why do people care about power consumption when it comes to AMD but not Nvidia/ intel

jigger · 12 Sep 2018 at 15:42

It was literally 50% the chip that was promised and you know it.

bigmike20vt · 12 Sep 2018 at 15:43

i put this in my edit above however this thread moves so fast it will get missed.

Fermi has actually aged well.... perhaps this is the logic vega 64 users are defending now.

edit
i dug this out for you. actually all things considered the card has actually aged pretty well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMbX7E6ozag

bigmike20vt · 12 Sep 2018 at 15:46

Rroff said:
Indeed - but also at the time it didn't lag significantly behind the competition for performance - a point that isn't particularly convenient to include in the equation for some posters I see.

i am probably being stupid here but.... I honestly do not see your point.

a poster said that the people commenting that Vega64 uses too much power didn't complain about fermi.... I countered that they actually did (I was one of them, it was so loud bordering on stupid and it put me off buying one..... I ended up getting the 5 series refresh which was better in every respect iirc) . I was not intending to hide any inconvenient truths and indeed my edit with video link shows that whilst it was hot and loud the card HAS stood the test of time pretty well.

jigger · 12 Sep 2018 at 15:47

Nvidias problem with the design was they made the HSF look like a Gorge Foreman grill and the ridge part of cooler got very hot. Hence people trying to cook eggs on it.

bigmike20vt · 12 Sep 2018 at 15:50

jigger said:
Nvidias problem with the design was they made the HSF look like a Gorge Foreman grill and the ridge part of cooler got very hot. Hence people trying to cook eggs on it.

Sony obviously liked the design as they ran with the Foreman grill look and dialed it to 11 with the PS3

(btw every time i see an nvidia RTX card i see a camping gas stove.... i am sure someone will make a meme about that at some point.)

Rroff · 12 Sep 2018 at 15:51

bigmike20vt said:
i am probably being stupid here but.... I honestly do not see your point.

a poster said that the people commenting that Vega64 uses too much power didn't complain about fermi.... I countered that they actually did (I was one of them, it was so loud bordering on stupid and it put me off buying one..... I ended up getting the 5 series refresh which was better in every respect iirc) . I was not intending to hide any inconvenient truths and indeed my edit with video link shows that whilst it was hot and loud the card HAS stood the test of time pretty well.

I'm not saying people didn't complain about Fermi - but not in the same way it was offset a bit by at the time having performance on par with or beating anything else out which somewhat mitigates the power use - unless you are purely complaining from a cost to run perspective which most people aren't. (EDIT: What I mean is if the 480 had the power consumption it did but lagged behind the 5870 by a significant margin it would have got a roasting - but it didn't so people weren't quite to that level of critical of it).

bigmike20vt said:
Fermi has actually aged well....

The "GTX675" in my laptop is actually a Fermi core - basically an overclocked 560 (performance more like desktop 570) - still handles a lot of stuff OK today surprisingly - helped by having 2GB of VRAM rather than the 1.x on the desktop cards. EDIT: I see similar to that video with it - most of the latest games are playable on medium settings with around 40-50fps and overclocking a little can bring it up to very playable performance.

Gregster · 12 Sep 2018 at 16:00

Probably gonna get lambasted for this but it still makes me chuckle

bigmike20vt · 12 Sep 2018 at 16:04

Rroff said:
I'm not saying people didn't complain about Fermi - but not in the same way it was offset a bit by at the time having performance on par with or beating anything else out which somewhat mitigates the power use - unless you are purely complaining from a cost to run perspective which most people aren't.

The "GTX675" in my laptop is actually a Fermi core - basically an overclocked 560 (performance more like desktop 570) - still handles a lot of stuff OK today surprisingly - helped by having 2GB of VRAM rather than the 1.x on the desktop cards. EDIT: I see similar to that video with it - most of the latest games are playable on medium settings with around 40-50fps and overclocking a little can bring it up to very playable performance.

i still have a 560ti now in my arcade pc.... it does a job just fine!.

but i think things improved a lot fairly quickly after the initial GTX 480 and GTX 470 launch. Personally for me it was not really the power use which put me off... it was the the fact that it would have heated up my room stupidly and, even more importantly was so loud. i am sure there were aftermarket solutions which improved things but....................................

Rroff · 12 Sep 2018 at 16:08

jigger said:
It was literally 50% the chip that was promised and you know it.

It didn't quite live upto some of the expectations but it was hardly terrible performance - being around 10-15% faster on average than the 5870 albeit that card having been out for 6 months already.

Some of the older performance claims which were double the actual release performance were actually a mistake due to a leak of dual GPU numbers (from compute use) being thought to be of a single card numbers.

five8five · 12 Sep 2018 at 16:21

Rroff said:
I'm not saying people didn't complain about Fermi - but not in the same way it was offset a bit by at the time having performance on par with or beating anything else out which somewhat mitigates the power use - unless you are purely complaining from a cost to run perspective which most people aren't. (EDIT: What I mean is if the 480 had the power consumption it did but lagged behind the 5870 by a significant margin it would have got a roasting - but it didn't so people weren't quite to that level of critical of it).

Exactly, if the VEGA 64 was close to or matched the performance of the 1080ti then the power consumption would be easier to overlook / forgive. As it doesn't even get close and competes with a 1080 then the power consumption and cost become major factors. AMD addressed the power issue partially with BIOS and driver updates but they're still struggling to match the efficiency of Maxwell and Pascal.

five8five · 12 Sep 2018 at 16:34

Gregster said:
Probably gonna get lambasted for this but it still makes me chuckle

all-time classic (along with the Nvidia engineer)

For me it isn't about the power consumption, it's what happens to the heat being produced. Being able to build a decently overclocked air cooled system that on full load doesn't sound like a jet on takeoff is great. I'm not looking for complete silence so the whoosh of air is fine As the Maxwell and Pascal Nvidia cards have been so efficient i've been able to achieve this.

Gregster · 12 Sep 2018 at 16:52

five8five said:
all-time classic (along with the Nvidia engineer)

For me it isn't about the power consumption, it's what happens to the heat being produced. Being able to build a decently overclocked air cooled system that on full load doesn't sound like a jet on takeoff is great. I'm not looking for complete silence so the whoosh of air is fine As the Maxwell and Pascal Nvidia cards have been so efficient i've been able to achieve this.

Same as that. I don't care how much power a card draws, as long as it has the performance to go with it. People don't seem to realise that the extra power requires better heat management and that is a key factor for many.

KillBoY_UK · 12 Sep 2018 at 16:55

Nasher said:
But then look at the price of a 1080/1080ti compared to Vega. Once you factor that in, any tiny savings made on power is wiped out and it looks poor value.

Then don't forget the Nvidia tax for gsync because they refuse to adopt adaptivesync. So that's another £150-200 on top of it.

I though this thread was about the power consumption of chips not there value.......

The value of a chip/card is a different question for a different thread.

Again a lower/higher power chips implications are not just a lower/higher power bill.....

KillBoY_UK · 12 Sep 2018 at 16:57

ubersonic said:
I could be wrong here but I *think* the confusion is due to him quoting the TDP his Vega was set to, and quoting what the 1080 was actually drawing. Though that still sounds off as an AIB 1080 will only peak around the 250w mark not 300 lol.

even total system load of a Titian Xp based system can be around 350w

Marine-RX179 · 12 Sep 2018 at 17:23

Rroff said:
Fermi performance terrible?

Performance per watt and performance per £ was indeed terrible:
It was launched 6 months later than the 5870, and launched at around 50% higher in price (£460 vs £330) and overall only around 10% faster.

EOL price at £200 though the GTX480 was a steal, even after factoring that heat and noise or spending extra getting 3rd party VGA cooler for the card.

Rroff · 12 Sep 2018 at 17:56

Marine-RX179 said:
Performance per watt and performance per £ was indeed terrible:

For the 480 maybe - I got my 470s at like £160? (wasn't even that long after launch) clocked to stock 480 performance without even touching the voltage and still had headroom to boot - which kind of made the 480s look a bit silly in a way as they used less power even then at stock 480 performance albeit less VRAM.

EDIT: Can't find the price on the first one I bought as it has dropped off order history - the SLI setup cost a little over £300 total for the GPUs.

ubersonic · 12 Sep 2018 at 19:07

KillBoY_UK said:
even total system load of a Titian Xp based system can be around 350w

I wouldn't go that far, maybe if there's nothing in the case except the Titan-Xp

Rroff said:
For the 480 maybe - I got my 470s at like £160? (wasn't even that long after launch)

It would have been more than that, I paid £165 around that time for a MSI "Hawk Talon Attack" GTX460 and that was the top GTX460, I remember the price jump to the GTX470 being enough to put me off (especially when that GTX460 had reference GTX470 performance anyway).

Rroff · 12 Sep 2018 at 19:17

ubersonic said:
It would have been more than that, I paid £165 around that time for a MSI "Hawk Talon Attack" GTX460 and that was the top GTX460, I remember the price jump to the GTX470 being enough to put me off (especially when that GTX460 had reference GTX470 performance anyway).

Admittedly they weren't that price at launch and there were times they were higher as well (price fluctuated quite a bit over the 6 months post launch) but I managed to buy mine fairly soon after release at pretty decent prices - I bought two at £164 each and another at £220 but not sure what I paid for the first one as it has dropped off my order history and my memory isn't recalling it right now.

Marine-RX179 · 12 Sep 2018 at 23:45

ubersonic said:
I wouldn't go that far, maybe if there's nothing in the case except the Titan-Xp

It would have been more than that, I paid £165 around that time for a MSI "Hawk Talon Attack" GTX460 and that was the top GTX460, I remember the price jump to the GTX470 being enough to put me off (especially when that GTX460 had reference GTX470 performance anyway).

Indeed. I clearly remember the GTX460 768MB being around £120~£150, and the GTX460 1GB being around £160~£190 for a long time.

Rroff · 13 Sep 2018 at 00:03

Marine-RX179 said:
Indeed. I clearly remember the GTX460 768MB being around £120~£150, and the GTX460 1GB being around £160~£190 for a long time.

I've this weird luck? with GPU prices - I don't think I've ever paid "full price" even close to or at launch for a GPU (aside from the 7950GX2).

For instance:

I was seriously thinking of selling it and going back to the 780 when they were fetching over £600 second hand at the height of the mining craze.