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Nvidia Power Management - Which setting are you using?

It makes sod all difference either way in my testing either in game, or idle on the desktop.

I've always thought this was a pointless setting.
 
I play a lot of Quake Live and other FPS multiplayer games and I've noticed the difference between the two settings in game for my setup. Adaptive introduced some weird lag to my aim, as though my aim wasn't fully registering hits properly, especially with hitscan weapons such as the lightning gun. Changing the setting to max performance removed this problem. It's hard to explain properly, but to put it across in a better way, it felt like going from a 125hz (adaptive) to a 500hz (max performance) mouse, the aim and hit registering just felt so much more precise.
 
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Ayahuasca said:
Well if it makes yours run flat out when idle/not doing much then I can see why you don't use it but for me 2d clocks still work fine and I don't get fluctuations so that's why I use max performance.

I don't care which one you use but don't try and tell people what it should be set to that's all.
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Well, if it works for yout there's no reason why you shouldn't use it, didn't mean to offend you. I'm just sharing my experience with this setting and it happens to be that it makes sod all difference in gaming but results in my card running way hotter becuase it doesn't downclock when idle.
 
wunkley said:
It makes sod all difference either way in my testing either in game, or idle on the desktop.

I've always thought this was a pointless setting.
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Not all games require 100% power and performance.

Take yourself going out for a nice evening walk with your misses. Do you really want to walk fast everywhere you go, or are you happy to gently stroll ?

Same for games, if you need the full whack adaptive will give you it.
 
It doesn't always work though.

e.g. In wow if I'm recording with max bit rate I get low frame rate because the GPU doesn't clock up fully as normally it can run at 60 FPS clocked down to half.

Putting this to max performance solves this.
 
Prefer maximum performance won't necessarily enforce 3D clocks in desktop stuff but you can end up with higher state clocks more of the time on desktop depending on what your doing and/or your hardware i.e. 120+hz screens.

i.e. with adaptive on if I start playing a medium resolution video on the desktop it will jump to 1019MHz then drop back to 324MHz for most of the time - with a ultra high res video it will fluctuate between 692MHz and 324MHz, with max performance on it will jump straight to 1019MHz regardless and stay there until the video has finished playing when it drops back to 324MHz.

I've found it varies in impact - on some systems adaptive has a noticeable laggy effect on fps gaming, etc. on others there is no difference at all.
 
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On a geeky and curiosity side, has anyone ever plugged up a power draw meter to their system and used both to see what its using at max perf over adaptive ?
 
Playing a video with adaptive = jumps to 143watt (whole system) then drops to 85watt average while the video is playing. Max = jumps to 146watt and stays there until the video is done.

EDIT: Running around the BF4 firing range map with both settings and no fps cap = 352watt average with either setting, using my normal 125fps cap = 296watt. Idling at desktop with either setting = 56watt average.
 
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Rroff said:
Playing a video with adaptive = jumps to 143watt (whole system) then drops to 85watt average while the video is playing. Max = jumps to 146watt and stays there until the video is done.

EDIT: Running around the BF4 firing range map with both settings and no fps cap = 352watt average with either setting, using my normal 125fps cap = 296watt. Idling at desktop with either setting = 56watt average.
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Thanks :)

I think thats basically telling us, max perf when gaming, adaptive for all other uses ?
 
LambChop said:
No, I'm not confusing anything. It should be set to adaptive, clock speeds wont be throttled incorrectly when gaming. Maybe in other apps, but not games.
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Funnily enough when I used to play CoD4 ProMod and put the settings to low the 7970 I had at the time used to switch into power saving mode and I couldn't hold a constant high FPS. That's why I dumped it for Nvidia cards :)
 
If your inclined to change them as needed adaptive uses less power over a range of desktop tasks and may reduce power use in some games (but not all).

EDIT: lol now I've been playing around my desktop is averaging at 85 watt - usually averages around 60 at idle/light load :S
 
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Adaptive for me. The temperatures on the water cooling rig were much higher using performance. I think the pair of 780ti's going full pelt might have helped though.
 
I set it to manually run max performance in games and adaptive on the desktop, i find this keeps the temps down when your just idling or browsing the net
 
Kind of mixed then, some keeping on Adaptive over Maximum performance. Thought I would try the Maximum performance mode on GTA V earlier and I experienced quite notable stutter, switched it back to Adapative and had much smoother gameplay.

Will probably give it some more testing though on other games at some point.
 
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