RX 7900 XTX Power Consumption: How Much Power Does The RX 7900 XTX Use?
The Radeon RX 7900 XTX is AMDs best GPU yet, being able to produce a performance on par with the RTX 4090. Allowing for high-quality ray tracing, and 4k gameplay, all at a very high frame rate.
One thing that concerns many people is with the increase in performance comes an increase in power consumption. However, in Nvidia’s case, they have done a great job of decreasing the power draw of their GPUs and still being able to provide the performance promised.
So, how does AMDs top-tier GPU compare? That’s what you will find out today.
How Many Watts Does the RX 7900 XTX Use?
With a TGP/TDP of 355 Watts, the RX 7900 XTX is a very power-hungry GPU. You will experience an average of 345 watts when gaming, and 28 watts when idle. (Source.)
When looking at the power draw of any GPU, the manufacturer provides a TGP or TDP of the base power and wattage that the GPU will use.
However, you should know that every GPU is different, and each one will have there own individual wattage, that’s why it’s good to not only look at the TGP of that specific model but also at the average power draw of the GPUs in certain tasks.
We will look at:
- Idle Power Consumption
- Multi-monitor power consumption
- Media Playback
- Gaming wattage
- Peak Maximum Wattage
Starting off, the RX 7900 XTX has an idle power consumption of 28 watts, and once you add a second monitor to the mix it will increase to around 48 watts.
As you can see even when idle this GPUs power draw is very high.
When you use your computer for media playback such as watching Youtube videos, Netflix, etc, you can expect the RX 7900 XTX to produce around 48 watts of power. This is the same as its multi-monitor usage.
When gaming you can expect these numbers to get even higher.
You can expect to see an average power draw of around 345 watts when gaming.
Another thing that you should know with graphics cards is that you can actually surpass the TGP which is the base power consumption it’s supposed to have.
However, when you introduce your GPU to overclocking, it will surpass not only its advertised performance but also its power draw.
More performance = more power.
For this reason, if you are really into overclocking, or want to learn how to do some minor overclocking you should make sure you have an upgraded power supply unit that’s passed the recommended wattage. (Which we will explain later.)
When overclocked you can expect the RX 7900 XTX to produce around 425 watts, and in certain cases, it can peak passed 500 watts for a few seconds.
When looking at a GPU’s power consumption, you want to look at the TGP (Total Graphics Power) because this shows the maximum power draw you will usually get when using your GPU for intensive tasks such as gaming.
You might also hear the phrase “TDP” which can be used interchangeably with TGP. The difference is essential in that TDP is the total power consumption of a component, and TGP is the total power consumption of a GPU specifically.
What Power Supply Do I Need to Use For The RX 7900 XTX?
AMD recommends an 800-watt power supply for the RX 7900 XTX. This much wattage in a PSU will give you some wiggle room just in case you want to overclock your system, or if you want to do any upgrades in the future.
If you have an existing computer and are upgrading your GPU you might also want to consider upgrading your CPU as well because, with a powerful GPU like this one, you don’t want your CPU to bottleneck it and slow it down.
A new CPU will make your computer’s wattage go up as well, which is another thing to look out for.
Not only do you need a power supply unit to support your graphics card, but also you need the power supply to meet the requirements of all the other components inside of your pc.
You should also be wary of the RX 7900 XTX peak wattage as it is an extremely high increase. Even though it’s only for a few seconds it can cause a lot of issues if your PSU can’t support it.
Trust me I know this first hand.
With my first computer, I had a power supply that only met the minimum wattage that was required to run my computer.
After a few months of using my computer, I started to dive into the world of overclocking.
I started by overclocking my GPU than my CPU, etc. Once I started to push the limits of my PC I forgot to factor in one thing.
The more I overclocked the more power my computer would use, and in the end, it exceeded my power supplies max wattage damaging my power supply.
I had to spend an extra $100 on a new power supply that I could’ve avoided in the first place.
So my two cents to you would be to purchase a power supply that is a little higher than recommended even if you don’t want to do any overclocking because you never know if you want to change your mind in the future.
Not to mention you also need to factor in the power consumption of the other components in your PC.
A power-hungry GPU mixed with a power-hungry CPU can use a lot more wattage than what you planned for so be careful.
When purchasing a power supply for your computer you want to keep in mind that every piece of hardware in your system has a power consumption.
If you also want to save on your electricity bill, then you should purchase a power supply that is at least 80 plus Bronze certified, with the best rating being 80 plus Gold certified.
You should read: “How Do Power Supply Ratings Work?”
For this reason, I would recommend the Cooler Master G800 Gold Power Supply,
The reason why I would recommend this PSU specifically is that it is manufactured by Cooler Master which is a trusted brand that is very reliable.
Another reason is that this PSU is 80 Plus Gold Certified, which will save you money on your electricity bill, and it is fully modular.
RX 7900 XTX Power Consumption Compared to Other GPUs
The GPUs power consumption is compared using TGP. It is essential to know and compare your graphics cards to other similar models because it will help you get a grasp on the amount of power your system is going to use.
Here is a comparison of a few graphics cards that are around the performance range of the RX 7900 XTX.
| GPU | TGP |
| RTX 4080 | 320 Watts |
| RTX 4090 | 450 Watts |
| RX 7900 XTX | 355 Watts |
| RX 7900 XT | 315 Watts |
| RX 6900 XT | 300 Watts |
After looking at this table you can see that by just looking at the power consumption of these high-end GPUs the RX 7900 XTX is on the higher side of power consumption.
The only GPU that draws more power than the RX 7900 XTX is Nvidias RTX 4090 with a very high TGP of 450 watts.
That is almost a 100-watt difference between Nvidias best graphics card compared to AMDs best graphics card.
So, the RX 7900 XTX does a pretty good job there.
However, if we take a step back and look at AMDs best GPU model from last year we can see that there is a 55-watt increase from the RX 6900 XT to the RX 7900 XTX.
Of course, we should expect an increase in power draw from year to year but 55 watts is a very big difference.
When we look at the RX 7900 XT we can also see that there is a pretty big difference in wattage moving up to only a slightly better GPU.
Between the RX 7900 XT and the RX 7900 XTX there is a 40 watt difference.
If you want to compare more graphics cards on their power consumption and TGP I have provided a database where you can look at dozens of different GPUs and their power consumption, that way you don’t have to do the research yourself.
Check out the Database.
I have also provided the average power consumption when gaming, as well as the average power consumption when idle, that way you can get a better understanding.
