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> What I would want to know is what happens to these good binned chips when you lower their voltages and frequencies and run them at a more reasonable 3.5GHz or

> What I would want to know is what happens to these good binned chips when you lower their voltages and frequencies and run them at a more reasonable 3.5GHz or something for a long time I'm not sure about intel chips, but amd's last couple generations of chips have an "eco mode" which underclocks the chip for you. You get about 85-100% of the performance while consuming 60% as much power. The chips probably last way longer like that too. NVidia's GPUs have similar options. 3090/4090 cards can have a totally reasonable power budget if you're happy to lose ~10% of your framerate. Arstechnica added eco mode to their benchmarks: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/03/ryzen-7950x3d-review-an-expensive-but-incredibly-efficient-16-core-cpu/4/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/03/ryzen-7950x3d-review...

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bustling-noose 3y ago
Thanks. The 7950X doesnt have a non X variant. So it seems the non X variant chips are basically doing the same - giving you lower clocks for lower wattage with an option to tinker at your own risk for pushing the chip as those are not as good as the X variants.
SomeoneFromCA 3y ago
I run 50mv undervolted 12500 which gives me about 20% lower consumption.
0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
Where are you getting that ECO mode cause a 15% performance drop? In my pretty unscientific testing, I saw ECO mode have zero impact on single core workloads and ~4% on multicore with a big drop in cpu temperature. If I am reading the “Gaming CPU” chart correctly from your link, the AMD 170w performance was 114.8 FPS, but the 105w ECO performance was 111.4 FPS. Effectively nothing for a huge drop in power.
- michaelmrose 3y ago
  Was this on a laptop or desktop? If a huge drop in power results in no meaningful drop in performance I would say that is a sign that previously you were hitting a point where heat was more of a problem than power.
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
    My testing was on a desktop with a way over specced cooler. Regardless, the above link shows that they were getting huge power drops for basically no loss in performance. With makes sense to me. We have seemingly run out of cheap architectural wins. CPUs and GPUs keep cheating by amping up the power draw to improve the performance numbers for vanishingly small returns. To get an extra 5% performance on these chips can require 10s of watts.
- josephg 3y ago
  > Where are you getting that ECO mode cause a 15% performance drop? It depends on the test. In that link I posted, 3dmark’s cpu test shows eco mode drop the score from 19000 to 14000. Which I guess is more like a 25% perf drop. In other tests, performance increased in eco mode. It seems like it depends a lot on the workload.

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bustling-noose 3y ago

Thanks. The 7950X doesnt have a non X variant. So it seems the non X variant chips are basically doing the same - giving you lower clocks for lower wattage with an option to tinker at your own risk for pushing the chip as those are not as good as the X variants.

SomeoneFromCA 3y ago

I run 50mv undervolted 12500 which gives me about 20% lower consumption.

0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago

Where are you getting that ECO mode cause a 15% performance drop? In my pretty unscientific testing, I saw ECO mode have zero impact on single core workloads and ~4% on multicore with a big drop in cpu temperature. If I am reading the “Gaming CPU” chart correctly from your link, the AMD 170w performance was 114.8 FPS, but the 105w ECO performance was 111.4 FPS. Effectively nothing for a huge drop in power.

michaelmrose 3y ago
Was this on a laptop or desktop? If a huge drop in power results in no meaningful drop in performance I would say that is a sign that previously you were hitting a point where heat was more of a problem than power.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
  My testing was on a desktop with a way over specced cooler. Regardless, the above link shows that they were getting huge power drops for basically no loss in performance. With makes sense to me. We have seemingly run out of cheap architectural wins. CPUs and GPUs keep cheating by amping up the power draw to improve the performance numbers for vanishingly small returns. To get an extra 5% performance on these chips can require 10s of watts.
josephg 3y ago
> Where are you getting that ECO mode cause a 15% performance drop? It depends on the test. In that link I posted, 3dmark’s cpu test shows eco mode drop the score from 19000 to 14000. Which I guess is more like a 25% perf drop. In other tests, performance increased in eco mode. It seems like it depends a lot on the workload.