AMD RX 6900 XT displays superior average power consumption over Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 FE and RTX 3090 FE by up to over 50 W from 1080p to 4K

The AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card has been launched and at a price of US$999 enthusiasts will be expecting a lot of performance and efficiency from this powerful component. The beefy graphics card comes with 16 GB VRAM and typical board power of 300 W. In comparison, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 (US$1,499) comes with 24 GB VRAM and 350 W TDP while the cheaper (US$699) RTX 3080 sports 10 GB VRAM and has a 320 W TDP.

Igor’s Lab has been pushing the RX 6900 XT in a bunch of power consumption comparison tests and the AMD card has come out smelling like roses. The board was tested with and without Smart Access Memory (SAM) enabled, although there was little difference in terms of power efficiency. In the 1080p test, the RX 6900 XT was measured consuming 299.1 W (with SAM) to 299.7 W, which was over 50 W behind the GeForce RTX 3090 on 352.7 W and a good distance behind the RTX 3080 on 328.4 W.

A similar picture was painted over the QHD test and the 4K test. In the latter, the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT devoured 303.5 W to 303.6 W, while the RTX 3080 had an average power consumption here of 330.0 W and the RTX 3090 was over 53 W greedier than the Navi-based board on 356.9 W. So, buyers of the RX 6900 XT can at least expect a power-efficient graphics card when compared to the big rivals in the forms of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090, it’s just a case of trying to find one in stock somewhere.

Buy the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT on Newegg