PC Drivers & Software

[just_another_user]

Just received a new 7800 XT GPU (A Powercolor Hellhound) and rather dismayed to see very high idle power usage.

It is sat at around 60W, but bounces around a bit between 55W and 80W.

The card it replaced, was a 6750 XT which sat at around 7W, the same as a 3070ti I have on hand.

I'm running Windows 11 Pro with a single 4k 120hz screen.  Changing to 60hz does not change the wattage being reported and the system is otherwise identical to the lower reported  wattage cards I used.

I did read there were some recent driver changes that improved things for 7900 XT users, so why is this still an issue for 7800 XT?

I'm running the Adrenalin 23.9.1 driver.

[Aleksejs]

Same here, 
7800XT Powercolor Hellhound in Windows 11, monitor - LG 34" 144hz, IDLE was eating around 75 watt. (Latest driver)
But enabling Adaptive sync in settings reduced consumption to 34 watt.
Its still a lot of power for just staring at desktop. I really would like to see something around 15-20 watt Idle.

[M4gnus0o0]

I have the same issue but I'm running driver 23.12.1 I thought this issue was fixed? Running a Sony M9 4K monitor at 120hz over HDMI. Tried multiple refresh-rates and settings doesn't make any differences.

[Zalugar]

For what it's worth, my XFX 7800 XT runs at around 20 watts semi-idle on 23.11.1 (I did do a dirty driver revert from 23.12.1) at 1440p 144hz. Only notable settings I have is FreeSync (AMD) and Variable Refresh Rate (Windows) on default graphics profile.

Though Tom's Hardware did do a report they plan to follow up on it not being so great with 4K above 60hz after a mistaken testing method.

[gloomd]

2 Dell 4K 60Hz, idle is around 40w whatever 1 or 2 turned on. Nothing but desktop!

Much higher than expected. I miss my 2060s.

[radu1006]

Do you have Freesync and/or HDR enabled? This can cause high power usage in idle. I saw the same power usage in idle with HDR on nvidia 3080ti as well.

If you disable HDR and Freesync you should see a power consumption of about 20-30W.

Also driver 24.2.1 seems to lower the power draw to around 15-20W even with HDR.

[txl420]

I tried everything, refresh rates, custom configurations and even started scanning for crypto miners. This is the ONLY thing that worked. 

It took my 6600xt down from 40% usage at idle, to 1%.

In Radeon Settings, go over to the Record & Stream tab, and turn off Record Desktop.