Does 7900XT still has high idle consumption on multiple monitors? And should I wait for the Supers even when I'm leaning towards AMD cards?

[Todestrieb]

I recently have my taste on 4K resolution, and it pushed my 3070 way beyond its limit. (although I can put my blame to incompetent game developers that can't manage VRAM even on 1080p.)
And because it's near the 11.11 sale on Taobao, I got a bunch of (not perfect) choices.
No preference on the N or A argument. I have some good and bad experiences on both sides recently (3070 and 5700XT). And I don't quite care about great RT performance and DLSS related features.

The choices are:
1. 7900XT. The day 1 review here on the reference model has it's idle power consumption at a ridonculously high level of 85W, while the review of Sapphire Pulse 7900XT, published a few months later, says it's around 40W (which is still high, but a lot more acceptable to me). As my computer is going 24/7 even when I'm not gaming, a stupidly high idle power consumption is...not preferable. My wacky monitor combination (4K150Hz, 1080p 144Hz, 1080p 60Hz) doesn't help the matter.
Did AMD completely sorted out the idle power consumption on multiple monitors? If so, I'm very likely to just buy it.

2. 7900GRE. I thought it was just a overclocked 7800XT (which has a reasonable idle power consumption), but apparently it's a more cut-down 7900XT. I would doubt that it won't do better as my main concern against 7900XT is idle power consumption.

3. 4080 after super launch. Not going to buy it now unless someone points a gun at me. In an slightly better world where it is USD$999 equivalent, I would have at least seriously thought about it.

4. 4070Ti. But VRAM though.

4. Wait until used 3090 drops to USD$650 equivalent. It probably has once dropped to such low, probably not. It has gone up again anyway. And there is the transient issue to go against this choice.

5. Wait until the super launch (even if I'm going to buy 7900XT). The 4070TiSuper is interesting. Maybe I can get a better deal for 7900XT. Maybe not. Maybe 4080 will suddenly become an irresistable deal. And I can wait it out, even though my PC, as it is, is a bit annoying.

I would like someone to wise me up and calm me down before I push the buy button.

Current PC configuration is as profile.

EDIT: and I'm kinda sorry for another should I buy thread.

 

[Ferrum Master]

Doing high refresh on multiple monitors will trigger high idle consumption for any card.

 

[Todestrieb]

Doing high refresh on multiple monitors will trigger high idle consumption for any card.

Yes I know, but the only thing that scares me from the 7900XT is the 85W idle power consumption from the day one review.
If it is on the 40W range like on the later reviews (...or there is a workaround to get to that range) I would be fine about it.

 

[Beginner Macro Device]

Sapphire Radeon RX 7700 XT Pure Review

Sapphire's Radeon RX 7700 XT Pure comes with a great-looking white cooler design that makes it a top choice for every white build. Compared to the Pulse you get a more powerful cooler that has three fans instead of two, with whisper-quiet noise levels and good temperatures.

www.techpowerup.com

The latest review shows us way lesser numbers. I guess you will be fine. And yes, I know it is a review of 7700 XT but the numbers of 7900 series are also present.

4070 Ti is a complete no go for 4K150. 3090 is also very suboptimal to say the least. So either grab a 7900 XT or wait till heavy discounts on 4080.

 

[Ferrum Master]

How did you manage to enable PLP mode on new cards either way? Just stretching the window?

 

[Vya Domus]

Mine doesn't, I have two monitors, 165hz 1440p and 4K 60hz and idle power consumption is about 20W.

 

[Todestrieb]

How did you manage to enable PLP mode on new cards either way? Just stretching the window?

Forgive my ignorance, but what is PLP mode?
My guess is it's a typo for PIP->picture in picture, and I don't know how to do a hardware level of PIP (don't need it for now anyway)

And yes, due to the difference in resolution I have done lots of lots of window stretching.

 

[Ferrum Master]

Forgive my ignorance, but what is PLP mode?
My guess is it's a typo for PIP->picture in picture, and I don't know how to do a hardware level of PIP (don't need it for now anyway)

And yes, due to the difference in resolution I have done lots of lots of window stretching.

No portrait landscape portrait mode... the one you supposedly use.

 

[droopyRO]

Well, if you worry about 40W difference at idle. You should not choose a 7900XT or RTX3090 as those will use way more power while gaming than a RTX4070 or other sub 200W cards. Use an app to calculate your power price monthly, but here in Romania, 40W an hour used 24 hours a day for a month is equal to about 9$/month. If you turn off your PC or put it to sleep mode, the price difference will drop more.

 

[Assimilator]

4K@150 is 4090 or 7900XTX territory IMO, so you're probably gonna be disappointed unless you go with either of those options.

There's no official timeframe on the SUPER release - rumours say Jan which would make sense to clear out non-SUPER stock during BF and Xmas, but whenever they do launch we'll almost certainly see a rebalancing of GPU prices across the board. So you might be able to pickup e.g. a 4070 Ti SUPER for what a 4070 Ti currently costs, or a 4080 if SUPER drops it to under the $1k mark you're looking at.

 

[Todestrieb]

No portrait landscape portrait mode... the one you supposedly use.

Aah... still not sure if this is what you asked, but if my guess is right...
Just go to desktop -> (right click) -> display settings -> (pick the monitor) -> there should be something like "display orientation". I rotated the 1080p displays.

There is something below that says something like "stretch desktop".

I'm on a non-English version (Chinese Traditional, to be exact) of Windows 10, but you can get the idea.

 

[Ferrum Master]

Aah... still not sure if this is what you asked, but if my guess is right...
Just go to desktop -> (right click) -> display settings -> (pick the monitor) -> there should be something like "display orientation". I rotated the 1080p displays.

There is something below that says something like "stretch desktop".

I'm on a non-English version (Chinese Traditional, to be exact) of Windows 10, but you can get the idea.

No. That's just windows.

I mean a legacy functionality that is dropped. You make a single uniform screen with compensations to game across all screens. Both companies are being idiots in this department and gimped support for mixed portrait landscape setups.

 

[tabascosauz]

I recently have my taste on 4K resolution, and it pushed my 3070 way beyond its limit. (although I can put my blame to incompetent game developers that can't manage VRAM even on 1080p.)
And because it's near the 11.11 sale on Taobao, I got a bunch of (not perfect) choices.
No preference on the N or A argument. I have some good and bad experiences on both sides recently (3070 and 5700XT). And I don't quite care about great RT performance and DLSS related features.

The choices are:
1. 7900XT. The day 1 review here on the reference model has it's idle power consumption at a ridonculously high level of 85W, while the review of Sapphire Pulse 7900XT, published a few months later, says it's around 40W (which is still high, but a lot more acceptable to me). As my computer is going 24/7 even when I'm not gaming, a stupidly high idle power consumption is...not preferable. My wacky monitor combination (4K150Hz, 1080p 144Hz, 1080p 60Hz) doesn't help the matter.
Did AMD completely sorted out the idle power consumption on multiple monitors? If so, I'm very likely to just buy it.

2. 7900GRE. I thought it was just a overclocked 7800XT (which has a reasonable idle power consumption), but apparently it's a more cut-down 7900XT. I would doubt that it won't do better as my main concern against 7900XT is idle power consumption.

3. 4080 after super launch. Not going to buy it now unless someone points a gun at me. In an slightly better world where it is USD$999 equivalent, I would have at least seriously thought about it.

4. 4070Ti. But VRAM though.

4. Wait until used 3090 drops to USD$650 equivalent. It probably has once dropped to such low, probably not. It has gone up again anyway. And there is the transient issue to go against this choice.

5. Wait until the super launch (even if I'm going to buy 7900XT). The 4070TiSuper is interesting. Maybe I can get a better deal for 7900XT. Maybe not. Maybe 4080 will suddenly become an irresistable deal. And I can wait it out, even though my PC, as it is, is a bit annoying.

I would like someone to wise me up and calm me down before I push the buy button.

Current PC configuration is as profile.

EDIT: and I'm kinda sorry for another should I buy thread.

The Radeon multi monitor power slowly improves over time as they manually vet more monitor setups for lower VRAM clock. Should be something like 20W or so for most people nowadays, not a problem anymore.

But for reference, if for some reason you really care a lot about idle power, 4070 Ti should still idle a bit lower - the way the power rails work on the chiplet packaging makes 20W kinda a minimum floor for Navi31. 4070Ti should be able to hit about 10W on run of the mill multi monitor setups, and sub-10W (closer to 5W) for single monitor.

Yes, GeForce has a long history of generally behaving better, but regardless of brand, multi monitor idle power is something you can only see for yourself. Reviews can't shed much light unless they use the literal exact same display setup.

However........for 3 monitors that are also a mix of refresh rates, I wouldn't be so sure if it will be 20W. A lot of the driver work in the past few months on idle power focuses on optimizing monitor setups around high refresh 1440p panels. Even on 4070 Ti, I wouldn't be surprised if your monitor config requires an extra step up in VRAM power state (I feel pretty confident it would be around the 15-40W mark), though it should not exceed 40W even worst case.

80-90W idle on 7900XT just means that it's stuck at max VRAM clock (2500) because it refuses to run idle clock. 40W idle would mean that AMD has finally decided to introduce a middle ground power state that is somewhere in between. On a bigger cooler, 40W might still run fanless.

 

[Assimilator]

@Todestrieb out of interest, what's your current multi-monitor idle power consumption on your 3070?

 

[Todestrieb]

No. That's just windows.

I mean a legacy functionality that is dropped. You make a single uniform screen with compensations to game across all screens. Both companies are being idiots in this department and gimped support for mixed portrait landscape setups.

I was too poor to use multiple monitors back in those days, and my setup is too wacky that I don't think it will work... but anyway.

Well, if you worry about 40W difference at idle. You should not choose a 7900XT or RTX3090 as those will use way more power while gaming than a RTX4070 or other sub 200W cards. Use an app to calculate your power price monthly, but here in Romania, 40W an hour used 24 hours a day for a month is equal to about 9$/month. If you turn off your PC or put it to sleep mode, the price difference will drop more.

40W is not a deal breaker. 80W is (was).

4K@150 is 4090 or 7900XTX territory IMO, so you're probably gonna be disappointed unless you go with either of those options.

There's no official timeframe on the SUPER release - rumours say Jan which would make sense to clear out non-SUPER stock during BF and Xmas, but whenever they do launch we'll almost certainly see a rebalancing of GPU prices across the board. So you might be able to pickup e.g. a 4070 Ti SUPER for what a 4070 Ti currently costs, or a 4080 if SUPER drops it to under the $1k mark you're looking at.

That made me to reconsider 7900XTX, although it is already in the "Oh I really don't want to spend that much..." range. Although having a 4K150Hz monitor doesn't mean I must push that high. I'm completely fine with around 60~100fps, and the first card I considered was 7800XT. Then I talked myself into spending 2 steps higher.
Now, will the super launch greatly affects the prices on AMD side though?

 

[tabascosauz]

40W is not a deal breaker. 80W is (was).

Pre-Ada, on a wacky setup like yours, you might regularly expect to see 40W anyway from a RTX 20 or 30 series card. So 40W is really not bad in the grand scheme of things. On the shitty reference cooler 7900XT, video playback was around 40W ish, and it still stayed fanless about half the time so I have no doubt Pulse would be better.

But no promises that you won't see 2500MHz VRAM.

 

[Todestrieb]

@Todestrieb out of interest, what's your current multi-monitor idle power consumption on your 3070?

~37W according to Afterburner. Higher than what I expected.
40W idle on a newer bigger card is completely fine then.

And now I sort of accepted that on my setup a really high idle power is inevitable if I got unlucky.

 

[droopyRO]

If electrical power is so expensive where you live, you should get a watt meter https://www.amazon.com/s?k=watt+met...fix=watt+me,aps,236&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_1_7 and monitor the power draw at the wall outlet. Then you can start saving power by making choices, using sleep mode, getting power buttons for your extension cords etc.

 

[Assimilator]

If electrical power is so expensive where you live, you should get a watt meter https://www.amazon.com/s?k=watt+meter&crid=23I1W09J4SO7R&sprefix=watt+me,aps,236&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_1_7 and monitor the power draw at the wall outlet. Then you can start saving power by making choices, using sleep mode, getting power buttons for your extension cords etc.

This has nothing to do with electricity costs.

 

[droopyRO]

If so, it's a nothing burger, it won't overheat your room neither will you go broke for paying a few USD each month on the elctricity bill.

 

[Vayra86]

Yes I know, but the only thing that scares me from the 7900XT is the 85W idle power consumption from the day one review.
If it is on the 40W range like on the later reviews (...or there is a workaround to get to that range) I would be fine about it.

Its in the 40W range or below, the clocks at low power have improved too, and substantially at that. Memory clocks back properly now and more in tune with core clock power states. That's probably where the fix is at, too. Earlier, the memory would not clock back as readily. I've seen 40W on my setup too, which really is high.

I'm seeing 12-20W on my 3440x1440 panel at 144hz on the desktop now. Not using any power saving feature like Radeon Chill.
And that's on custom UV/OC settings with a +15% power target, you can do a few watts less if you go -10%. Proof below. Fun fact: with this setup my ingame performance is at stock level, but the card uses a max of 250W instead of 315W. VRAM ticks at 2600, didn't put that in screenshot its just under here.

If you're still on the fence for this card... I'm slightly biased of course, but its damn good. Rock solid, everything just runs, no need to get every driver either. Past card was a GTX 1080 I ran for 6 years. I can't say RDNA3 is any less solid than that, and that's saying a lot. The 1080 was honestly the best most trusty GPU I've ever had. 7900XT might beat it - its on that trajectory, 5,5 years to go

Here's a bit of logging while clicking around, dragging windows, etc.
To my surprise we can go sub 10W now? Okay!

That made me to reconsider 7900XTX, although it is already in the "Oh I really don't want to spend that much..." range. Although having a 4K150Hz monitor doesn't mean I must push that high. I'm completely fine with around 60~100fps, and the first card I considered was 7800XT. Then I talked myself into spending 2 steps higher.
Now, will the super launch greatly affects the prices on AMD side though?

I see you are running your rig in a Phanteks P600S.
Is that the high airflow version? If NOT - get the 7900XT. Or you will be spending more on case cooling.

You can see my specs. We have a nearly identical case cooling setup but the Define is somewhat bigger on the inside, airflow wise I think the Define is marginally better or similar too; I had more luck with 2x 140mm front intake in my Fractal Define R4 btw, I switched out 3x SilentWings 120 for two 140mm Fractal fans. They move more air, it seems. When I ran the 7900XT at 315W (stock), the most demanding titles would put the hotspot temp over 100C. I run it at 250W now and temps look a lot better.

So if you put a 7900XTX in there, you'll likely have to either cut down on wattage too or improve your case/cooling, which means losing some % of perf, because its board power is even higher.

the way the power rails work on the chiplet packaging makes 20W kinda a minimum floor for Navi31.

I'm not sure the jury is out on that statement yet when I see below 10W here.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

No. .

 

[alwayssts]

4K@150 is 4090 or 7900XTX territory IMO, so you're probably gonna be disappointed unless you go with either of those options.

There's no official timeframe on the SUPER release - rumours say Jan which would make sense to clear out non-SUPER stock during BF and Xmas, but whenever they do launch we'll almost certainly see a rebalancing of GPU prices across the board. So you might be able to pickup e.g. a 4070 Ti SUPER for what a 4070 Ti currently costs, or a 4080 if SUPER drops it to under the $1k mark you're looking at.

Yeah, that's the big Q in my mind. Does nVIDIA play it sensible and price 4070ti against something like a 7900xt, with then 4080 slightly higher and 4080 Ti/super ~$1000 (which is founded in their history; a late ~$1000 Ti card). Or do they do what ever-increasingly appears possible and price 4070 Ti 16GB at ~$800, 4080 at a grand, and 4080 Ti $1200?

Could go either way, depending upon if 4090 is replaced or if a 4090 Ti is placed above it ($2000?), which is bananas to me (2x perf for ~4x price), but it's all relative to someone's sitch.

In my personal opinion, nVIDIA is going to have a really tough time selling their current price divide of AD104/103 because of increased competition from AMD and even potentially Intel in that middle-ground space. That said, the "mindshare/$™" of nvidia is roughly +30% imho, as Tom @ MLID often agrees. That means if AMD releases a card at ~$600, the nvidia part may in-fact be ~$800.

As I've said before, it really matters a whole very much lot how public perception is at that time. If AMD (and potentially Intel) make up lost ground, 4070 Ti (et al) will be cheaper. If not, it/they probably won't be.

This is why I push the reasoning, not value, of what AMD does (raw compute being one notch higher per market, higher framebuffer that adds to potential boilerplate longevity vs 4070 Ti). It's not that I don't appreciate nVIDIA's features, it's that I want people to realize they are a choice wrt perks in current titles at the cost of that longevity; they won't age well. If that's your jam (you want playable 1440p, really high-end 1080p for RIGHT NOW, buy a 4070 ti), awesome. If you want the compute (which is increasingly being used for the equivalent of nVIDIA's fixed-function hw)/buffer of 4080 for wayyy less, buy a 7900xt. If you want what 4070 Ti should have been (16GB for >1080p longevity), buy a 7800xt. They're for two different kinds of consumers, but the value should not be as lopsided as it is and truly is this way because people are generally short-sighted/uninformed/mezmorized by nVIDIA's marketing (until the next product launch and they're left in the cold, complain about it, and then buy the card nvidia wants them to upgrade to in order to maintain that level of perf). It's only with educating people on these realities that perception changes and we bring nVIDIA's pricing down to earth. It's not about being any kind of fanboy of a company, it's about wanting better prices/choices for everyone and people realizing what each purchase means; where it fits with their (short or long-term) goals. Like I said, I want to minimize the people that are pissed when their $800 4070 ti won't play a future game at cranked 1440p60, or any kind of decent upscaled 4k resolution. If they're cool with 1440p DLSS Quality (960p) or 4k performance (1080p) for $800 because of comparative DLSS quality (at each res) or RT features that allow higher quality at a lower rez (and that will age badly as newer archs launch with improved capability per tier), that's wonderful. When 7900xt is priced less and will sustain real higher resolutions (1440p/decent 4k upscaling) much longer on the whole, I am not, and don't think most people should be, but that's their choice. Across the stack, now and (conceivably) forever.

As for 4k150...Ooof. It totally matters what games you play and what (framerate/settings) you think is acceptable, but when you think of something like Alan Wake 2, I imagine the goal for something like a 4090 Ti (142 SM) will be 4k balanced (1270sp DLSS upscaled) at 120fps, and that's without any RT/PT goodies. I would perhaps look at relative performance of other cards and then decide what you think is acceptable.

As I've said before, I'm shooting for 4k60 FSR/DLSS balanced(/Quality; 1440p) across new/upcoming titles over the next 4'ish years with dialed-up [non-nvidia specific] settings, which I *think* will be mostly achievable (especially if you overclock) with 7900xt (currently approx $700 sometimes), 4070 Ti 16GB ($? in Q1/2?), or Navi 4 (which I think will be ~$600 Q1/2).

 

[Todestrieb]

Well, ridiculous numbers are ridiculous, and I don't want to waste that ridiculous amount of electricity no matter the cost...Though I totally forgot that switches on extension cords is a thing.

---

@Varya86 You got a single monitor setup, so it's probably not relevant to my setup (3 monitor with different resolution and refresh rate). That said, after that short discussion before I'm going to accept whatever 7900XT(X) is going to throw at me and hope it is on the ~40W range, if I'm really going to buy one.
The Phanteks P600S is the one that comes with removable front and top covers with noise deadening surface. I'm currently running with only the top cover (front cover is open), and the whole setup is almost completely silent after I put the good fans inside and a little bit of undervolting. The 3070 I'm using is on the cheap side, is now pulling 185W at most on everything I play, and it should never go above 75C ,prolly not 70C. I would imagine the 7900XTX would be fine temperature-wise if I compromise a little bit on noise.

---

Considering that the only demanding genres I play is racing simcades, I don't foresee anything as stupidly demanding as Alan Wake 2 in near future. What I want now is something that can do native 4K at >>60fps for now with everything high w/o RT. Not even the 4090 can do native 4K@150fps reliably, I suppose. 7900XT(X) is likely the best option below USD$1000 equivalent while doing well enough.

On 4K native the current setup I have doesn't do well in some courses in Forza Motorsport 8 (Medium texture, high for everything else except no RT, sometimes < 30fps in races) and The Crew Motorfest (frequently run out of VRAM no matter the settings, not very smooth even when it is working). That compromising on texture or lots of other details, or weaksauce optimization probably is what prompted me to seriously consider upgrades. And yes I know that FM8 currently doesn't like 7900XTX. And the DLSS/DLAA on FM8 is annoyingly broken, and Motorfest can't do DLSS/FSR and can only do resolution scaling with mediocre results, which forces me to go native.

Edit: getting rid of a emoji auto-conversion.

 

[Toothless]

I'll just toss in that running 3440x1440 144hz, and two 1080/60 panels my 7900xtx sits at around 20w or less idle. 6950XT did about the same.