The Radeon RX 480 features a TDP rating of 150 watts, which is pretty low compared to the R9 390, for example. However, the GTX 1070 also has a 150 watt TDP rating and the GTX 960 is rated at 120 watts, so I was keen to see what kind of consumption we would see from our test system when running the RX 480.
So here we see when playing The Witcher 3 that the RX 480 consumed the same amount of power as the GTX 970 and only slightly less than the GTX 1070. It also used slightly more than the R9 380 and quite a bit more than the GTX 960. I’m not sure how I feel about this result.
This time when testing with Black Ops III we see that the RX 480 consumes a similar amount of power as the GTX 1070 and slightly more than the R9 380.
Interestingly, in Just Cause 3 the RX 480 consumed more power than the GTX 1070 and slightly less than the GTX 970. Given that it was on average 34% slower than the GTX 1070, the fact that it uses a similar level of power is disappointing.