Question GPU Power consumption in games

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flagmonkey47

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Apr 24, 2019
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While playing Fallout 4 and Far cry Primal I noticed that my RX 460 was not drawing its full 76W as it does in Furmark and other games. It was stuck at 52 W and I got only 24fps. However the GPU utilisation was not dropping much , only to 98% when the drops ocurred. Is this behaviour normal? I was playing at ultra. The odd thing is that when I lower settings the power consumption increases.
 
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ubern00b

ubern00b

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Jun 11, 2019
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is it the 2GB? you could be hitting your vram limit if that's the case as TPU's review of the 460 4GB shows it playing FO4 at 46fps average@1080p though FC Primal was low @28fps 1080p and is a more demanding game
 
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flagmonkey47

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Apr 24, 2019
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ubern00b said:
is it the 2GB? you could be hitting your vram limit if that's the case as TPU's review of the 460 4GB shows it playing FO4 at 46fps average@1080p though FC Primal was low @28fps 1080p and is a more demanding game
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It is the 4 gig version. Please post the link. I am confused. Even the tomshardware benchmark showed r7 370 playing the game at ultra.
 
ubern00b

ubern00b

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Jun 11, 2019
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Is your CPU overclocked? what RAM speed and amount? What HDD/SSD do you have the games on?

I mean you have the lowest spec'd Ryzen from the very first gen which is 2 years old now and a 3 year old entry level GPU so there's only so much performance you can expect with these components in gaming, you wont change that much, you could improve it by overclocking your CPU, GPU and RAM if possible, make sure your using the latest chipset and GPU drivers, keeping HDD's defragged, limiting background tasks whilst gaming etc. You will probably see a decent boost overcloking your CPU and GPU, your motherboard should have enough options in the bios to get that 1200 to around 3.9-4Ghz and MSI afterburner will allow you to squeeze a few more % FPS from your GPU also. just turn settings down to med/high and don't worry about trying to play on ultra settings as there's usually minimal improved eye candy for quite a considerable hit in performance.
 
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flagmonkey47

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Apr 24, 2019
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ubern00b said:
Is your CPU overclocked? what RAM speed and amount? What HDD/SSD do you have the games on?

I mean you have the lowest spec'd Ryzen from the very first gen which is 2 years old now and a 3 year old entry level GPU so there's only so much performance you can expect with these components in gaming, you wont change that much, you could improve it by overclocking your CPU, GPU and RAM if possible, make sure your using the latest chipset and GPU drivers, keeping HDD's defragged, limiting background tasks whilst gaming etc. You will probably see a decent boost overcloking your CPU and GPU, your motherboard should have enough options in the bios to get that 1200 to around 3.9-4Ghz and MSI afterburner will allow you to squeeze a few more % FPS from your GPU also. just turn settings down to med/high and don't worry about trying to play on ultra settings as there's usually minimal improved eye candy for quite a considerable hit in performance.
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I am going to upgrade my GPU soon but what I wanted to know was why I see the power droop in those games. Nobody has explanation for that. And yes regarding the age of my components you gotta consider the age of the games that I am playing.
 
psolord

psolord

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Sep 16, 2009
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Try reducing the draw distance. This can do wonders in weak systems, especially when using AMD driver, which is not the most DX11 multithreaded driver out there.

There is a specific fallout thread around here somewhere, that has shown some terrible results for AMD. I wonder if anyone tested a Ryzen 3000 yet or a Navi...

Regarding the power usage, yes, higher settings can cause lower power usage, because a specific part of the card is hammered, while the rest of them are waiting their turn. For example too much shaders hammering, can lead the rops and tmus to fall asleep, thus lower power usage.
 
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flagmonkey47

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Apr 24, 2019
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psolord said:
Try reducing the draw distance. This can do wonders in weak systems, especially when using AMD driver, which is not the most DX11 multithreaded driver out there.

There is a specific fallout thread around here somewhere, that has shown some terrible results for AMD. I wonder if anyone tested a Ryzen 3000 yet or a Navi...

Regarding the power usage, yes, higher settings can cause lower power usage, because a specific part of the card is hammered, while the rest of them are waiting their turn. For example too much shaders hammering, can lead the rops and tmus to fall asleep, thus lower power usage.
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Tried reducing all draw distances and 0 effect. How is the tomshardware benchmark showing r7 370 and r7 360 playing the game at acceptable frame rates? Post the link of the thread.
 
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maddie

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Jul 18, 2010
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What exactly is the name and model # of your graphics card?

98% utilization, 52 W and 24fps. Horrible thought here. I keep seeing a RX550
 
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flagmonkey47

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Apr 24, 2019
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I think it is time to buy a new card, this card is too weak to run the game. Will RX 570 run this game at those settings?
 
ubern00b

ubern00b

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Jun 11, 2019
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570 is good for high settings at 1080p in most games, there will be the odd few where reducing certain settings will improve your FPS though I'm sure the 570 should be about 2x as powerful as rx 460 without looking for comparisons.

Edit: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/sapphire-rx-570-pulse/30.html yup roughly x2 the performance of a 460.

Also note that furmark places an unrealistic load on the GPU that games don't tend to even when your game is stresing the GPU 100% hence the higher power usage.
 
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pandemonium

pandemonium

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Mar 17, 2011
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Did you ever figure this out?

This sounds like a poor driver set, global settings, or possibly thermal throttling to me. How dirty is the fan and heatsink fins? :p
 
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flagmonkey47

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Apr 24, 2019
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pandemonium said:
Did you ever figure this out?

This sounds like a poor driver set, global settings, or possibly thermal throttling to me. How dirty is the fan and heatsink fins? :p
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My GPU temps are fine and fan is clean. And the fps drops occur when I step on shadows in Fallout 4.
 
IntelUser2000

IntelUser2000

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Oct 14, 2003
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flagmonkey47 said:
My GPU temps are fine and fan is clean. And the fps drops occur when I step on shadows in Fallout 4.
Click to expand...

So when that happens, what clock is the CPU and GPU running at?

The thing is reviews are idealized because real world testing is very very difficult and its impossible to cover every scenario that the user might subject to. Plus, the system is usually clean.
 
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flagmonkey47

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Apr 24, 2019
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IntelUser2000 said:
So when that happens, what clock is the CPU and GPU running at?

The thing is reviews are idealized because real world testing is very very difficult and its impossible to cover every scenario that the user might subject to. Plus, the system is usually clean.
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Max clocks. The most surprising part is that the most intensive scenes like diamond city run well while others do not.Only when I step on shadows and that too from a certain angle I get horrible fps. And yes one more thing, the godrays are pixelated for some reason even on high godrays setting. I tried testing drivers from two years back but no help. Since I purchased the card I recieve error 0x15 for amdkmdap in events viewer after drivers are successfully installed and that is weird for me. It says that the service had a problem starting. I tried everything like re-installing windows.
 
IntelUser2000

IntelUser2000

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Oct 14, 2003
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flagmonkey47 said:
Since I purchased the card I recieve error 0x15 for amdkmdap in events viewer after drivers are successfully installed and that is weird for me. It says that the service had a problem starting. I tried everything like re-installing windows.
Click to expand...

Hmm, maybe the card has a problem.

The thing is load % numbers are too simplistic. You can have the CPU Turbo at 100% on mostly idle threads. Then there's AVX where it'll use far more power.

Same thing with GPUs.

Try changing the GPU core and memory clocks to see how it behaves. Try both lowering it and increasing it.

If its under warranty you might want to see if you can replace it. What about temperatures?
 
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flagmonkey47

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Apr 24, 2019
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IntelUser2000 said:
Hmm, maybe the card has a problem.

The thing is load % numbers are too simplistic. You can have the CPU Turbo at 100% on mostly idle threads. Then there's AVX where it'll use far more power.

Same thing with GPUs.

Try changing the GPU core and memory clocks to see how it behaves. Try both lowering it and increasing it.

If its under warranty you might want to see if you can replace it. What about temperatures?
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That is another weird issue. In all games due to higher power consumption the temps go above 70 but only in THIS specific game they are around 60-65 due to lower power consumption. And about warranty I tried that too and I got another card with different serial numbers but the same errors. So I think the card is fine. But one think that I have not changed is this trash Gigabyte board. That could be the issue. There BIOS is just annoying. Also overclocking RAM, CPU, GPU does not make difference of one frame.
 
psolord

psolord

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Sep 16, 2009
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flagmonkey47 said:
That is another weird issue. In all games due to higher power consumption the temps go above 70 but only in THIS specific game they are around 60-65 due to lower power consumption. And about warranty I tried that too and I got another card with different serial numbers but the same errors. So I think the card is fine. But one think that I have not changed is this trash Gigabyte board. That could be the issue. There BIOS is just annoying. Also overclocking RAM, CPU, GPU does not make difference of one frame.
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Did you try rehashing the game files? Also sorry but I couldn't find the fallout thread I told you about.
 
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flagmonkey47

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Apr 24, 2019
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psolord said:
Did you try rehashing the game files? Also sorry but I couldn't find the fallout thread I told you about.
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Do you mean forcing vsync off using .ini files? I tried that already. I saw on the internet how a GTX 960 was having problem with this game so i think my fps is as it should be. What do you think?
 
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