Will power consumption concern you? (future CPUs)

wandplus

Limp Gawd
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or even GPUs. They used to talk about gains in efficiency but now they're talking more and more cores which will use more and more power (even GPUs). Would you go down to an i3 just to have a more efficient CPU?
 
If you want the CPU to use less, CPU power management does a pretty good job. Then you can have your "65 watt" CPU.

Personally, if the option exists im going to obtain the most powerful CPU possible, overvolt it, and push it as far as it will go.

Its generally not hard to find a psu that can keep up with any load.
 
Nah, i buy what i want regardless. Ive always built wced rigs that can handle 2 to 3 times the wattage i run through them and i always run 40-50% more psu than i need.
When it comes to my main rig, having an excess of cooling and wattage is a must.
This excess would have worked out perfectly if not for all of the cpu and gpu shortages that completely fucked my upgrade plans (and the rest of the enthusiast world).
 
Nah, i buy what i want regardless. Ive always built wced rigs that can handle 2 to 3 times the wattage i run through them and i always run 40-50% more psu than i need.
When it comes to my main rig, having an excess of cooling and wattage is a must.
This excess would have worked out perfectly if not for all of the cpu and gpu shortages that completely fucked my upgrade plans (and the rest of the enthusiast world).
Interestingly enough I run many of my psus at 80-110%. They are supermicro server 560w ones(PWS-563-1H20) I have left over from mining and various other rigs. Dang near impossible to kill and do so well that I have a hard time using anything else. For rigs with a true power usage over 600w I'll happily use two.

As far as dc work goes what new hardware is generally desirable? Is it mostly gpus now?
 
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Ugh, that would be loud af! And hot.
Well when am3 released it was virtually impossible to find a 5800x, 5900x or 5950x(gaming kings). It wasnt until around April of this year that they became almost easy to find. But yes, gpus of any form have been overpriced and impossible to find at less than stupid prices since both amd and nvidia released their new cards last year. So most have either overpaid. Or have decided to wait until this storm of circumstances that caused the shortages subside and prices normalize.
 
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Only where it matters, mobile.
I do like how modern CPUs throttle way back when idle and instantly kick up to boost levels and maintain them as long as thermals are managed. Compared to running at MAX speed constantly which wastes more power and puts more wear and tear on power delivery components.

I remember back in the early 90s when I built a 486 and the motherboard logo had this "Energy Star" label on it.
Loaded up the Doom demo (this was 1993!) and was wondering why my Maxtor IDE drive kept spinning up and down and lo and behold there was a setting in the BIOS to spin down the drive after 30 seconds of inactivity. Turned that crap off immediately! I generally like to leave important systems ON and just set their monitors to go into power save after 20 minutes or so of non input (mouse/KB) and this works well.
 
It should since you're already getting to the point of not being able to buy certain computers in liberal states due to power consumption (a farce, but yet here we are).
 
It should since you're already getting to the point of not being able to buy certain computers in liberal states due to power consumption (a farce, but yet here we are).

You have a point there. There are also technical issues to deal with, like thermal density. I think that in the coming years we are going to see higher and higher core counts, but with decreased per-core power consumption (and per-core performance) under heavily-threaded loads. Just look at the stock behavior of the 5950X as evidence of that trend. 5GHz and 1.5 volts when 2 cores are active, ~3.8GHz and ~1 volt when all 16 are cooking. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but I think it's going to become necessary for a number of reasons, some of them logical and some of them ideological.
 
Yes and no. Do I care? Only in the summer with heat; just because it warms the room up a lot (my 3960X is the worst offender at this). It's not the 220-600W of power, it's that all that power converts to heat, and that heat has to go ~somewhere~, and in this case, that somewhere is the room with poor air circulation. Winter is great, fall and spring are fine, but heart of summer? Even idling along at 220W it puts out a lot of warm air.
 
I don't see Intel or AMD ignoring power consumption going forward - to do so would simply hand the market over to ARM. The top-end desktop CPUs will probably continue to push power/thermal limits, because they can, but ultimately any CPU architecture that can't function with reasonable efficiency in something like a Laptop is going to have limited usefulness.

Where we are right now with Intel reminds me a lot of the Pentium 4 era. Pentium 4 laptops were abominations, usually 2" thick or more and heavy to accommodate the massive cooler inside. Then Intel came through with the Centrino/Pentium-M platform which then evolved into the Core series of processors. I see something similar occurring going forward.
 
Not really when I'm gaming although I have gotten better for when I step away to changing my system sleep timer to a fairly short interval and my monitor will turn off in a few minutes if it doesn't detect a person in front of it.
 
Not really. I think the improvements in power management are huge. If you get a brand new top-end monster of a GPU/CPU you can get your stuff done quicker and have it sleep when not needed. Fans adapt nicely, especially if you edit the curves, CPUs use sub-volt potentials when chilling.

The end of the line for conventional stuff is definitely closer than it was, and there will be a period where the only way to incite buying will be extremely strict binning and factory overclocking/overvolting with a lot of dies not cutting it.
 
I want more speed so as long as the power gain gives good performance gain I am fine with it, however I do have an issue with using 70% more power at 100% all core usage for 5-10% more performance. Basically the boosts should be balanced so that the power usage doesn't go into the minimal returns for a lot more power area. Not really a fan of short term massive extra power usage either as it is irrelevant for 99% of my use cases, outside of benchmarks.
 
I want more speed so as long as the power gain gives good performance gain I am fine with it, however I do have an issue with using 70% more power at 100% all core usage for 5-10% more performance. Basically the boosts should be balanced so that the power usage doesn't go into the minimal returns for a lot more power area. Not really a fan of short term massive extra power usage either as it is irrelevant for 99% of my use cases, outside of benchmarks.

Getting that last 10% of performance at the expense of doubling power consumption used to be the domain of overclockers. Now they do it for you and charge extra for it.
 
As long as there are no power efficiency regressions I'm fine.
 
yes. because the higher wattage parts run hotter.

all that wattage goes to heat, and gimps the top speed.

you need a turbine fan, or one of these to compensate....

white-lasko-box-fans-b20201-64_1000.jpg

i don't like these compromises.
 
As long as the performance is there, and a viable cooling solution exists to keep it from throttling, it can use all the power it wans as far as I'm concerned.
 
For desktop use? Not so much.

When it comes to anything mobile that runs off a battery? Absolutely.
 
Depends on the build and purpose, but generally, not stepping down to a lower processer unless it suites the build. On a file server, mining machine or GPU DC rig? Sure. On my daily driver power is only a concern insofar has PSU and cooling go. My old SR2 would pull 1200w from the wall when pushing it for certain workloads. Much lower normal use, gaming and at idle but still...I only wanted to know if I needed a different PSU or a second PSU.

I haven't bothered checking others since then. Generally, heat is a concern, mainly for the GPU in HTPC/SFF builds if they are in enclosed spaces.

I don't even care about he laptop I use, since it's reasonably sized and I carry a Surface Pro for long flights.

Today, I split a 1200w PSU between two systems and only worry about it if I crank both up, gaming on one and performing rendering or DC tasks on the other. Usually, it's a teeter totter, but, if it becomes an issue then I'll get another PSU. I'm not swapping to an i7 or r7, versus the i9 and TR.

The other concern that is becoming an issue is all the tricks they use to keep heat in check when spiking the power. Again, that's more of a practical issue - having enough power and cooling to support the spikes and not throttle. I don't push the 125w CPU I have now to 175w and hold it there 24/7 like we did in the past, either. So, that's more of a PITA issue.
 
no, but i doubt that power consumption will go very much over say 400w for GPU or CPU, ever. more likely power will stay at those levels and will decline only once some new non-silicon technology is released.
 
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I enjoy ITX builds so power consumption and heat are always a factor. A full tower rig on the other hand not so much.
 
yes. because the higher wattage parts run hotter.

all that wattage goes to heat, and gimps the top speed.

you need a turbine fan, or one of these to compensate....

View attachment 382898

i don't like these compromises.
Many years ago I had a poorly designed PC at work that would randomly crash. I finally just removed the side panel and pointed a box fan at it, problem solved. As for the original question, for everyday office work I am concerned about the power, but I wouldn't compromise performance much as it needs to be useful for many years. If it was for high performance work and games, I'd put performance above all other factors.
 
Don't care one bit. I believe the Alder lake CPU using little big core design is just stupid on a desktop system. Laptop is fine but has no place on the desktop PC.
 
I have some hope for the Royal Core in 2024 (not counting delays lol). I wasn't upbeat about what I read about the RTX 4000 series though. I'm hoping they'll have a 4050 Ti under 150 or even 125 watts. Otherwise, what can you do with a 450 watt power supply.
 
Considering the amount of cores my future cpu will probably have (16 I imagine), heat-noise will be concern and actual action will be taken in the form of buying an big performance but low noise cooler because of that concern and everyone that does the same has I imagine the same concern.

In form how many actual kwh the cpu consumme, not where the energy cost I have where I live combined at how good cpu became to auto-clock and adjust themselve with the workload when they run stock like I do,

a 60 watt average CPU 12 hours a day, 365 days a year versus a 90 watt one would be between $8 and $12 and that quite an big extreme case.
 
If you want the CPU to use less, CPU power management does a pretty good job. Then you can have your "65 watt" CPU.

Personally, if the option exists im going to obtain the most powerful CPU possible, overvolt it, and push it as far as it will go.

Its generally not hard to find a psu that can keep up with any load.
Yeah but if it's not possible to go to another option then I'll stay on the present CPU. and I used to with it.
 
As a person living in a tropical, humid climate by the seaside, I do care a lot about power usage, as it's hot as fuck here, so I started switching to undervolting for more comfort without having to turn on AC. Couldn't care less about the bill or the noise, just the heat.

Performance is still king, though I wouldn't sacrifice 30-50% more thermal output for 5% more frames. At some point, gaming environment matters more than FPS.
 
When lockdowns hit I switched off the OC I had on my CPU. I haven't missed it.
 
My thoughts are the higher watt cpu's don't really draw more power per say to performance if not being used to full potential. Auto lower clocks etc. The new systems we use are more power friendly than what we use to have. My power usage folding on 5 gpu's is half of what 4 9800 cards were. So I would never buy a lower end cpu to save power. Get rid of older power hungry parts and upgrade to more power friendly parts. I would bet my 10850 rig under everyday use draws less power in a month then my wife's 2600k.
 
good thing the 12600k uses much less power than the 11600k

looks like i'll be getting a 12600k when the B boards come out
 
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