AMD will be ramping up power levels with its RDNA 3 graphics cards, according to an interview with a Team Red executive.
Tom’s devices (Opens in a new tab) He spoke to Sam Naffziger, senior vice president and corporate associate and product technology engineer at AMD, on next-generation GPUs (presumably the RX 7000) on topics that included power consumption.
Naffziger notes that the demand for better gaming (and computation) performance is accelerating, while process technology improvements are “dramatically” slowing at the same time, meaning: “Power levels will continue to rise. Now, we have a multi-year roadmap for very significant efficiency improvements to offset That curve, but the trend is there.”
The exec once again confirmed that with RDNA 3, AMD is expected to achieve a significant jump in performance per watt of up to 50% (or more) over current RDNA 2 graphics cards – a significant gain in efficiency and one comparable to the advances from RDNA to RDNA 2.
“Performance is king, but even if our designs are more energy efficient, it doesn’t mean you’re not raising power levels if the competition is doing the same. They’re just going to have to push them a lot higher than we’re going to,” Navziger explained.
In other words, Nvidia is pushing hard with power consumption to get more raw performance, which means AMD has to do the same to play catch-up — so we can expect more power-hungry cards this time around with the RX 7000 range, sure. But the main point that Naffziger makes, of course, is that Nvidia will have to run at much higher power, with less efficiency achieved with next-generation Lovelace (RTX 4000) cards (or that’s the expectation – not just here).
Analysis: The Cost of Keeping Up with Lovelace
Therefore, it appears that even higher levels of power usage (or TBPs) can be expected from both AMD and Nvidia with next-generation graphics cards, and that’s something the rumors have long persisted.
For AMD, we’ve seen various bits of speculation about power consumption, including that the flagship RDNA 3 (Navi 31) could reach around 375 watts, or maybe even higher, perhaps as high as 450 watts. Although a more recent leak indicates that we are looking at the lower end of this scale.
Meanwhile, in regards to Nvidia’s power usage, Grapevine has had some troubling theories for some time, including speculation about the RTX 4090 pushing up to 600W – although 450W was another suggested figure that is more plausible.
It’s clear enough that the rumor mill is broadly painting the same picture that Naffziger painted in this interview, but the concern is that the hint here might point to something more energy-hungry from Team Red in an effort to match Nvidia’s pedal-to-metal stance on power and performance.
Ultimately, if AMD can achieve significantly better efficiency, which is how Team Red is already touting RDNA 3 aggressively against the RTX 4000, this could have more of an impact on the GPU buying decision than it has in the past – given the cost of Electricity these days, and generally spiraling electricity bills.
Another potential gain for those looking for higher-quality graphics cards is a potentially better chance of avoiding the risk of upgrading a PSU with an RDNA 3 model, or even allaying concerns about a smaller or poorly-cooled case failing. Dealing on the thermal front. But let’s not jump to any conclusions yet, of course…
Via VideoCardz (Opens in a new tab)