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600 watts? That's one bar of a two-bar electric fire; in my youth, that two-bar fire was the only thing keeping some families warm. I mean, that power all gets

600 watts? That's one bar of a two-bar electric fire; in my youth, that two-bar fire was the only thing keeping some families warm. I mean, that power all gets turned into heat anyway in the end; so sure, if you need more heating, forget the two-bar fire, and buy a graphics controller instead - playing games with the two-bar fire isn't a good plan. I don't get why they can't make efficient GPUs. I mean, I do get that graphics depends on computation, and that all computation has an intrinsic minimum energy cost; but half a killowatt, to make a moving picture? That's more than the power supply for my gaming rig (which I retired, because the fan noise was excessive).

MrBuddyCasino 5y ago
> I don't get why they can't make efficient GPUs They do make efficient GPUs, see smartphones. Even current desktop cards are efficient considering their computational power, but they are increasingly tuned to run with higher power budgets. Turns out people care more about FPS than power consumption I guess? Also consider that winning the performance crown has a halo effect for the rest of the portfolio, so the performance / high-end models are tuned towards that.
sp332 5y ago
GPUs are efficient. That's why (some) people get benefits from throwing lots of power at them. If there were a smaller difference between a 200W part and a 300W part, fewer people would upgrade.
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  I do appreciate that! It just seems seriously counter-intuitive to claim that spending 600W to put a moving colour picture on a screen the size of a bed-pillow counts as "efficient". [Edit: obviously it doesn't take 600W to play back an HD movie - the energy is being spent on game computations, or hashing, or something like that]
metalliqaz 5y ago
I agree it is a little out of control. Some may marvel at the incredible power available to consumers now, but I've been watching with disappointment at how each new generation is only very slightly better in the performance per watt metric. Most of the new compute power is coming from increased energy draw. In an energy-conscious environment it's quite hard to justify.

MrBuddyCasino 5y ago

> I don't get why they can't make efficient GPUs They do make efficient GPUs, see smartphones. Even current desktop cards are efficient considering their computational power, but they are increasingly tuned to run with higher power budgets. Turns out people care more about FPS than power consumption I guess? Also consider that winning the performance crown has a halo effect for the rest of the portfolio, so the performance / high-end models are tuned towards that.

sp332 5y ago

GPUs are efficient. That's why (some) people get benefits from throwing lots of power at them. If there were a smaller difference between a 200W part and a 300W part, fewer people would upgrade.

denton-scratch 5y ago
I do appreciate that! It just seems seriously counter-intuitive to claim that spending 600W to put a moving colour picture on a screen the size of a bed-pillow counts as "efficient". [Edit: obviously it doesn't take 600W to play back an HD movie - the energy is being spent on game computations, or hashing, or something like that]

metalliqaz 5y ago

I agree it is a little out of control. Some may marvel at the incredible power available to consumers now, but I've been watching with disappointment at how each new generation is only very slightly better in the performance per watt metric. Most of the new compute power is coming from increased energy draw. In an energy-conscious environment it's quite hard to justify.