According to an updated report by ComputerBase, AMD reportedly removed performance-per-watt graphs from its recent RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT graphics card presentations that compared the cards to Nvidia's RTX 4090. AMD's footnotes from November 15th's performance presentation state there was supposed to be a performance-per-watt slide "RX-841" for the RX 7900 XTX, but AMD never presented it.
To be more specific, AMD was initially supposed to present a performance-per-watt slide of its RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT compared to Nvidia's very power-hungry GeForce RTX 4090 based on publicly disclosed peak power consumption values (TBP/TGP). However, because this slide was never shown and AMD accidentally left this footnote in its presentation, the decision to exclude the result was apparently made at the very last minute.
We don't have any confirmation as to why AMD decided to remove this slide, and there could be several reasons for the omission. While Nvidia's 40-series cards consume prodigious amounts of energy, the new architecture is more power efficient than its predecessors. Additionally, the cards often consume far less energy during gaming and don't consume the full TGP.
For instance, our review of the RTX 4080 found the card's performance-per-watt to be incredibly good. It outperformed Nvidia's power-sucking RTX 3090 Ti while consuming far less power during gaming than its maximum 320W TGP allows. In fact, according to our tests, the RTX 4080 Founders Edition consumed just 221W at 1080p. Furthermore, the only workload we found that would max out the RTX 4080's power budget was Furmark combined with a GPU overclock.
Nvidia also sought to highlight the 4080's efficiency with its own article on the same subject, (opens in new tab) stating the RTX 4080 could hit just 251W of power consumption under average gaming conditions (albeit at 1440p resolution) and calling out the fact that its GPUs don't pull the full TGP during gaming. This is an impressive feat considering Nvidia's previous generation RTX 3090 Ti consumes significantly more power than the RTX 3080 at 398W under typical gaming workloads, according to Nvidia's article. This accounts for a 37% power reduction for the RTX 4080, and that's not even considering the 4080's slightly faster gaming performance.
It's logical to expect AMD's forthcoming RDNA 3 GPUs to be power efficient and easily rival or beat the RTX 4090. However, as with all presentations, AMD will want to ensure that it has a healthy enough lead to highlight the advantages of its architecture. Maybe the comparison didn't work out quite as favorably as it expected. Conversely, AMD may have become aware that comparing the two cards based on total power ratings alone might not be the best approach, as the RTX 4090 likely doesn't pull its full TGP during gaming.
We'll likely never know why AMD pulled the comparison, but one thing is for sure — it is missing from the deck.
