AMD Adrenalin 21.4.1 drivers with reduced power consumption
A week after AMD introduced its ‘wonder driver’ TechPowerUP have discovered that the graphics driver actually improves power consumption in certain states.
The 21.4.1 driver introduced certain upgrades to the Radeon Software. AMD has finally figured out that rather than keep adding features to an already large stack of software, it would make sense to offer other options to end-users, such as a minimal install option. The ability to install the GPU driver without bundled Radeon Software is not the only new feature of the 21.4.1 driver. AMD also launched a new version of AMD Link software that can now be installed on the Windows operating system and stream 4K/144fps content directly from the RDNA2 equipped system to ultra-low-power notebooks, tablets, and phones.
What AMD forgot to advertise, but was eventually discovered by TechPowerUp, is that the 21.4.1 driver greatly improves the power consumption of Radeon RX 6800+ graphics card in certain scenarios. Namely, idle power, as well as media playback, see a great improvement in comparison to March 21.3.2 driver. As noted by TPU, the Radeon RX 6700 XT already had great power consumption numbers in contrast to Navi 21 based RX 6800, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6900 XT. With the 21.4.1 driver, Navi 21 based models see better power consumption figures, compared to older drivers.
A media playback power consumption decrease from 50 to 35W is still not as good as NVIDIA’s RTX 3070 of 18W or RTX 3080 of 27W, but the difference is not as significant as it was before.
AMD Adrenalin 21.4.1 Power Consumption, Source: TechPowerUP
Source: TechPowerUP
