The 3090 Ti is already way past what I'd ever consider running. 500W+ for a GPU is insanity. I've owned many 250-300W cards in the past and even those made my room unreasonably warm, before you get to the cost aspect. I wouldn't even want to go back to that sort of level really.
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How far could and should power consumption go?
- Thread starter almoststew1990
- Start date
Modern day puritanism.
If it bothers you so much you should stop playing games on your PC completely, it's not like you need to do it, humanity survived millions of years without computer games.
On topic: Yes it's getting out of hand, I've always been a fan of the quiet, efficient PC and I've tried to squeeze the best performance/watt in a particular power envelope. Although saying that my current PC is a beast 5950x/3090, it is at least watercooled and undervolted so it's nice and quiet. Without the undervolt it shuts down randomly however because I think it goes over the UPS limit...
Soldato
Its not often Uk is warm enough that heat is a problem really. They naturally refine all these designs in time anyway but we have a small arms race in chip design currently so its not the focus
Associate
UNLIMITED POWER, of course! 
Caporegime
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Or perhaps just good old fashioned common sense.
While my gaming is ~2 hours per day, the rest of my PC usage is mainly work related software developement. I'm certainly not one of these self entitled arses that mines.
I do like to keep electronics running below default hence my undervolted 3080 draws up to 300W and my 12900k is also PL2 limited due to not requiring the full all core performance. In a Fractal Torrent, under the desk, my PC is silent with default fan profiles without having to resort to water. I'd recommend Alder Lake as it's surprisingly efficient - https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-i9-12900k-alder-lake-tested-at-various-power-limits/
Power consumption per frame is going and have been going down each generation but it's getting smaller and smaller because the node improvements are so minor - for example the last GPU generation that had great efficiency was when we went from 28nm to 12nm, a massive 16nm drop. Now we are going from 7nm to 5nm and 5nm to 4nm, these are very minor gains so the only way to get more performance that gamers expect is to push up the power limit
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Soldato
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Performance could be almost double for multi GPU solutions, so if they make it work for MCM designs the performance is there for those willing to buy into that.
Man of Honour
Even for a multi GPU solution my point is still valid.
The performance difference between using 350W and 700W on a MCM card would not be huge.
You only have to look at all the people who undervolt their cards now to see that, what works for a single GPU will also work for a MCM solution.
Soldato
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In an ideal situations in SLI it would scale around 90% +/-. So if a "chip" of 350w would give you 60fps, two of them would give ~ 108fps for 90% scaling.
Double the power, but also almost double the performance. People still bought 2 cards or even 3 or 4 for a selected few when SLI was a thing. Ergo, 5-600w cards MCM design would be about the same as 2 cards in SLI.
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If efficency cannot be increased (diminishing returns in smaller microarchitectures), the only solution is to split the problem:
- either you go towards multiple cards for different rendering aspects (one for raster, one for RT etc) which will not necessarily decrease the power usage but will make cooling the components easier
- or you go towards a self contained external GPU module with its own separate PSU and (likely liquid) cooling
- or you externalize the problem to the cloud (which is what big tech wants you to do)
The ideal answer would be to instead optimize the software to require less resources but that means either increased game cost or reduced quality at the same price so instead we got "cheating" via upscalers.
- either you go towards multiple cards for different rendering aspects (one for raster, one for RT etc) which will not necessarily decrease the power usage but will make cooling the components easier
- or you go towards a self contained external GPU module with its own separate PSU and (likely liquid) cooling
- or you externalize the problem to the cloud (which is what big tech wants you to do)
The ideal answer would be to instead optimize the software to require less resources but that means either increased game cost or reduced quality at the same price so instead we got "cheating" via upscalers.
I wonder what's going on with the 6900xt
it averages 300w but spikes to more than double
Caporegime
I think we're now approaching a time where some people will seriously start to take notice of high total/average power draw for the top performing graphics cards. Especially given the soaring energy prices now in effect from today.
I've already started using ECO mode on my 5950X (along with curve optimiser), dialled my memory back to 3600Mhz CL16 and 1.35v, and reduced my 6900 XT clocks back to 2500Mhz so it runs at 250W or thereabouts under 100% load to try and save some energy and reduce costs a little.
I've already started using ECO mode on my 5950X (along with curve optimiser), dialled my memory back to 3600Mhz CL16 and 1.35v, and reduced my 6900 XT clocks back to 2500Mhz so it runs at 250W or thereabouts under 100% load to try and save some energy and reduce costs a little.
Associate
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Yeah power draw isn't going to keep increasing. AMD are already better than Nvidia in that regard, if the next gen of cards have ridiculous power draw and AMD are lower and offer better performance Nvidia will take notice.
The issue currently is that Nvidia offer better ray tracing perfomance and better perfomance at high resolutions. They are also better for mining etc so anyone with those priorities in mind go to Nvidia regardless of power draw.
If (or rather when) AMD offer similar or even better performance the market will change the way it did in the CPU market with less people looking towards intel.
I think the absolute maximum it could go is 750ish, just because of how difficult it is to actually cool it then, particularly due to the insane density of chips. Unlikely to see it go past 600w though, imo.
As for should. Should go all the way to the max, if the market bears it, why not? Environmental concerns are so irrelevant, it's laughable, there's no mystery as to how to get enough energy for our needs in a sustainable way, it's just a matter of will. Besides, such cards are generally luxury products and don't sell in high numbers at all, so their effect on anything is not going to even register. The personal responsibility angle for the climate conscious is just pure propaganda anyway, if you study the real numbers it's very clear that it's reductions for key major industrial and military players that are the most important. Rest is just hokum.
As for should. Should go all the way to the max, if the market bears it, why not? Environmental concerns are so irrelevant, it's laughable, there's no mystery as to how to get enough energy for our needs in a sustainable way, it's just a matter of will. Besides, such cards are generally luxury products and don't sell in high numbers at all, so their effect on anything is not going to even register. The personal responsibility angle for the climate conscious is just pure propaganda anyway, if you study the real numbers it's very clear that it's reductions for key major industrial and military players that are the most important. Rest is just hokum.
It certainly has put the kybosh on me wanting to eke performance by overclocking anymore, now that I have a 3080. It simply is not necessary and given the base performance and not worth the extra leccy. Before, banging up the core and memory would be the first thing I would do with previous cards.
And better streaming by far, saw some benchmarks today on Reddit testing across a range of bitrates and settings and a rtx2060 which is a last gen entry level card beats the best amd has the 6900xt
Then situation with streaming is even worse than Ray Tracing, if you do any streaming then you are just about forced to go Nvidia
Associate
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Ah yes I forgot about streaming, so yet another reason why Nvidia to a degree can do what they want, espeically at the high end.
People that just want the absolute best don't tend to care about certain factors. Although I appreciate they make up a small percentage of the market.