What is your GPU Wattage draw?

[wwed26]

Hi Everyone,

Reviewing my power usage in Ubuntu via watch -n 0.5 nvidia-smi - driver 510.108.03

Finding that my power draw idles at around 75-80W

This occurs when I push my Gigabyte M32U (4k) to 144hz. At 60hz its in the low 40s.
The 3080Ti is also driving a LG 4k 60hz monitor. If it means anything, the Gigabyte is connected via HDMI 2.1, the LG monitor via DP.

Does this seem high to y’all? Don’t hesitate to post yours. Interested to see.

At 4k 144hz it seems like my Performance Level floor is Level 2.

Let me know your thoughts!

P.S. dropping to 120hz drops draw to about 50W with intermittent spikes to 80W

[Susanna]

Radeon RX 6900XT, idles at reported 5W.
I’m using the iGPU as output, though, which idles at reported 58W. 4k120Hz.

[MetalizeYourBrain]

HWiNFO64 reports my MSI RTX 2070 Super Gaming X idling at 24W while displaying the Windows desktop at 3840x1600 144Hz. It stays pretty steadly at that power level while not moving anything.

@wwed26

Does this seem high to y’all? Don’t hesitate to post yours. Interested to see.

Doesn’t seem too high considering you’re running two 4K panels, but it’s weird seeing it drop 30W reducing one screen refresh rate by 24Hz.
One thing though: try using Nvidia SMI with an higher sampling interval (1s or above). Using a 0.5s sampling interval usually puts unnecessary stress on the system and might prevent the system from idling.

[anon7678104]

3070 idles at the desktop 11-14w tops out at around 205w in something like assassins creed origins running max settings 1440p 60fps.
with a total board power including the cpu, 320w.

in debian

Every 0.5s: nvidia-smi Debian: Sun May 28 23:35:09 2023Sun May 28 23:35:09 2023
±----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 525.105.17 Driver Version: 525.105.17 CUDA Version: 12.0 |
| 0% 35C P8 13W / 240W | 481MiB / 8192MiB
| 2% Default |
||=======================================||

13-38w sitting at idle with firefox open.

so windows is a little more power efficient at idle in my case.

[wwed26]

@MetalizeYourBrain

One thing though: try using Nvidia SMI with an higher sampling interval (1s or above). Using a 0.5s sampling interval usually puts unnecessary stress on the system and might prevent the system from idling.

This… seeing a stable 48W with this.

Noticing a about 25-30% gpu usage at Perf Level 1. This appears to be the new floor . Can’t get to Level 0

Just flinging windows across the monitors get spikes between 75-100W

EDIT: Graphics clock sits around the bottom spec of 210Mhz a lot of the time. Then further noticed that L0 and L1 (hehe) min graphics clock is the same. I am now thinking this is VRAM driven

[rrubberr]

@wwed26

Finding that my power draw idles at around 75-80W

Wow that’s crazy! Running Debian, my whole dual processor system with 12 DIMMs and an A5000 idles at 90 watts at the wall!

It probably has to do with the resolution, I only run 2560x1440 at 144hz.

I’ve seen Nvidia issue driver fixes in the past for high idle power draw, so hopefully you’ll find that it decreases substantially in the future.

[wwed26]

They have for sure in the newer versions at the cost of I can’t push my monitor past 60hz. The newer ones are a regression for me in that front.

That whole experience really pissed me off.

[wwed26]

Just realizing back when I was testing I was looking at it with only a 1440p.

Maybe it’s not unfathomable to have the hike.

Thanks y’all for your input. Sincerely.

[Kht540]

@wwed26

Finding that my power draw idles at around 75-80W

Does this seem high to y’all? Don’t hesitate to post yours. Interested to see.

Let me know your thoughts!

I’m not sure but I can tell you mine. Stock it’s about 60 watts at 1440p using an RX6950XT at 164hz. Slightly edited SPPT settings and it’s more like 75 watts “idle”.

[MetalizeYourBrain]

@wwed26

This… seeing a stable 48W with this.

Nice, that’s a lot closer to what it should be in my opinion.

@wwed26

I am now thinking this is VRAM driven

Can you force the GPU into lower power states to see what happens? SMI has a preferred mode, maybe setting that to powersave could help.

@wwed26

Just realizing back when I was testing I was looking at it with only a 1440p.

I also just noticed that you had some processes running in the background spawned by Firefox. I think you had your GPU still rendering web pages in the background. In this new screenshot you posted only the DE is running, which is a much more realistic idling state for the GPU.

[thro]

@wwed26

Finding that my power draw idles at around 75-80W

under windows 6900xt about 5 watts doing 4k desktop