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It seems like both CPUs and GPUs this generation are going to push the power requirements to absolutely ridiculous heights for very minimal gains in performance

by least 4y ago

It seems like both CPUs and GPUs this generation are going to push the power requirements to absolutely ridiculous heights for very minimal gains in performance. Sure, it doesn't take much work for a tinkerer to modify the settings, reduce voltages, and get something still quite powerful with considerable power savings, but that's the tinkerers. The CPUs and GPUs coming to people out of the box are going to be chugging power. These chips coming in prebuilts from system integrators for the people that just want to get work done are going to be as well. I think Apple is probably too conservative with their power limits on their Mac Studio (maybe that's something they're saving for the Mac Pro) but I'd prefer that to this nonsense being the default.

tester756 4y ago
Are those concerns even reasonable? My CPU runs most of the day at around 5-20% usage And it reaches top usage when I run some relatively new game for like a hour a week at best Thus, the point is: why power usage at highest usage is that important? I'd say power usage for the most common CPU usage is most important for majority of the people (for data center it'd be different)
- KennyBlanken 4y ago
  These sorts of CPUs are probably more likely to be bought by people who use them heavily, rather than sit idle for hours and hours. Obviously there will always be the Whale who surfs the web but has to buy a 13900k, but most people aren't dropping this sort of dough if they don't need the horsepower. I can spend several hours on a weekend night gaming, and my GPU and CPU, depending on the game, are going half to full tilt. Typically ~350W, and that doesn't include my two monitors. When it's not in active use, it's asleep - I rarely leave it idling for more than ~30min before I put it in sleep mode. I'd say it probably spends 25% of its life under load. This and the prior generation I9s use 2-3x the wattage of current generation AMD CPUs...couple that with NVIDIA 4000 series cards hitting 600W and you could have an intel 13900k w/4090 gaming rig using around 1000W, not including PSU efficiency losses or monitor(s). We're talking "you might need a dedicated circuit if you're on 100-120VAC and want anything else on that circuit" territory; it wouldn't surprise me if people start hiring electricians to switch circuits over to 208v.
  - leetcrew 4y ago
    how does gaming for several hours on weekends add up to your PC being at load 25% of it's life? think that through. you'd need to spend 42 hours/week gaming for that to be correct, literally gaming like it's a full-time job. that's not unheard of, but it's not common and it's certainly not healthy.
    - tester756 4y ago
      What? Turning your pc OFF means it's not running You can use PC for 4 hours/week, so 3h gaming per week = 75% That's what I believe s/he meant
bufferoverflow 4y ago
Minimal gains? RTX 4090 is almost double the performance of 3090.
- sliken 4y ago
  For some raytraced games, the rest it's more like 20-30% improvement
- mastax 4y ago
  If you reduce the power target of the RTX4090 to 60% you still get 90% of the performance[0]. This is becoming the norm for new hardware it seems. [0]: https://youtu.be/60yFji_GKak?t=1020 https://youtu.be/60yFji_GKak?t=1020
CodeArtisan 4y ago
Ryzen 7000 has an ECO mode that seems to be quite effective for gaming related work. https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/xp5yj5/eco_mode_is_very_good_performance_increases_for/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/xp5yj5/eco_mode_is_ver...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
leetcrew 4y ago
I don't really get this argument. if you're putting a PC together yourself, you're certainly capable of turning down the PL2 limit. so are the OEMs like dell. I'd rather have the product ship near the top of it's v/f curve than risk my warranty getting it there myself.
- least 4y ago
  > I don't really get this argument. if you're putting a PC together yourself, you're certainly capable of turning down the PL2 limit. so are the OEMs like dell. Tuning power profiles down to something reasonable is much harder than putting together a computer. You overestimate the competency of DIYers. System integrators aren't going to go out of their way to reduce the performance of their systems. Enthusiasts should carry the burden of tuning their systems to eke out its maximum performance to the point of massive diminishing returns. That should not be the default profile.
  - leetcrew 4y ago
    it's really not that complicated. PL2 is two settings in most bioses, a power limit and a max duration for that limit. sure, you could spend hours optimizing with all kinds of tweaks, but if you just want your cpu never to exceed 150W for more than 120 seconds, it takes a couple minutes to configure that. but that's kinda missing the larger point. if you care more about power consumption than performance, you aren't the target audience for K-suffix parts anyway. these parts are specifically marketed to enthusiasts.
    - jeffbee 4y ago
      I honestly have no idea why anyone uses the BIOS to set power limits. Intel, in their infinite wisdom, has exposed the relevant MSRs and they can be changed at any time. I feel like the BIOS is the worst possible place to set this, especially since changing it to suit your workload without rebooting is so valuable. Example: I currently have my 12th-gen Core configured in a peculiar way that caps the all-core turbo clock rate to 4100MHz, but this leads to shorter project build times because it leaves thermal overhead sufficient for the single-threaded link to hit 5200MHz earlier and longer.
formerly_proven 4y ago
What's strange with GPUs specifically is how nVidia has aggressively pushed power up with very little performance increase. With RTX 30 cards you could reduce the power target a fair bit with minimal performance loss, and with the RTX 4090 you can reduce the power consumption by almost 50 % or so and only loose single digit FPS. It's a weird part of the perf/power curve to pick for stock.
Melatonic 4y ago
Probably because they have a very mediocre cooling solution in it (I am guessing here based on their previous designs) Hopefully the new Mac Pro is better

by least 4y ago

tester756 4y ago

Are those concerns even reasonable? My CPU runs most of the day at around 5-20% usage And it reaches top usage when I run some relatively new game for like a hour a week at best Thus, the point is: why power usage at highest usage is that important? I'd say power usage for the most common CPU usage is most important for majority of the people (for data center it'd be different)

KennyBlanken 4y ago
These sorts of CPUs are probably more likely to be bought by people who use them heavily, rather than sit idle for hours and hours. Obviously there will always be the Whale who surfs the web but has to buy a 13900k, but most people aren't dropping this sort of dough if they don't need the horsepower. I can spend several hours on a weekend night gaming, and my GPU and CPU, depending on the game, are going half to full tilt. Typically ~350W, and that doesn't include my two monitors. When it's not in active use, it's asleep - I rarely leave it idling for more than ~30min before I put it in sleep mode. I'd say it probably spends 25% of its life under load. This and the prior generation I9s use 2-3x the wattage of current generation AMD CPUs...couple that with NVIDIA 4000 series cards hitting 600W and you could have an intel 13900k w/4090 gaming rig using around 1000W, not including PSU efficiency losses or monitor(s). We're talking "you might need a dedicated circuit if you're on 100-120VAC and want anything else on that circuit" territory; it wouldn't surprise me if people start hiring electricians to switch circuits over to 208v.
- leetcrew 4y ago
  how does gaming for several hours on weekends add up to your PC being at load 25% of it's life? think that through. you'd need to spend 42 hours/week gaming for that to be correct, literally gaming like it's a full-time job. that's not unheard of, but it's not common and it's certainly not healthy.
  - tester756 4y ago
    What? Turning your pc OFF means it's not running You can use PC for 4 hours/week, so 3h gaming per week = 75% That's what I believe s/he meant

bufferoverflow 4y ago

Minimal gains? RTX 4090 is almost double the performance of 3090.

sliken 4y ago
For some raytraced games, the rest it's more like 20-30% improvement
mastax 4y ago
If you reduce the power target of the RTX4090 to 60% you still get 90% of the performance[0]. This is becoming the norm for new hardware it seems. [0]: https://youtu.be/60yFji_GKak?t=1020 https://youtu.be/60yFji_GKak?t=1020

CodeArtisan 4y ago

Ryzen 7000 has an ECO mode that seems to be quite effective for gaming related work. https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/xp5yj5/eco_mode_is_very_good_performance_increases_for/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/xp5yj5/eco_mode_is_ver...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

leetcrew 4y ago

I don't really get this argument. if you're putting a PC together yourself, you're certainly capable of turning down the PL2 limit. so are the OEMs like dell. I'd rather have the product ship near the top of it's v/f curve than risk my warranty getting it there myself.

least 4y ago
> I don't really get this argument. if you're putting a PC together yourself, you're certainly capable of turning down the PL2 limit. so are the OEMs like dell. Tuning power profiles down to something reasonable is much harder than putting together a computer. You overestimate the competency of DIYers. System integrators aren't going to go out of their way to reduce the performance of their systems. Enthusiasts should carry the burden of tuning their systems to eke out its maximum performance to the point of massive diminishing returns. That should not be the default profile.
- leetcrew 4y ago
  it's really not that complicated. PL2 is two settings in most bioses, a power limit and a max duration for that limit. sure, you could spend hours optimizing with all kinds of tweaks, but if you just want your cpu never to exceed 150W for more than 120 seconds, it takes a couple minutes to configure that. but that's kinda missing the larger point. if you care more about power consumption than performance, you aren't the target audience for K-suffix parts anyway. these parts are specifically marketed to enthusiasts.
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    I honestly have no idea why anyone uses the BIOS to set power limits. Intel, in their infinite wisdom, has exposed the relevant MSRs and they can be changed at any time. I feel like the BIOS is the worst possible place to set this, especially since changing it to suit your workload without rebooting is so valuable. Example: I currently have my 12th-gen Core configured in a peculiar way that caps the all-core turbo clock rate to 4100MHz, but this leads to shorter project build times because it leaves thermal overhead sufficient for the single-threaded link to hit 5200MHz earlier and longer.

formerly_proven 4y ago

What's strange with GPUs specifically is how nVidia has aggressively pushed power up with very little performance increase. With RTX 30 cards you could reduce the power target a fair bit with minimal performance loss, and with the RTX 4090 you can reduce the power consumption by almost 50 % or so and only loose single digit FPS. It's a weird part of the perf/power curve to pick for stock.

Melatonic 4y ago

Probably because they have a very mediocre cooling solution in it (I am guessing here based on their previous designs) Hopefully the new Mac Pro is better