Question 3060ti +80W power usage when recording @4k

[psolord]

Hello all.

I did my first ever recording at 4K with shadowplay the other day and I noticed extreme power draw, when doing that.

The game I recorded was Chorus and while it used around 110W, with the settings I had chosen, when I started recording with shadowplay, it jumped by 80W!

Here are two screenshots at the same location, showcasing this.





And this is the resulting video, for reference (non monetized channel).

I have used shadowplay for many recordings, on GTX 970, GTX 1070 and even the 3060ti, but at 1080p and hadn't seen anything that pronounced. Now I got a 4k screen and started recording at 4k and this is what happened.

I was lucky that Chorus was a light game, but what happens when I run a game that needs the full power of the 3060ti, just for the rendering? Is this normal?

thanks

 

[ZGR]

I see increased GPU load when using NVENC. To compensate, I usually bump the clocks up by about 100 MHz.

You check your 3060 Ti's voltage? 3000 series can undervolt really well. I like to remain below 0.8v under load; dropping power consumption nearly in half.

In MSI Afterburner, press CTRL-F. Hold alt and drag down one of the dots to lower your clocks by a few hundred MHz. Then find a voltage you wanna test, and drag that single dot up to where you wanna test and click Apply in the main MSI Afterburner window.

I like to do:
0.717 mV @ 1560 MHz
0.731 mV @ 1605 MHz
0.792 mV @ 1770 MHz
0.867 mV @ 1875 MHz

Here is what it should look like:


For reference, my GPU at stock is 1049 mV @ 1950 MHz which is stupid.

Save the profiles to MSI Afterburner once you are stable.

 

[psolord]

Thanks for your response.

In your Nvenc tests, did you see that much greater power draw, as I see here?

 

[ZGR]

At stock I do see about a 30W increase in X4. I am awfully close to the 320W power limit that throttles the card. I do not see this behavior with voltage curve though.

Your GPU power limit is 200W I believe. It appears your card is boosting to its max voltage and clockspeed during the recording. It does go back down to 110 ish watts during the loading screen, and we can see your clockspeed decrease as well.

A quick fix would be setting your GPU's power limit to 70% and call it a day. You do lose out on ~100 MHz compared to using the voltage curve editor though.