Power Consumption
Since AMD is claiming that the Radeon Pro W5700 is more power-efficient than previous models, we wanted to test this, so we set the VRMark Cyan Room test running as a loop, then measured total system power consumption. We also tested the system at idle, with nothing running.
When idle, the system draws 79W, and the AMD Radeon WX 8200 is the most thirsty, consuming 417.5W at its peak. The W5700 consumes 14 per cent less peak power, and since it is getting more work done as well (with a 24 per cent higher score), it's much more efficient than the previous model. The most miserly is the WX 7100, drawing just 235W, but it also has a VRMark score of less than half. The NVIDIA Quadro RTX 4000 is the most efficient, posting a 1 per cent lower score than the W5700, but consuming 22 per cent less power to do so. So whilst the W5700 is much more efficient than previous AMD generations, it's not quite competing with NVIDIA in this respect yet.
Temperature
We also checked the temperature of each card before we began the VRMark loops, and then during once it had settled to a constant value.
Here, AMD does beat NVIDIA comfortably, with both the Radeon Pro WX 8200 and W5700 idling around 29-31C, whilst not breaking too much of a sweat at full pelt with 75C. The WX 7100 is the least able to cope with the increased load, reaching 90C and idling at a higher 42C, whilst the NVIDIA Quadro RTX 4000 also hits a hotter 84C under load.