Basics GPUs Graphics Reviews

Making the Radeon RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT more energy-efficient and significantly quieter with the MorePowerTool | Tutorial

Powercolor showed us the way with the Silent-BIOS, today we follow with a tutorial for everyone that is suitable for everyday use: no more BIOS flashing and no more Wattman tricks, but a comprehensible manual that is easy to implement with our free MorePowerTool...

After we’ve completed all the rework, we’re amazed to see that we’ve almost reached the reference card values again and had to iron out all the great factory OC manually to get a more efficient and quiet card. Let’s first take a look at the power consumption of the MSI RX 5700 XT Evoke and be amazed. The approx. 250 Watt TBP for the whole card turned into 202 Watt for the optimized card! Did the original Evoke still look like this…

… the optimized card looks much better! The 180 watts we entered for the GPU alone are also kept clean on average, so that it is a little over 20 watts that are still allocated to the remaining partial voltages, memory and losses. Thus, we save about 50 watts compared to the card in the factory state, which runs out to as much as 80 percent of the initial value!

If there is less waste heat, you can also adjust the fans. I’ve found a practical value of around 1600 rpm in a closed case, which keeps the card cool enough and never lets the GPU temperature rise above the 74 °C stored in the BIOS. For example, if I set 1400 rpm as “Fan Acoustic Limit RPM” and only 1600 rpm for the Throtteling, there would be additional clock jumps, which would express themselves in worse frametime variances.

As far as noise development is concerned, it is now much more moderate. From 44.4 dB(A), which is quite loud, the whole thing drops to only 35.7 dB(A), which is not only bearable, but now also quiet! Well, the motor noises are still there, but the air noises of the rotor blades are history. And it’s even quiet enough to finally hear the voltage regulators again during load changes. This is not loud, but noticeable again, especially in the menus in the game.

Now only the question of the clock rate and finally also the gaming performance has remained open. Let’s first look at the story with the clock rate. I lose an average of 90 to 95 MHz, which corresponds to a loss of a moderate 5 to 6 percent! Since this doesn’t even scale linearly with the gaming performance, you can probably assume a 3 to 4 percent real loss in the end, which you can easily cope with in view of the increase in efficiency and noise reduction.

A counter-test with both settings, i.e. original vs. optimization with the current driver shows that I’m absolutely right with my assessment, because it’s pretty much 3.5 percent!

The percentiles also show no negative peculiarities:

 

The variances of the optimized card are only insignificantly worse than those of the factory OC card, but still better than those of the reference card, which is stuck in the temperature limit and therefore shows clock fluctuations. But I wrote exactly at the top about the clock rate jumps.

Summary and Conclusion

It’s interesting that MSI now also offers a kind of Silent BIOS for flashing on their own homepage after my first feedback to slow down the Evoke a bit. But my version has a small advantage, because it is still quieter. MSI has meanwhile set the value for “Fan Acoustic Limit RPM” to 1500 rpm, but the GPU performance has been left at 190 watts. However, this is a hindrance as the 1600 rpm target is not even reached in the fridge. Having a full 100 rpm more on the fans due to perhaps one percent more performance (if at all) is no gain. On the contrary, it’s annoying.

Everything that the manufacturers themselves can still modify in the BIOS to adapt the cards can also be done with the MorePowerTool. And this is exactly where the advantage is obvious, because on the one hand you don’t have to risk a BIOS to flash and on the other hand you can adapt the card to your individual needs. So a Radeon RX 5700 XT with only 160 watts limit and adjusted Ampere and fan values can still act faster than a RX 5700 @Stock, but can act much more efficient and quieter.

However, if you take a Radeon RX 5700 as your optimization target, you’ll end up in regions where a RX Vega 64 will sink into the ground with shame. Because there is still a lot of savings potential, even if the chips are clearly worse. Is it all worth it? Certainly, because you don’t risk the hardware just once, except for a lot of time invested in tinkering and trying it out. Unless you are too stupid. But that’s almost impossible.

 

And the MSI RX 5700 XT Evoke? All of a sudden we have a small and cuddly ITX card, which doesn’t look bad with RTX Off and doesn’t have to hide any more acoustically. So the card has arrived exactly where I would have liked it to be. Now only the market and prices have to play along better. Well, let’s be surprised…

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About the author

Igor Wallossek

Editor-in-chief and name-giver of igor'sLAB as the content successor of Tom's Hardware Germany, whose license was returned in June 2019 in order to better meet the qualitative demands of web content and challenges of new media such as YouTube with its own channel.

Computer nerd since 1983, audio freak since 1979 and pretty much open to anything with a plug or battery for over 50 years.

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