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Performance per watt[1] makes more sense than raw power for most consumer computation tasks today. Would really like to see more focus on energy efficiency goin

by mikae1 2y ago

Performance per watt[1] makes more sense than raw power for most consumer computation tasks today. Would really like to see more focus on energy efficiency going forward. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_per_watt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_per_watt

epolanski 2y ago
That's s blind way to look at that imho. Doesn't work on me for sure. More energy means more power consumption, more heat in my room, you can't escape thermodynamics. I have a small home office, it's 6 square meters, during summer energy draw in my room makes a gigantic difference in temperature. I have no intention of drawing more than a total 400w top while gaming and I prefer compromising on lowering settings. Energy consumption can't keep increasing over and over forever. I can even understand it on flagships, they meant for enthusiasts, but all the tiers have been ballooning in energy consumption.
- bb88 2y ago
  Increasing performance per watt means that you can get more performance using the same power. It also means you can budget more power for even better performance if you need it. In the US the limiting factor is the 15A/20A circuits which will give you at most 2000W. So if the performance is double but it uses only 30% more power, that seems like a worthwhile tradeoff. But at some point, that ends when you hit a max power that prevents people from running a 200W CPU and other appliances on the same circuit without tripping a breaker.
  - epolanski 2y ago
    > Increasing performance per watt means that you can get more performance using the same power. I'm currently running a 150 watt GPU, and the 5070 has a 250 TDP. You are correct. I could get a 5070 and down volt it to work in 150ish range e.g. and get almost the same performance (at least not significantly different to notice in game). But I think you're missing the wider point of my complain: it's been from Maxwell that Nvidia hasn't produced major updates on the power consumption side of their architecture. Simply making bigger and denser chips on better nodes while keeping to increase the power draw and slapping DLSS4 is not really an evolution, it's laziness and milking the users. On top of that: the performance benefits we're talking about are really using DLSS4, which is artificially limited to the latest gen. I don't expect raw performance of this gen to exceed a 20% bump to the previous one when DLSS is off.
    - lukeschlather 2y ago
      > But I think you're missing the wider point of my complain: it's been from Maxwell that Nvidia hasn't produced major updates on the power consumption side of their architecture. Is this true or is it just that the default configuration draws a crazy amount of power? I wouldn't imagine running a 5090 downvolted to 75W is useful, but also I would like to see someone test it against an actual 75W card. I've definitely read that you can get 70% of the performance for 50% of the power if you downvolt cards, and it would be interesting to see an analysis of what the sweet spot is for different cards.
      - bb88 2y ago
        Today's hardware typically consumes as much power as it wants, unless we constrain it for heat or maybe battery. If you're undervolting a GPU because it doesn't have a setting for "efficiency mode" in the driver, that's just kinda sad. There may be times when you do want the performance over efficiency.
      - epolanski 2y ago
        I remember various benchmarks in the years since Maxwell, when they took GPUs with comparable number of cuda cores and clocked them the same, the performance were in the delta of error suggesting that (raw) performance wise you're not getting much more since Maxwell (and that was what, 2013?). I can confirm you that downvolting can get you the same tier of performance (-10%, which by the way is 3 fps when you're making 3 and 10 when you're making 100, negligible) by cutting power consumption by a lot, how much is that a lot depends on the specific gpu. On the 4090 you can get 90% of the performance at half the power draw, lower tier car have smaller gain/benefits ratios.

by mikae1 2y ago

epolanski 2y ago

That's s blind way to look at that imho. Doesn't work on me for sure. More energy means more power consumption, more heat in my room, you can't escape thermodynamics. I have a small home office, it's 6 square meters, during summer energy draw in my room makes a gigantic difference in temperature. I have no intention of drawing more than a total 400w top while gaming and I prefer compromising on lowering settings. Energy consumption can't keep increasing over and over forever. I can even understand it on flagships, they meant for enthusiasts, but all the tiers have been ballooning in energy consumption.

bb88 2y ago
Increasing performance per watt means that you can get more performance using the same power. It also means you can budget more power for even better performance if you need it. In the US the limiting factor is the 15A/20A circuits which will give you at most 2000W. So if the performance is double but it uses only 30% more power, that seems like a worthwhile tradeoff. But at some point, that ends when you hit a max power that prevents people from running a 200W CPU and other appliances on the same circuit without tripping a breaker.
- epolanski 2y ago
  > Increasing performance per watt means that you can get more performance using the same power. I'm currently running a 150 watt GPU, and the 5070 has a 250 TDP. You are correct. I could get a 5070 and down volt it to work in 150ish range e.g. and get almost the same performance (at least not significantly different to notice in game). But I think you're missing the wider point of my complain: it's been from Maxwell that Nvidia hasn't produced major updates on the power consumption side of their architecture. Simply making bigger and denser chips on better nodes while keeping to increase the power draw and slapping DLSS4 is not really an evolution, it's laziness and milking the users. On top of that: the performance benefits we're talking about are really using DLSS4, which is artificially limited to the latest gen. I don't expect raw performance of this gen to exceed a 20% bump to the previous one when DLSS is off.
  - lukeschlather 2y ago
    > But I think you're missing the wider point of my complain: it's been from Maxwell that Nvidia hasn't produced major updates on the power consumption side of their architecture. Is this true or is it just that the default configuration draws a crazy amount of power? I wouldn't imagine running a 5090 downvolted to 75W is useful, but also I would like to see someone test it against an actual 75W card. I've definitely read that you can get 70% of the performance for 50% of the power if you downvolt cards, and it would be interesting to see an analysis of what the sweet spot is for different cards.
    - bb88 2y ago
      Today's hardware typically consumes as much power as it wants, unless we constrain it for heat or maybe battery. If you're undervolting a GPU because it doesn't have a setting for "efficiency mode" in the driver, that's just kinda sad. There may be times when you do want the performance over efficiency.
    - epolanski 2y ago
      I remember various benchmarks in the years since Maxwell, when they took GPUs with comparable number of cuda cores and clocked them the same, the performance were in the delta of error suggesting that (raw) performance wise you're not getting much more since Maxwell (and that was what, 2013?). I can confirm you that downvolting can get you the same tier of performance (-10%, which by the way is 3 fps when you're making 3 and 10 when you're making 100, negligible) by cutting power consumption by a lot, how much is that a lot depends on the specific gpu. On the 4090 you can get 90% of the performance at half the power draw, lower tier car have smaller gain/benefits ratios.