AMD's latest drivers reduce power consumption, but not for gaming

AMD's latest drivers greatly reduce power consumption for some of the latest RX 6000-series GPUs.



What you need to know


The latest AMD driver appears to significantly reduce power consumption for Radeon RX 6000-series GPUs.
The reduction in power consumption only happens in certain non-gaming scenarios.
Idle power consumption drops as much as 72% on certain RX 6000-series GPUs.


AMD recently released the Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.4.1 driver update. That updated drivers bring several significant features, such as the ability to stream games between PCs. While those features are impressive, the new drivers appear to bring one more important change that AMD didn't mention; greatly reduced power consumption. According to TechPowerUp, Radeon RX 6000-series GPUs use significantly less power in non-gaming scenarios following the update.

The RX 6700 XT, RX 6800, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6900 XT were tested by TechPowerUP. The RX 6800, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6900 XT showed reductions in idle po...