Well , I have a 3900x Mini ITX Build and for the last few days I’ve toggled the “Eco Mode” option from BIOS as a curiosity experiment .
It turned out to be one of the most “under the radar” features of Zen2 architecture and IMHO there are real benefits to get from this .
So far it seems to work fine (better than fine for me) . Temps , both at idle and under load are noticeable lower and although there is a measurable loss of performance (mainly on multy-core) it is un-perceivable to me during my day to day operations . As a plus, gaming seems virtually unaffected.
I have a Gigabyte X570I Aorus pro wifi mobo and this feature was available since BIOS ver. F4 … I know it is available through Ryzen Master program also but I’m on Linux so …
Fun idea @Wendell , is it possible to investigate further in more scientific and quantifiable measure and have your opinion on the matter? (I think it would make a cool L1 video)
Yeah, as far as I know Eco Mode limits the overall power limit but still allows it to boost clocks like a mofo. And honestly, with the efficiency of Ryzen you might drop 10-20% in performance under heavy load but you draw 40% less power. So for small form factor builds Eco Mode is great.
Did a quick check with CPU-X (the same as CPU-Z but for Linux) and GeekBench_X86_64 run , and overall I’m very pleased . It boosts exactly the same 4.1 - 4.2 Ghz all core (depending the workload) and it regularly hits 4.5+ on single thread instances . Workloads like Blender would take a minor hit as it won’t boost as high as possible for the duration of a sensible project render but my CAD/CATIA projects don’t seem to be affected at all . If you game too performance is exactly the same . Thermals are a bit better overall . I don’t know what kind of dark sorcery are practicing at AMD, but it works …
I have been an AMD fan since the Phenom days, and run a 3950X for the cores and threads while crunching BOINC / WCG numbers 24x7 with 100% cores and 100% cycles. The ECO mode clearly dropped 20c from temps, now consistently in the upper 50-60c range with Corsair AIO.
I am running Manjaro linux. Haven’t done any real technical measurements, but my daily statistics graph doesn’t even show the point where I switched to ECO mode.
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