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For our power, temperature, clock speed, and fan speed testing, we use Powenetics testing hardware and software. We capture in-line GPU power consumption by collecting data while looping Metro Exodus at 1440p ultra as well as while running the FurMark stress test at 1600x900. Our test PC remains the same old Core i9-9900K as we've used previously, to keep results consistent. We tested the MSI card in its default mode and also enabled AMD's Rage mode in the drivers, which applies a potential 10% power limit increase. This is where the MSI card unfortunately fails to impress.
In theory, MSI lists 340W as the power draw for the RX 6950 XT Gaming X Trio. It labels that as "Power Consumption," but with our in-line power measurements, we saw far more than 340W. In Metro Exodus, we saw average peak power use of 429W, and FurMark showed even higher power use of 438W. We weren't running any MSI utilities or other software that would affect power use, so this represented the out of box experience. AMD's Rage mode gives a potential 10% increase in power limits, but here the MSI card only used 3% more power in Metro Exodus, though it did consume 6% more while running FurMark.
It's pretty obvious that MSI pushed power limits a lot higher than other GPUs with the Gaming X Trio, all in pursuit of the last few ounces of performance. As we showed in our gaming benchmarks, when using the same 22.5.1 drivers, things were so close between the MSI and Sapphire cards that it's hardly worth mentioning. We saw a range of up to 1.4% higher performance and up to 0.9% lower performance, and a lot of that is just the normal margin of error for testing GPUs, with an overall 0.2% difference on average.
Looking at the GPU clock speeds, you would expect more of an advantage for MSI, but without Rage mode the gap was still only 3%, and we didn't measure GPU clocks across our entire test suite. It's very likely that in many of the games, average GPU clocks were only 1% higher at most. With Rage mode, the difference in clock speed shrank to 2% in Metro Exodus. FurMark wasn't any different, showing about 3% higher GPU clocks for the MSI card with and without Rage mode, but again, MSI's card used up to 16% more power in FurMark, and 11–13% more power in Metro.
Temperatures were pretty similar across most of our extreme GPU test suite. The 3070 Ti and 3080 Ti (Founders Editions) ran a bit hotter, though custom AIC partner models tend to do a lot better, and the MSI card peaked at around 74C in our gaming tests, and up to 76C in FurMark. Rage mode bumped up fan speeds, so peak temperatures were 1C–3C lower than at stock for the MSI card.
Due to its higher power use, it's no surprise that the MSI card needed higher fan speeds to stay cool. At stock, fans averaged 1800 RPM, which is higher than the Sapphire card in Rage mode for gaming. Somewhat curiously, fan speeds started higher with both the RX 6950 XT cards, and then dropped after a minute or so to lower values, almost like the cards were overcompensating for potential GPU heat than never fully arrived. We've seen a bit of that with some of the other RX 6000-series GPUs, like the reference 6900 XT, but the Nvidia GPUs tended to be a bit more consistent.
Checking noise levels, we used an SPL (sound pressure level) meter pointed at the center fan at a distance of 10cm, which is done to limit the impact of environmental noise. The ambient noise level in the room, running the test PC but with the GPU fans off (since there was no GPU load) was 32–33 dB(A). Under load, running Metro Exodus for over 30 minutes (not looping), fan speeds reached a stable 29% and we measured 42.1 dB(A) of noise. Enabling Rage mode caused the fans to always run, so ambient noise levels increased to 35.5 dB(A) and our gaming test hit 43.3 dB(A) with 32% fan speed. In both cases, the MSI card was about 5 dB louder than the Sapphire card.
We also tested with a static fan speed of 75%, which was far higher than anything we expect most people will ever encounter during normal use. The Gaming X Trio reached 58.5 dB(A) of noise, at a close distance, which is pretty similar to what we've seen with other high-end enthusiast cards.
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