DX 12 performance increase comes at a cost

[Mew]

In Tomshardware's Ashes of the Singularity testing, they found that power consumption goes up when running in DX 12 mode, with the R9 390X being the biggest offender.

 

 

Quote

While the Radeon R9 Fury X adheres to its power limit, the Radeon R9 390X under DirectX 12 blows through the roof compared to DirectX 11. Its 100W-higher power consumption with asynchronous compute activated may be okay when you consider the 20 percent performance increase, but it's just marginally less with this option deactivated, despite significantly lower framerates.

Both Nvidia cards demonstrate increased power consumption with just a moderate performance boost. The GeForce GTX 980 Ti buys itself a mere three frames per second at the cost of 45W+. The GeForce GTX 980, on the other hand, stays rather inconspicuous.

However, running in DX 12 mode does result in less CPU power draw, although pretty minor.

 

I wonder if this is an early driver issue causing this or just the fact that unlocking the 390x and presumably 390's performance causes them to consume even more power. One interesting thing to note is that the GeForce cards draw slightly less power than the rated TDP's on nvidia's website. 980ti is rated at 250W but draws 225W and 980 is rated at 165W and draws 159W.

 

Source: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ashes-of-the-singularity-beta-async-compute-multi-adapter-power-consumption,4479.html

[Guest Kloaked]

Yeah surprise surprise, leveraging a GPU more makes it work harder.

[Noolz]

Unlock moar power

 

Unlock Secondary feet heater

Kappa

[Prysin]

what a massive shock.

 

Are you also going to say my car will use more fuel if i load it up with more weight?

Cuz i'd be pissed if that was true.

 

/s

[stijnweijters]

No shit sherlock, you can see tha PPPOOOWWAAARRR now they will use all the cores soo it will take some xtra power

[Samfisher]

3 minutes ago, Kloaked said:

Yeah surprise surprise, leveraging a GPU more makes it work harder.

CPU*

[Nena Trinity]

Not that it is a big deal but was it not meant to make the hardware more efficient use its power?

[don_svetlio]

How is the 980 using less power than it's rated for ? I find this awfully conspicuous.

[don_svetlio]

And with A-sync off Fury X using less than 980 Ti? I don't buy it.

[The Benjamins]

1 minute ago, don_svetlio said:

And with A-sync off Fury X using less than 980 Ti? I don't buy it.

In CPU power but not GPU, for the A-sync off on the GPU it is still being bottle necked so that is why it uses less. its like running a V6 full out uses more then a V12 just trying to keep up.

[don_svetlio]

Just now, Suicidal Korean said:

In CPU power but not GPU, for the A-sync off on the GPU it is still being bottle necked so that is why it uses less. its like running a V6 full out uses more then a V12 just trying to keep up.

DX12 is low-level so the CPU bottleneck is next to none

[Senzelian]

Just now, don_svetlio said:

How is the 980 using less power than it's rated for ? I find this awfully conspicuous.

This is a conspiracy. NVidia is obviously part of ISIS, while AMD f*cks with Mark Zuckerburg, who has secretly an affair with Osama, who is actually not dead.

Let's boykott everything and fire our liberal guns in the air like true 'Muricans.

[Mew]

3 minutes ago, don_svetlio said:

How is the 980 using less power than it's rated for ? I find this awfully conspicuous.

Well, at least for Maxwell, the bios specifies the max power it'll give the gpu at 100% power limit and the increased power limit. 

[Mew]

1 minute ago, Suicidal Korean said:

In CPU power but not GPU, for the A-sync off on the GPU it is still being bottle necked so that is why it uses less. its like running a V6 full out uses more then a V12 just trying to keep up.

The first graph is strictly gpu power consumption, not system power consumption. 

[don_svetlio]

Just now, kurahk7 said:

Well, at least for Maxwell, the bios specifies the max power it'll give the gpu at 100% power limit and the increased power limit. 

It's rated at 175W. How is it using 145W at MAXIMUM usage? This makes 0 sense

[Mew]

1 minute ago, don_svetlio said:

It's rated at 175W. How is it using 145W at MAXIMUM usage? This makes 0 sense

It's using 159W. Maybe this game isn't a power virus like some other games. 

[don_svetlio]

Just now, kurahk7 said:

It's using 159W. Maybe this game isn't a power virus like some other games. 

A power Virus should force 250W through it. A game using it to the max should be using rated power as minimum and then based on OC anywhere from 200 to 225W

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

Well... Duh... The 390x is finally utilising all its hardware. 

 

Test isn't really accurate though, how is the 390x only using 211w in dx11? 

[Mew]

2 minutes ago, don_svetlio said:

A power Virus should force 250W through it. A game using it to the max should be using rated power as minimum and then based on OC anywhere from 200 to 225W

Actually the real reason might be that nvidia's drivers aren't as optimized so power consumption and performance are both lower? But on the other hand, that would mean after game launches, initial power consumption tests might not be accurate because of drivers...........

[don_svetlio]

Just now, Pohernori said:

Well... Duh... The 390x is finally utilising all its hardware. 

 

Test isn't really accurate though, how is the 390x only using 211w in dx11? 

Same way 980 is using less than rated power

[don_svetlio]

Just now, kurahk7 said:

Actually the real reason might be that nvidia's drivers aren't as optimized so power consumption and performance are both lower? But on the other hand, that would mean after game launches, initial power consumption tests might not be accurate because of drivers...........

In that case they are gimping the 980 via drivers?

[Mew]

Just now, Pohernori said:

Well... Duh... The 390x is finally utilising all its hardware. 

 

Test isn't really accurate though, how is the 390x only using 211w in dx11? 

AMD's dx11 performance wasn't that good to start with so it was underutilized, resulting in lower power consumption? 

[Mew]

5 minutes ago, don_svetlio said:

In that case they are gimping the 980 via drivers?

Gimping performance ahead of Pascal launch? 

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

2 minutes ago, kurahk7 said:

AMD's dx11 performance wasn't that good to start with so it was underutilized, resulting in lower power consumption? 

 

Explains the inaccurate testing. 

 

Tomshardware should put in more than a little effort in their testing. 

[don_svetlio]

Just now, kurahk7 said:

Gimping performance ahead of Pascal launch? 

Eh, possible. Not like we haven't seen that before (poor 780 Ti owners :/)