My AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT has had unusually loud, intermittent fan noise for the past year or two, even when the computer is idle, browsing with about five tabs open, or playing a movie. In AMD Adrenalin, I'm seeing roughly 2,487 MHz GPU clock speed, low GPU utilization, and memory temperatures around 72°C. The clock speed seems close to the card's maximum, so I'm wondering whether that is abnormal during light use and whether it could be causing the fans to ramp up so often. After leaving the computer on for about an hour without changing anything, the clock speed later dropped to around 100–400 MHz and the temperature fell to 65°C.
1 Answer
The clock speed by itself doesn’t tell you how hard the card is working. Check the actual power draw instead, since that gives a better indication of whether the GPU is really under load. AMD Adrenalin should show a power or board-power metric in its performance monitoring section; if it isn’t visible, enable that metric in the monitoring settings. Browsers, video playback, high-refresh displays, or multiple monitors can sometimes keep GPU clocks elevated without producing much utilization.
I wasn’t sure where to find power usage in Adrenalin, but I’ll enable the board-power metric and compare it while browsing and when the fans ramp up.