Despite persistent rumors that like Nvidia's next-generation graphics cards, AMD's planned RDNA 3 GPUs would be super power hungry, that may not actually be the case. Seasonic's power supply recommendation calculator has been updated with a host of next-generation AMD Radeon GPUs, and none of them are said to need any more power than existing RDNA 2 cards.
As it stands, AMD's top RDNA 2 cards, like the 6900XT, and 6950XT demand 300W and 335W respectively, with more mid-range GPUs pulling around 250W, 200W, and less. There have been rumors that RDNA 3 cards could pull more than 500W at the top end, but Seasonic's power calculator says that won't be the case. If accurate, RDNA 3 may not need any more power than RDNA 2.
The recommendation for a top-of-the-line RX 7900XT is for a mere 850W PSU. That's not nothing, but it's not exactly high-end either, especially when Nvidia's Lovelace GPUs are reported to need well over 1,000W for stable use. Recommendations for the 7800XT and 7700XT are less still, suggesting you only need a 750W or 650W PSU when running them with an eight core Ryzen CPU.
Something else of interested hinted by this information is that AMD's new cards may not make use of the new 16-pin PCIE power cable that has found use in Nvidia's recent GPUs.
How do you feel about the next-generation of GPUs as it stands? Are you happy with a huge increase in power draw for added performance, or does efficiency matter in your PC?
