3 ms·

Similarly, I upgraded the GPU in my server from a decade old formerly high end gaming GPU to a modern lower-mid range because I wanted new video encoders, and a

by Macha 3y ago

Similarly, I upgraded the GPU in my server from a decade old formerly high end gaming GPU to a modern lower-mid range because I wanted new video encoders, and a smoother Linux driver experience. But it's idle 99% of the time. The difference in idle consumption (80% lower on the new GPU) works out to €50/year, which means even if I didn't use any of the other features of the GPU, it would pay for itself in 3 years. Video encoding power draw is also 86% lower and even if I found something to max the new card out, it's still 40% lower than maxing out the old card (for a lot more compute power than the ten year old card).

paulmd 3y ago
Note that this trend isn’t always downwards - upgrading from rdna2 to 3 or from intel CPUs to AMD CPUs could result in increased idle power, sometimes significantly so. Things like higher PCIe lane configurations, higher generation/transfer rate, or higher memory channel count/frequency are likely going to represent higher power expenditures at all levels. PCIe 5.0 is a very fast link (a PCIe 5.0 channel is about equivalent to a DDR5 memory channel) and the trend is already upwards in terms of PCIe 4.0 requiring much more than PCIe 3.0. And turning the link speed down doesn't mean you get all the power back either. (From what I remember, ASPM is sometimes still a mess especially with consumer chips with their own frequency transitions and OC'd fabric/System Agents, and devices don't all wake up reliably all the time and return to high-power state, so iirc the enthusiast advice is "it's only a couple watts, it's a hassle, leave it off". I fear this may become "it's a hassle and it's also a significant power expenditure". I hope it's improved like other frequency transition things. :\) Also, just in general, the product focus on efficiency varies between vendors. NUCs are quite efficient, because they put a lot of focus into it to win those corporate contracts back in the day. A random minisforum mini pc probably is less efficient than an old nuc. Connectx-5 is much less efficient than connectx-4 even when running at lower pcie speeds. Ssds generally pull much more power than the HDDs they replaced, and pcie5 pulls much more than pcie4 which pulls much more than PCIe 3. Most laptop or other power bricks don't hit 80+ cert and if you are switching off a fancy brick that does, you'll use more. Etc. Not saying you didn’t look at it, but you have to look at it specifically and newer is not automatically better, sometimes product tiers increase over time too. And it’s certainly always a product-by-product thing. The exact way products are built or cut down doesn't just matter for performance, it affects power too.

by Macha 3y ago

paulmd 3y ago

Note that this trend isn’t always downwards - upgrading from rdna2 to 3 or from intel CPUs to AMD CPUs could result in increased idle power, sometimes significantly so. Things like higher PCIe lane configurations, higher generation/transfer rate, or higher memory channel count/frequency are likely going to represent higher power expenditures at all levels. PCIe 5.0 is a very fast link (a PCIe 5.0 channel is about equivalent to a DDR5 memory channel) and the trend is already upwards in terms of PCIe 4.0 requiring much more than PCIe 3.0. And turning the link speed down doesn't mean you get all the power back either. (From what I remember, ASPM is sometimes still a mess especially with consumer chips with their own frequency transitions and OC'd fabric/System Agents, and devices don't all wake up reliably all the time and return to high-power state, so iirc the enthusiast advice is "it's only a couple watts, it's a hassle, leave it off". I fear this may become "it's a hassle and it's also a significant power expenditure". I hope it's improved like other frequency transition things. :\) Also, just in general, the product focus on efficiency varies between vendors. NUCs are quite efficient, because they put a lot of focus into it to win those corporate contracts back in the day. A random minisforum mini pc probably is less efficient than an old nuc. Connectx-5 is much less efficient than connectx-4 even when running at lower pcie speeds. Ssds generally pull much more power than the HDDs they replaced, and pcie5 pulls much more than pcie4 which pulls much more than PCIe 3. Most laptop or other power bricks don't hit 80+ cert and if you are switching off a fancy brick that does, you'll use more. Etc. Not saying you didn’t look at it, but you have to look at it specifically and newer is not automatically better, sometimes product tiers increase over time too. And it’s certainly always a product-by-product thing. The exact way products are built or cut down doesn't just matter for performance, it affects power too.