PowerColor’s “Next-Gen” AMD Radeon GPUs To Work With NPUs To Reduce Power Consumption While Gaming

PowerColor's "Next-Gen" AMD Radeon GPUs To Work With NPUs To Reduce Power Consumption While Gaming 1

PowerColor teased a demo of its upcoming AMD Radeon RX GPUs that would utilize the power of NPUs to lower power consumption while gaming.

The information regarding PowerColor's new tech comes from @Harukaze5719 (via QuasarZone). As per the details, it looks like PowerColor is preparing to introduce some new technologies with next-gen AMD Radeon RX graphics cards.

PowerColor integrated NPU to Radeon GPU. (Still developing)Through AI, they claim power consumption deceased 22%. More saved than AMD Power Saving. pic.twitter.com/9I8iEikotD

— 포시포시 (@harukaze5719) June 7, 2024

The tech was showcased at PowerColor's Computex booth under their "Edge AI" lineup and showcases how NPUs can be harnessed to make graphics cards more efficient. For its demo, PowerColor used an AMD Radeon RX graphics card which ran two games, Cyberpunk 2077 and Final Fantasy XV. These games were tested at their default settings, with AMD's own Power Saving mode, and with the new NPU AI tech using a prototype Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics card.

At default, the AMD Radeon RX GPU consumed 263.2W in Cyberpunk 2077 and 338.6W in Final Fantasy XV. With AMD's power saving mode, the graphics card sees a drastic reduction down to 214.5W (-18.5%) and 271.4W (-19.8%), respectively. But with the new NPU AI tech, you can get even more savings. The power consumption dropped to 205.3W (-22.0%) and 262.9W (-22.4%) in the respective games with the new tech-enabled.

PowerColor NPU ECO Mode Tech Demo In Cyberpunk 2077 / Final Fantasy XV on 7900 XTX:

Without Power Saving: 263.2W / 338.6W

With Power Saving (AMD): 214.5W / 271.4W

With Power Saving (NPU): 205.3W / 262.9W

This new AI-enhanced ECO mode reduces power consumption by 22% while gaming while offering slightly lower performance. It is still an upgrade over the AMD ECO mode settings and this is just an early demo that made use of an external NPU so maybe we could see better optimization in terms of performance in the final version of this technology.

PowerColor says that the technology works by adding its own GUI interface as a middleman that connects the AMD Radeon RX GPU with an NPU featured on the PC. The NPU then offloads the burden from the VRMs and also the MOSFETs, thus resulting in these power savings and also lower temperatures. AMD is currently the only chipmaker that's offering a desktop-tier NPU solution with its Ryzen 8000G APUs so it looks like we may see a variety of other NPU-infused options to go along with these new tech capabilities.

It isn't clear if the technology is only specific to PowerColor GPUs or if it will be coming across the entire AMD Radeon RX family. AMD's RDNA 4 GPUs are expected to feature the new RDNA 4 graphics architecture & we have heard rumors about AMD going heavy on the AI bandwagon with its next-gen Radeon RX graphics cards.

PowerColor also states that since AMD won't have RDNA 4 ready for launch within this year, it might launch a version of its Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics card with this tech until the newer GPUs come out. This might be PowerColor just showing us what the future holds for the gaming market but it is a cool thing to see and we would love to see the power-saving feature displayed in a more detailed demonstration.

News Sources: Tweakers, ITMedia