Is there a list or table that anyone knows of that lays out the last few generations of GPUs that gives actual power usage numbers, and performance numbers? basically looking to build a very low watt machine for some modern games, World of warships, Quake champions as well as some emulator stuff. Will be running linux of some flavor.
Some hardware reviewers have power numbers, rarely for the affordable GPUs though. I will keep my eyes open.
Don’t know how the APUs do in Linux, but a 3400G would probably be your best bet.
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In an ideal world that’s exactly what I would do, but I’m just trying to keep some old hardware out of the recycling facility. ride it 'til the wheels fall off.
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Went shopping for graphics cards myself a while back. Settled on an old Radeon 6450 as the best-performing fanless device (without absurd massive heatsink) I could locate. Rated at 18W and costs under $10 used. If you need more processing power, R7 240 is 30W and $30.
https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-Radeon-HD-6450-vs-AMD-R7-240/m7821vsm8608
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Alternatively, if you spend more time watching video than gaming, these numbers might be more useful:
— https://www.3dcenter.org/abbildung/graphics-card-fullhd-performancepowerdraw-index-march-2020
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Yeah, I’m genuinely surprised they don’t include those numbers in a lot of stuff. HD/4K video playback requires some power, but not full gpu usage, so it’s not characterized by idle or gaming load.
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This graph feels like there is information required to understand it.
The first thing I can think of when you say “low power” is an Intel NUC or an equivalent AMD PC. Running laptop components gives usually the best power draw/performance rateo since they’re build to run on battery for at least 2 hours worst case scenario.
So for Intel anything with an Iris Plus GPU will be enough for World of Warships or Quake Champions.
For AMD I don’t know if there exists yet a 4000 series mini PC. If it does a 4700/4700U has enough power for those games in the GPU.
Considering that the decoding is done in hardware and mapped to the GPU core the load it puts on the component is negligible.
Keyword for the engineers (me included): approximation
Red indicates cards from Team Red. Green indicates cards from Team Green. The list is sorted in descending order of power consumption. The first number in the brackets after the model number is FHD playback performance compared to some baseline model in the distant past (not sure which one — they have been producing these charts for years). The % at the end of each bar is (and the length of the bars themselves are) merely normalised to a model chosen from the visible sample set (in this case the 2060S) — which lets you quickly compare the video-perf/watt of the displayed models without having to do any real math. HTH.
tl;dr: Longer bars == better efficiency. Someone looking to build a low-power, video-performant system would select a dGPU with long bars near the bottom of the list.
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Asus PN50 is a 4000 series mini pc. They have up to a 4800u I believe. Availability is crap though.
Also I think the OP is looking for an efficient dedicated gpu to put in an older system.
I don’t have a good reference for what is needed for gaming, but for video playback a Gt710 can do 1080p fine. I don’t know about 4k though.
Another option I just remembered is buying an Intel laptop CPU that’s soldered to PCB to work with desktop motherboards. Linus did a video on it and that’s a pretty good way to get good CPU performance and have more watts in the budget for a GPU.
P.S. It’s the jankiest thing possible, but effective I think.
Doesn’t it have to clock up anyways, so you’d see some increase in power draw?
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If not clock increase, it has to turn on the decoding hardware.
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From my experience there’s no clock increase over idle clock while video decoding.
Increase in power draw of course, but how measurable it is over tens of watts?
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