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Power Draw. Its importance.

FinglisHobbit

FinglisHobbit

FinglisHobbit

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I asked this in another thread but it kinda derails topic so ill ask again here.

Can someone explain to me the significance of power draw please? How does it impact on people?

To the uneducated like me, its kinda like the current trend in cars where young people care more about MPG than BHP, it seems almost depressing.

Is it down to temperatures and ability to overclock?

I have a 750w PSU and as long as it can power my card then I dont really care what the card draws.

What is making it such an important characteristic these days?
 
As above, and to add higher frequencies can create gpu coil whine, higher quality psu's can(but not always) negate coil whine.
 
Coil whine is irrelevant, look at the lower power draw GTX970 percentage wise it has the most coil whine of all cards I can remember.

Heat is the issue mostly.

Cost isn't that much extra yearly but to each his own.
 
Im not 100% sure this is accurate but my take on it is this

say a GPU and its various capacitors etc can take 100 units of power maximum (this is a made up number)

now these components will also leak a small amount of power and do not scale linearly either.

So for the first say 80 units you scale 1:1 but after that it rises dramitcally 2:1, 5:1, 10:1 etc

So for the first 80 units you can keep the power to heat ratio kinda incheck, but then as you start filling the remaining bit you have to dramatically increase the amount of power for small gains.

As we all know power = heat, so at first say 80 units above you can handle it fairly well, its when you go above that 80 units above you start to hit levels of diminishing returns etc.

Like i say thats just my take on it and all the numbers above are completely made up just to illustrate my point and im probably very wrong.
 
For the majority its the lower heat which allows them to push things a bit harder.

Id find it weird if people were thinking about electricity bills after sinking up to £1000 in some cases on a graphics card.
 
The only relevant factor gamers should be worried about when power draw is concerned is the heat output. High power draw usually equates to something running hot. So for example a GPU that is pulling close to 400 watts is going to certainly be toasty and be hard to cool. But if you have the cooling solution for it then that worry is gone.

As long as you have a quality branded PSU you dont have to worry so much and if you do look at benchmarks or TDP of set certain cards to give you a idea although once overclocking that goes out of the window.

People who will tell you about saving money obviously dont pay their power bills as look at prices for a Kilowatt hour (kWh) its usually pennies and that's drawing 1000 watts per hour how i take that. So that doesn't worry me when you can draw 500 watts vs 700 watts from your pc. Your talking pennies and only when you see the difference is after a year when you save at the most 20 quid or something. By the time you need to upgrade you may have saved about 60 quid at the most vs a more power hungry card.

It's not money your really going to notice saved in your pocket nor leaving your pocket in the months.

Heat is the most concerning factor. As cooling it is what becomes the problem followed by the sound of the cooling solution etc.





As for what is making power draw such a important factor these days well that answer is fanboys
 
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It was irrelevant and always had been until Maxwell came along, at which point power draw became the single most important feature of your gaming PC.

The only significance is if you need to buy a new PSU to run a high draw GPU. All the other talk about lower case temps significantly increasing overclocks and component life? Never seemed to be an issue before.
 
mulpsmebeauty said:
It was irrelevant and always had been until Maxwell came along, at which point power draw became the single most important feature of your gaming PC.

The only significance is if you need to buy a new PSU to run a high draw GPU. All the other talk about lower case temps significantly increasing overclocks and component life? Never seemed to be an issue before.
Click to expand...

Selective memory, power and heat was a massive (AMD fan) issue when Fermi came out, now its the other way round AMD would rather brush it under the carpet
 
andybird123 said:
Selective memory, power and heat was a massive (AMD fan) issue when Fermi came out, now its the other way round AMD would rather brush it under the carpet
Click to expand...

It's never been an issue for me at any point! Do CPUs clock significantly higher with a 970 in your case instead of an aftermarket 290x? I doubt it.
 
Power draw is AMD and NVIDIAS biggest enemy. It directly limits how fast they can make a card. People not paying attention dismiss it, saying I don't care what my card uses, but this is why AMD are suffering so much right now.

NVIDIA have roughly double the performance per watt with Maxwell over Hawaii. For AMD it's like having to use V Power fuel to get a Micra to move. NVIDIA use Tesco value fuel on a GTR and it still goes like stink. NVIDIA can sell a cheap to produce small chip on the 980 and AMD have to push thermal limits using 200w more just to keep up with it.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2015/06/18/msi_r9_390x_gaming_8g_video_card_review/10#.VYaKvvnBzRY

AMD are unable the relesse the Fury X without an all in one watercooling system. They are just at the limit of the performance they can get out of 28nm with air cooling now. If Pascal multiplies the performance per watt again then we could very well see Titan X performance with the power usage of a GTX 970. For the people that say Power is irrelevant, that means your shiny new graphics cards next year will be potentially faster and cheaper. Is that relevant? I hope AMDs Arctic Islands are a big improvement in this area or they will find themselves struggling even more against Pascal.
 
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RanxZy said:
the performance per watt
Click to expand...


This, is ultimately what it boils down to. More performance per watt, higher the performance as the wattage on the high end is usually always in the 250-300w mark. GM200 (250w?) against GK110 (250w?) has pushed near double the performance without a die shrink.

Given the Fury is touted to be around or above 980Ti performance, AMD too have gained more performance per watt, actually this was AMD's big selling point on the fury reveal, rather then give raw frame figures it was all laid out as '1.5x performance per watt' etc...regardless, Hawaii (290w?) vs Fiji (275w?), twice the performance and in this case slightly less power consumption. Result.

With no die shrink in sight, improved power to performance efficiency is becoming incredibly important.
 
There are two issues being addressed:

1. The power draw as a limiting factor on what performance can be obtained from a card at the given process. This is important but also theoretical as it always looks to the future.
2. Power draw on two more or less equally performing cards where one draws 150w and the other 250w. This is not really important as long as you have the psu to match and an adequately cooled card and case.
 
I couldn't care less about performance per watt. Were going into mobile technology here.
This is where performance per watt has got its traction from. As long as the card performs well, at a reasonable temp that has a reasonable powerdraw then its all good. Couldn't care if its 1.5x or 2 times performance per watt i care about the FPS i can get and if i got overclocking room with temp and power draw. Along with the noise it generates. I dont look at its performance per watt LMAO.
 
Mynight said:
I could be wrong but would cooler componants lead to a better lifespan?
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You're right - but power draw & operating temperature are not directly linked so this isn't relevant - people get confused because Hawaii both had high power draw (almost as much as the 780Ti) but also a high operating temperature on the reference cards, intended to reduce the noise of the fan by making the cooling more efficient but in practise giving them various other problems with throttling etc and when pushed still a noisy fan hence the ones with better coolers were much better.
 
r7slayer said:
I couldn't care less about performance per watt. Were going into mobile technology here.
This is where performance per watt has got its traction from. As long as the card performs well, at a reasonable temp that has a reasonable powerdraw then its all good. Couldn't care if its 1.5x or 2 times performance per watt i care about the FPS i can get and if i got overclocking room with temp and power draw. Along with the noise it generates. I dont look at its performance per watt LMAO.
Click to expand...

as someone has already said above... GPU's have a "budget" of between 250W and 300W for maximum performance, if the perf/w is higher for the same budget then absolute performance is higher for a given product

you care about performance. Manufacturers, system builders and OEM's care about not having cards that go much if at all over 250W, how much performance they can get in to that form factor has a direct relationship with perf/watt
 
africanos23 said:
Coil whine is irrelevant, look at the lower power draw GTX970 percentage wise it has the most coil whine of all cards I can remember.
Click to expand...

Power draw is tied to frequency/load/core clocks, splitting the power cables to power a 970 can reduce power draw on the rails=power draw=relevant(especially when it cures the whine) if you look at the threads whith 970 coil whine.
 
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