Considering buying a 9070 XT and underclocking to 9070 levels

[mortoise]

I'm in the market for a new Radeon card, upgrading from my aging 5060.

 

I currently only have a 650W PSU, and I mostly like that my PC doesn't draw a lot of power.

 

I was thinking of getting a 9070 XT and most of the time limiting the maximum power draw to roughly match the 9070, so about 220W rather than 304W. That way if I decide I want the 10% or so extra performance for a particular game (or in the future) then I can get a new PSU and increase the GPU power draw setting, but most of the time I can have a very quiet, cool and efficient card which is Good Enough.

 

I haven't seen much evidence of people doing this. Any reasons not to? I know it's not very wallet-efficient, but that's not a top concern for me.

 

P.S. AMD limited the amount you can reduce the power limit in Linux (which I use), but there are patches floating around which remove that limit, which are default applied on Zen Linux & Bazzite.

[TatamiMatt]

24 minutes ago, mortoise said:

I'm in the market for a new Radeon card, upgrading from my aging 5060.

 

I currently only have a 650W PSU, and I mostly like that my PC doesn't draw a lot of power.

 

I was thinking of getting a 9070 XT and most of the time limiting the maximum power draw to roughly match the 9070, so about 220W rather than 304W. That way if I decide I want the 10% or so extra performance for a particular game (or in the future) then I can get a new PSU and increase the GPU power draw setting, but most of the time I can have a very quiet, cool and efficient card which is Good Enough.

 

I haven't seen much evidence of people doing this. Any reasons not to? I know it's not very wallet-efficient, but that's not a top concern for me.

 

P.S. AMD limited the amount you can reduce the power limit in Linux (which I use), but there are patches floating around which remove that limit, which are default applied on Zen Linux & Bazzite.

What CPU do you have?

[DeerDK]

https://www.pcgameshardware.de/Radeon-RX-9070-XT-Grafikkarte-281023/Tests/Preis-Test-kaufen-Release-Specs-Benchmark-1467270/6/

 

This outlet played around with the powersettings. Look in the bottom of the link, there are two "screendump" where you can adjust the settings, there you can see what you get with a 9070 xt at-30% powerdraw. I think you need to look into undervolting/overclocking to get more fps back, but its a pretty solid beginning

 

[Millios]

3 minutes ago, DeerDK said:

https://www.pcgameshardware.de/Radeon-RX-9070-XT-Grafikkarte-281023/Tests/Preis-Test-kaufen-Release-Specs-Benchmark-1467270/6/

 

This outlet played around with the powersettings. Look in the bottom of the link, there are two "screendump" where you can adjust the settings, there you can see what you get with a 9070 xt at-30% powerdraw. I think you need to look into undervolting/overclocking to get more fps back, but its a pretty solid beginning

 

Depending on how you do it it actually makes it more powerful according to some

Here undervolting actully made it considerably stronger with a -200mV undervolt

[DeerDK]

6 minutes ago, Millios said:

Depending on how you do it it actually makes it more powerful according to some

Here undervolting actully made it considerably stronger with a -200mV undervolt

Jup. The one I linked to was just using the stock -30 percent wattage.

[Salted Spinach]

If you want

57 minutes ago, mortoise said:

...I can have a very quiet, cool and efficient card...

You can get that by undervolting the GPU, which the 9070XT seems to be quite good at based on attempts on YouTube

 

But I think you could be more transparent about the real reason to make this post

59 minutes ago, mortoise said:

I currently only have a 650W PSU, and I mostly like that my PC doesn't draw a lot of power.

Because there is no reason to be afraid of the GPU pulling 300W from a 650W PSU unless you have a very power hungry CPU

[mortoise]

Such a lot of useful replies so fast, thanks!

 

My CPU is a Ryzen 7 3700X, which apparently only pulls 65W, so I guess maybe I could get away with the 7090 XT at full tilt without changing my PSU. I hadn't really considered that, thanks.

 

I'm still a fan of not using loads of power, though, so am still attracted to reducing the power usage. Regardless, I will play around with undervolting too, but limiting the maximum power draw sounds like it will have the biggest effect on power. From the Gamers Nexus review, the 9070 (non-XT) was better frames per watt, so I guess the "sweet spot" for these RDNA 4 cards for efficiency is below what the 9070 XT is running at.

 

Thanks so much for the responses, I feel more confident that this is a good way to go. I'll play around with undervolting & reducing power draw, but am also happy to hear that my PSU should be beefy enough to handle the full POWER of the beast if I want to unleash it, too.

[DeerDK]

3 minutes ago, mortoise said:

Such a lot of useful replies so fast, thanks!

 

My CPU is a Ryzen 7 3700X, which apparently only pulls 65W, so I guess maybe I could get away with the 7090 XT at full tilt without changing my PSU. I hadn't really considered that, thanks.

 

I'm still a fan of not using loads of power, though, so am still attracted to reducing the power usage. Regardless, I will play around with undervolting too, but limiting the maximum power draw sounds like it will have the biggest effect on power. From the Gamers Nexus review, the 9070 (non-XT) was better frames per watt, so I guess the "sweet spot" for these RDNA 4 cards for efficiency is below what the 9070 XT is running at.

 

Thanks so much for the responses, I feel more confident that this is a good way to go. I'll play around with undervolting & reducing power draw, but am also happy to hear that my PSU should be beefy enough to handle the full POWER of the beast if I want to unleash it, too.

If you learn something interesting, playing around, please share. Im in the same mindset as you, but am currently waiting for the prices to drop a bit. As I have a 4070 super that is just a bit too noisy for my taste im not in a big hurry

[mortoise]

This is a good video I just watched which goes more into undervolting and reducing the board power for the 9070 XT, sounds like it works well, and you can reduce by a decent amount of power with only a small performance impact, probably due to AMD pushing extra power to try to beat / match the 5070 Ti on launch. He also mentions that you can reduce the power to 9070 levels, and get slightly better performance than a stock 9070, I guess because of the extra CU cores and better silicon in general, which is very interesting to me - I didn't know that. The actual difference looked pretty minimal from his measurements, though. I'll report back when I eventually pull the trigger on one of these cards; we'll have to wait until a time I feel more irresponsible than normal, but those come around quite often these days

https://youtube.com/watch?v=XldrlEg8mYk

 

[hollyh88]

On 3/20/2025 at 11:01 AM, mortoise said:

I'm in the market for a new Radeon card, upgrading from my aging 5060.

 

I currently only have a 650W PSU, and I mostly like that my PC doesn't draw a lot of power.

 

I was thinking of getting a 9070 XT and most of the time limiting the maximum power draw to roughly match the 9070, so about 220W rather than 304W. That way if I decide I want the 10% or so extra performance for a particular game (or in the future) then I can get a new PSU and increase the GPU power draw setting, but most of the time I can have a very quiet, cool and efficient card which is Good Enough.

 

I haven't seen much evidence of people doing this. Any reasons not to? I know it's not very wallet-efficient, but that's not a top concern for me.

 

P.S. AMD limited the amount you can reduce the power limit in Linux (which I use), but there are patches floating around which remove that limit, which are default applied on Zen Linux & Bazzite.

i would upgrade the psu just in case. ive seen spikes up to 570w even with an undervolt and -5%w. i simply wouldnt say it would be fully save to run it on a 650w even with reducing the power draw. 

[DNooby]

On 3/20/2025 at 7:45 AM, mortoise said:

I'm still a fan of not using loads of power, though, so am still attracted to reducing the power usage. Regardless, I will play around with undervolting too, but limiting the maximum power draw sounds like it will have the biggest effect on power. From the Gamers Nexus review, the 9070 (non-XT) was better frames per watt, so I guess the "sweet spot" for these RDNA 4 cards for efficiency is below what the 9070 XT is running at.

I got the 9070 XT hellhound from Powercolor and run it with an offset of -10% + a stable undervolt of -85
It runs fairly cool and quiet, pulls a max of 285W under full load and runs above stock performance (from when I tested it out of the box )

I did have it at -15% for some time, but it was like 270Wish around that, after running some 3dmark tests I figured I could afford the extra 15W for a nice performance bump

Oh and I have a PSU that shows how much power is being pulled from the wall, and the max I've seen is like 550 while stress testing ( I have a 9800X3D & AIO ). Do note this is wall power so supplied power is a bit lower than that ( between 8-14% less ) and it was before the tweaks

[xAcid9]

You could also reduce the max boost clock to reduce power usage. 

[Mihle]

On 3/25/2025 at 11:22 AM, hollyh88 said:

i would upgrade the psu just in case. ive seen spikes up to 570w even with an undervolt and -5%w. i simply wouldnt say it would be fully save to run it on a 650w even with reducing the power draw. 

On a good PSU, you can have short spikes above what the PSU rated for as long as it's short enough time.

I would just get the GPU and then play around with it to see if it works fine or not.