• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Power consumption and efficiency in gaming: AMD vs Intel

Soldato
Joined
12 Apr 2007
Posts
11,852
As much as I like his vids, he's such a douche sometimes... but he needs the clicks for the ad-rev.

intel stuff is super efficient when idle, it only gets hot and hungry when....(spoiler) you work it hard.

 
Soldato
Joined
17 Aug 2009
Posts
10,719
intel stuff is super efficient when idle, it only gets hot and hungry when....(spoiler) you work it hard.

That's too much of a backhanded metric to be a selling point.

Nevertheless the only thing I'd give credit for is that one doesn't put out an extra 100-150 watts of heat when it's told to do work, possibly at the same time a GPU is putting out up to 400W of heat. This heat has nothing to do with whether it's wanted or not, it comes with the product.
 
Man of Honour
Joined
13 Oct 2006
Posts
91,182
Not that it makes much odds as the 7800x3D is a long way out ahead when it comes to power efficiency but their 14700K seems a touch on the poor side, at least compared to mine, for power draw. I'd still choose the 14700K every time though if doing anything other than pure gaming, and if power use is a strong consideration for you I wouldn't buy either.

I have to say despite the meh reviews the 14700K is one of the few tech things in awhile I've bought and had zero regrets, despite considerations about how quickly next gen CPUs may arrive, the only negative really is the limited PCI-e lanes especially when it comes to PCI-e 5.0 provisioning which shares with the GPU lanes :(
 
Last edited:
Associate
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
1,938
Location
Sheffield
intel stuff is super efficient when idle, it only gets hot and hungry when....(spoiler) you work it hard.

That was effectively "Greg's" opinion and the whole point of the video. Is gaming "working your CPU hard"? What if you limit the games to 144/60fps?

Spoiler - it's still naff. Very very naff. So naff, that if you use their power figures over a 5 year period (gaming), its going to cost you most of the price of the CPU all over again at European power costs.
 
Soldato
Joined
27 Nov 2005
Posts
24,701
Location
Guernsey
intel stuff is super efficient when idle, it only gets hot and hungry when....(spoiler) you work it hard.


That what would make intel far better for me as my PC spends far more hours at idle then it does at load
When I say at idle I mean while browsing the internet almost everyday and leaving the pc on many nights & days

Also gets left on over night or through the day many times to download huge games & game updates which take many hours
 
Last edited:
Caporegime
Joined
17 Mar 2012
Posts
47,669
Location
ARC-L1, Stanton System
That what would make intel far better for me as my PC spends far more hours at idle then it does at load
When I say at idle I mean while browsing the internet almost everyday and leaving the pc on many nights & days

Also gets left on over night or through the day many times to download huge games & game updates which take many hours
Steve was talking about the SoC chiplet when contains the fabric link hardware, this feature does make Ryzen CPU's idle that bit higher, Steve used the example of Epyc CPU's where the IO die "can use as much as 100 watts" while that might be true he's using an extreme example, a 7700X3D doesn't have 128 cores to link, it actually idles at about 10 watts.
Steve is just throwing some hyperbolic shade over AMD or his video would just be a complete trashing of Intel with no criticism laid at AMD, tech jurnoes are scared of doing that and Steve is one of the most conscious of that fear, he's always throwing shade over the other when criticising one even when it makes him look like an idiot, which using an Epyc CPU as an example of high idle power consumption for AMD is, especially when throwing that shade but then don't explain that the CPU's he's testing, IE the 7800X3D is nothing like that, just leaving you with that impression is quite typical of how Steve operates, its quite political, its not a lie, its just misleading for unrelated half truths.
These people would rather look daft than bias.

In any case Its a strawman argument, idle its a couple of watts vs a few watts, it would have to be idling for 100 years to save £10 on electric costs.

On the other hand one used 65 watts vs 200 watts while gaming. And 10 watt of the former is just for the IO die existing :D
 
Last edited:
Caporegime
Joined
17 Mar 2012
Posts
47,669
Location
ARC-L1, Stanton System
Its not even properly idle, i'm in Discord, have Chrome tabs running ecte... its not what Intel would call Idle. not all of my cores are in sleep mode :D

UP8LiFK.png
 
Last edited:
Soldato
Joined
27 Nov 2005
Posts
24,701
Location
Guernsey
Steve was talking about the SoC chiplet when contains the fabric link hardware, this feature does make Ryzen CPU's idle that bit higher, Steve used the example of Epyc CPU's where the IO die "can use as much as 100 watts" while that might be true he's using an extreme example, a 7700X3D doesn't have 128 cores to link, it actually idles at about 10 watts.
Steve is just throwing some hyperbolic shade over AMD or his video would just be a complete trashing of Intel with no criticism laid at AMD, tech jurnoes are scared of doing that and Steve is one of the most conscious of that fear, he's always throwing shade over the other when criticising one even when it makes him look like an idiot, which using an Epyc CPU as an example of high idle power consumption for AMD is, especially when throwing that shade but then don't explain that the CPU's he's testing, IE the 7800X3D is nothing like that, just leaving you with that impression is quite typical of how Steve operates, its quite political, its not a lie, its just misleading for unrelated half truths.
These people would rather look daft than bias.

In any case Its a strawman argument, idle its a couple of watts vs a few watts, it would have to be idling for 100 years to save £10 on electric costs.

On the other hand one used 65 watts vs 200 watts while gaming. And 10 watt of the former is just for the IO die existing :D

Not sure what all the means,
Short answer i can save £10 in electric costs over 100 years if i go intel, So I take it you recommend getting an intel cpu over AMD :cry:
 
Last edited:
Soldato
Joined
12 Apr 2007
Posts
11,852
If I'm putting a gaming PC together, I basically just look at FPS V's price @resolution X.

There are other factors too, as I spend a lot of time just idling/desk jockeying on the net, so the PSU comes into play there as well, The Corsair RM series,, for example are incredibly efficient at low loads, like lower loads than the 80+ certification takes into account, without checking, I think 80+ only looks at 30% load as a function of total capacity at the minumum, so for example if you have a 750w or more PSU, it's not going to be 30% loaded if your just watching youtube or whatever.

So there are a number of factors to consider when building a PC, and it's mostly about balancing the components with what you'll be using it for.

CPU power draw/heat under stress, like gaming for example, is not such a big deal in my case, as I'm probably only gaming on it for 10-20% of uptime to be generous, so in my particular usage case, a PSU that is ultra efficient and a CPU/gpu that goes into a low power state when not under stress is important.

That said, I'm still not convinced platinum rated PSU's are worth the premium over gold rated, as again, that's the 80+ certification limitation for testing, and it doesn't take into account ultra low loads when idling/surfing the net, etc.
 
Last edited:
Caporegime
Joined
17 Mar 2012
Posts
47,669
Location
ARC-L1, Stanton System
I just spent some time trying to find the idle power consumption between Intel and AMD, no reputable reviewer that i could find bothered with any of that, so far as i can ascertain its because the difference is so small no one thinks its worth bothering with, its 5 to 10 watts vs 10 to 15 watts.
Other than one lol Youtube video who tried to claim that due to "Intel's efficiency cores AMD's idle power consumption is 10X higher" and said that while he had HWINfo open with a big red arrow pointing at a 50 watt load on a Ryzen 7950X on the right hand screen with with an image stabilisation workload running on the left side of the screen :D
Its such an obvious shill attempt i'm not even going to post it here to give it views.

So still don't get it, the difference in idle power consumption between AMD and Intel is 5 watts, or 10 watts if you want to give Intel the benefit of the lowest value vs AMD's highest value, the difference in gaming is 60 to 200 watts, so if its 10 watt idle then you need to be AFK for 16 hours for every 1 hour of game time to even it out, if you cared that much why is your system running when you're not using it???? because where ever the system is actually doing something the Intel CPU is pulling more watts.

If for some strange reason you care about your power bill but also never turn the system off and game only for 1 hour per day then you would save £8 per year at 30p per KWh.
If you game for 3 hours per day well then you're ______ if you're on Intel.

The 7800X3D is £380
The 14700K is £400

So after 3 years you save.......... £4, double digits, £12 in fact if you go 4 years. £12 saved over 4 years and you still have the slower gaming CPU, this also ignoring the 7800X3D is so efficient it will run cool on a £25 CM Hyper 212 cooler, you need a high end £100 cooler for the 14700K.

Ridiculous arguments.
 
Last edited:
Soldato
Joined
12 Apr 2007
Posts
11,852
I just spent some time trying to find the idle power consumption between Intel and AMD, no reputable reviewer that i could find bothered with any of that, so far as i can ascertain its because the difference is so small no one thinks its worth bothering with, its 5 to 10 watts vs 10 to 15 watts.
Other than one lol Youtube video who tried to claim that due to "Intel's efficiency cores AMD's idle power consumption is 10X higher" and said that while he had HWINfo open with a big red arrow pointing at a 50 watt load on a Ryzen 7950X on the right hand screen with with an image stabilisation workload running on the left side of the screen :D
Its such an obvious shill attempt i'm not even going to post it here to give it views.

So still don't get it, the difference in idle power consumption between AMD and Intel is 5 watts, or 10 watts if you want to give Intel the benefit of the lowest value vs AMD's highest value, the difference in gaming is 60 to 200 watts, so if its 10 watt idle then you need to be AFK for 16 hours for every 1 hour of game time to even it out, if you cared that much why is your system running when you're not using it???? because where ever the system is actually doing something the Intel CPU is pulling more watts.

If for some strange reason you care about your power bill but also never turn the system off and game only for 1 hour per day then you would save £8 per year at 30p per KWh.
If you game for 3 hours per day well then you're ______ if you're on Intel.

The 7800X3D is £380
The 14700K is £400

So after 3 years you save.......... £4, double digits, £12 in fact if you go 4 years. £12 saved over 4 years and you still have the slower gaming CPU, this also ignoring the 7800X3D is so efficient it will run cool on a £25 CM Hyper 212 cooler, you need a high end £100 cooler for the 14700K.

Ridiculous arguments.

Yeah, I agree... it's much of a muchness if you are talkiing about a typical gaming pc thats only proably being pushed hard maybe 20% of uptime...

If you are runing blender or something 24/7 for weeks at a time, then yes that's a very different usage scenariao.
 
Caporegime
Joined
17 Mar 2012
Posts
47,669
Location
ARC-L1, Stanton System
I know this topic was about efficiency but buying a CPU that's consuming more power hurts you not so much in electricity costs but it requires more cooling, more case fans, stronger PSU, noise etc, all that adds up.
I have an EVGA Supernova 650 GS, i'm quite picky when it comes to PSU's, i read a lot of reviews before committing to buy because the PSU is so important, it powers all your components, if you have an unstable overclock that can be down to the PSU's voltage ripple suppression, if you have a coil whiny GPU that could be the quality of PSU's filtering, and so on.....

So it matters, it really matters more than most people realise, especially if you like overclocking because a PSU that is able to deliver clean stable power to your components makes them more stable than a lesser PSU would.

It was quite expensive at the time for a 650 watt PSU at £96, and i've managed to keep it for 7 years by avoiding Intel's last few years of power hungry CPU's, not specifically for that reason, but you know what i mean.

If i upgrade to DDR5 next year i'm not buying a 14700K because i like my PSU, its been excellent to me and i don't want to spend £150 for a high quality 850 watt PSU to replace it when there is nothing wrong with the one i have and its proven to be a good'n.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom