looks like AMD has finally solved the problem.
I've tested the five RX 7000-series GPUs with the latest AMD 23.12.1 drivers, as well as the previous 23.11.1 drivers. Actually, I had previously started logging idle power last month, and when looking at the finally implemented hardware accelerated GPU scheduling, I noticed things had changed. So I commenced retesting all of the GPUs.
Update: But mistakes were made. Sigh. It appears some of the cards defaulted to a 4K 60Hz refresh rate, which lowered idle power draw substantially. Some GPUs do fine at 4K and 144Hz. Others are fine at 4K and 120Hz. But many GPUs still have relatively high power draw at anything above 4K and 60Hz. The text below hasn't been updated, as I'm having to retest things. There will be a future article on idle and low use power draw, using more extensive testing.
Looking at the 23.11.1 results should immediately illustrate why I suggested the idle power issues were not yet completely fixed with the previous drivers. Now, part of the issue may be that the PC was connected to an Acer X27 Predator display — a 4K 144 Hz G-Sync monitor. One of AMD's previous "workarounds" was to enable FreeSync support if available, which it's not on G-Sync displays like the X27. Except, a static refresh rate shouldn't be a problem.
With the last drivers (and the RX 7800 XT / RX 7700 XT launch drivers), I noticed idle power draw, measured using an Nvidia PCAT v2 device, was quite high at around 50W. Power use dropped a bit with the monitor set to a 60 Hz refresh rate, but it was still above 40W. The RX 7900 XTX/XT meanwhile were down in the sub-30W range, and with the 23.11.1 drivers they dropped to less than 20W. In fact, the bigger GPUs were using less power than even the smallest Navi 33 GPU.
Now, with the 23.12.1 drivers installed, things look far more sensible. The big Navi 31 GPUs are pulling 15–16 watts of power, the medium Navi 32 GPUs are in the 12–13 watts range, and the smallest Navi 33 GPU sips just 8W.
To be clear, this is when the PC is sitting fully idle at the Windows desktop, still, with the monitor set to 4K and 144Hz. Setting the display to a 60 Hz refresh rate dropped the power another 30%, but any activity beyond moving the mouse cursor around will start to increase the power draw.
For example, having the PCAT window open and visible, which shows a constantly changing real-time power draw, increased the power use to over 30W on the 7900 XTX. Opening a web page in Chrome — it's surprising how much power Chrome can use — depending on the content, saw power use jump to anywhere between 30W and 90W. But if your PC is just sitting there, showing static content, you should get similar power use to what's shown in the chart.
Of course if your PC is fully idle and the monitor is set to go to sleep, you can expect even lower power use. We didn't check every GPU, but the RX 7900 XTX as an example dropped to just ~11W of power use when the display went to sleep. Or just put the PC to sleep and then power use drops to basically zero.
