AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series "Big Navi" GPU Features 320 W TGP, 16 Gbps GDDR6 Memory

[Makaveli]

It's not about the bill, it's about the heat. 400W GPU, 150W CPU, 50-150W for the rest of the system and you get yourself 0.6-0.7 KWh room heater. That's a no go in a 16m2 or smaller room in late spring and summer months if you live in moderate or warm climate.

I don't see that as big problem at all. You are taking fully loaded numbers and applying them very generally. When you are gaming that 3080 isn't using that full 320 watts. You can notice this by using something like Furmark which is considered a power virus by the GPU makers. Check how much wattage the card is using during this vs playing a game.

Same applied for a 105watt AM4 cpu and the rest of the system.

Unless you have everything running fully loaded non stop you won't hit those maximum power numbers you are trying to use to make your argument. Current hardware is very good at quickly dropping in lower power states when needed. And pretty much everything out today is very good at idle power draw.

 

[Vayra86]

Power is a non issue.

Power does result in more heat, and more heat is always an issue, inside any case.

Worth considering is that CPU TDPs have been all over the place as well. The net result is you'll be taking a lot more measures than before just to keep a nice temp equilibrium. More fans, higher fan speeds, higher airflow requirements. Current day case design is of no real help either, in that sense. In that way, power increases directly translate to increased purchase price of the complete setup. And that is on top of the mild increase to a monthly (!) energy bill. 3,5 pounds per month... is another 42 pounds per year. Three years of high power GPU versus the same tier of past gen... +126 pounds sterling. 700 just became 826. Its not nothing. Its a structural increase of TCO. And not even considering the power/money used for that first 250W we always did.

Also worth considering is the fact that people desire smaller cases. ITX builds are gaining in popularity. Laptops are a growth market and a larger one than consumer desktops.

So... is power truly a non issue... not entirely then?

Unless you have everything running fully loaded non stop you won't hit those maximum power numbers you are trying to use to make your argument. Current hardware is very good at quickly dropping in lower power states when needed. And pretty much everything out today is very good at idle power draw.

You can rest assured a common use case for GPU is to run it at a100% utilization. Even if that doesn't always translate to 100% of power budget... its still going to be close.

 

[Chrispy_]

The new 20.10.1 driver seems to address the HDMI audio issue with AV receivers. I have not tested this on the RX 5700 XT and Onkyo yet.

Goddamnit! I waited three months and the 2060S has only been in there for four days before AMD fix it. I'm using Yamaha, but I suspect if they say "AV recievers" it basically means any situation where there's an intermediate device extracting audio between the GPU and the final display.

I'll have to give this a try at the weekend. The 5700XT is faster AND significantly quieter than the 2060S.

Or rather, I should say that the 5700XT I have is quieter than the 2060S I have. I shouldn't make sweeping generalisations since both cards have a wide variety of performance and acoustics depending on which exact model. Still, though, the 5700XT undervolts more gracefully than the 2060S, I guess that's 7nm vs 12nm for you....

 

[Cheeseball]

Goddamnit!
I waited three months and the 2060S has only been in there for four days before AMD fix it.
I'm on Yamaha, but I suspect if they say "AV recievers" it basically means any situation where there's an intermediate device between the GPU and the final display.
I'll have to give this a try at the weekend. The 5700XT is faster AND quieter than the 2060S and my highest-priority in an HTPC graphics card is silence and 4K60 performance, something I've recently realised the 2060S sucks at.

I would think that depends on which 2060S AIB card you purchased (in relation to the silence since the cooling layout varies). No doubt that the 2060S is a weaker card in terms of gaming performance, but it should be on-par when it comes to using NVENC/NVDEC compared to VCE (except in real-time H.264 transcoding/streaming).

 

[Makaveli]

You can rest assured a common use case for GPU is to run it at a100% utilization. Even if that doesn't always translate to 100% of power budget... its still going to be close.

Yes for those that are using them for work and miners.

But for gamers you are rarely sitting at 100% utilization.

 

[mtcn77]

Unless you have everything running fully loaded non stop you won't hit those maximum power numbers you are trying to use to make your argument. Current hardware is very good at quickly dropping in lower power states when needed. And pretty much everything out today is very good at idle power draw.

Yes for those that are using them for work and miners.

I have to say, after all the miner craze I have encountered, it seems very plausible that those numbers are not just real, they are vital to the operating life of the gpu. People have been cancelling factory overclocks just to last them a couple months longer. All those 20% overclocks, available power budget limits are thrown out the window when you have a brick.

 

[Zach_01]

But for gamers you are rarely sitting at 100% utilization.

2~3 games I play lately I see an average of 98~99% GPU usage when GPU is unrestricted at full speed (no FPS cap). 1920x1200 max settings

 

[EarthDog]

But for gamers you are rarely sitting at 100% utilization.

Sorry, what? Any modernish game that doesn't have any limitations (cpu or vsync) will run a gpu at that 98/99% threshold this is normal behavior. I cant think of a game I own outside of gemcraft that doesn't show ~99% use...

 

[Mysteoa]

I don't follow, the limited edition of the 5700XT wasn't a different product, it was still named 5700XT. "6900XTX" implies a different product.

Navi 10 XTX is 5700 XT 50th Anniversary Lisa Su edition, so essential NAVI 21XTX is higher binned NAVI 21XT. Maybe NAVI 21XTX is a 6900XT watercooled edition.

 

[Makaveli]

Sorry, what? Any modernish game that doesn't have any limitations (cpu or vsync) will run a gpu at that 98/99% threshold this is normal behavior. I cant think of a game I own outside of gemcraft that doesn't show ~99% use...

I mean it been pegged to 100% consistently. In most games usage will vary with load screens, where you are on the map, how many enemies etc.

 

[dragontamer5788]

I mean it been pegged to 100% consistently. In most games usage will vary with load screens, where you are on the map, how many enemies etc.

Even at 100% utilization, that doesn't mean that the GPU is using 100% of the power. Utilization is usually OS-level, which is to say how full the GPU-command queues are. Its not actually about power usage at all.

Different games will be mostly at high utilization (because the command queues have something in them constantly), but if you watch the power-usage, it will vary.

 

[EarthDog]

I mean it been pegged to 100% consistently. In most games usage will vary with load screens, where you are on the map, how many enemies etc.

Load screens, sure.. otherwise, its pretty consistent 98/99%.. very consistent (again unless vsync, or CPU bottleneck). As was said, power can vary though.

 

[Th3pwn3r]

We used to have two slot gpu's as of last gen that went upto 3 slots, and now we are seeing 4 slot gpu's and it is all about to cool the power hungry beasts. But this trend surely has to stop. Yes, we can undervolt to bring power consumption to our desired needs and will most certainly be more efficient to last gen. But is that what 99% of users would do? I think about not only the power bill, the heat that is outputted, the spinning of fans,band consequently the faster detoriation of those fans and other components in the system. The noise output, and the heat that comes from the case will be uncomfortable.

I suggest you shutdown your computer or power off your phone because you're just wasting electricity and generating heat for what reason? I'm not serious. There's a lot of goofy going on in your post but if you don't want noise and heat then just put your PC in the next room over and use extension cables for everything OR you could vent your PC somehow. A LONG time ago I vented my PC into my Attic and while many would say small, low pressure PC fans won't push the air up and out I can say for sure that it worked for me.

 

[Mussels]

I just don't get this undervolting crowd... You pay for a certain level of performance, but due to power you strip a fair amount of performance off of it to run lower. Why not pay less for a card down the stack with less power use and use it to its fullest potential? I don't buy a performance coupe and decide to chip it to lower the horsepower because I don't like the gas mileage...

freedom to run either way. right now at 1440p 144hz, i doubt a 3080 will get maxed out very often - so i'd either run Vsync on, a power limiter or both to keep the heat down until i actually need the performance.

To put it another way, i dont want a 400W screamer to run CSGO - i'd rather it become a 200W card in that situation.

Edit: with my 1080, its almost always 100% load, except for the instances i'm CPU limited. Even if its not an issue NOW, it WILL be as the cards age.

 

[Th3pwn3r]

freedom to run either way. right now at 1440p 144hz, i doubt a 3080 will get maxed out very often - so i'd either run Vsync on, a power limiter or both to keep the heat down until i actually need the performance.

To put it another way, i dont want a 400W screamer to run CSGO - i'd rather it become a 200W card in that situation.

Fair point but this isn't the same scenario others describe. But what you've described is also wasteful if you're not going to use the full potential of the card you have installed. In your case you probably shouldn't have upgraded at all. Seems like a hassle to me to water down a card and then boost it back up just because I'm gonna play a different game .

 

[mtcn77]

But what you've described is also wasteful if you're not going to use the full potential of the card you have installed.

You have to consider whatever you do, that gpu is never gonna run its workloads serially. There is an order of magnitude power difference between running the card 99% and 100%. Are you going to pursue that 1%? It is not 99p's, or 999th's either. Just 99fps, or 100 for all disrupted case internals, cpu and psu overheating as a result. Not cool.

 

[Mussels]

Fair point but this isn't the same scenario others describe. But what you've described is also wasteful if you're not going to use the full potential of the card you have installed. In your case you probably shouldn't have upgraded at all. Seems like a hassle to me to water down a card and then boost it back up just because I'm gonna play a different game .

You dont see the point in getting a GPU twice as fast as what i have, for future games? You may have odd views on this stuff.

 

[Camm]

Discussions on boosting from Sony and AMD continuing to separate Game from Boost clock is much more interesting that the 'TDP' numbers IMO.

Much like CPU's, TDP's will start becoming irrelevant, and I believe this is the first move as such, with boosting becoming much more deterministic and transitory.

 

[nguyen]

Fair point but this isn't the same scenario others describe. But what you've described is also wasteful if you're not going to use the full potential of the card you have installed. In your case you probably shouldn't have upgraded at all. Seems like a hassle to me to water down a card and then boost it back up just because I'm gonna play a different game .

have you ever seen those anime where the villains just keep on unleashing their power when MC power up .

 

[EarthDog]

freedom to run either way. right now at 1440p 144hz, i doubt a 3080 will get maxed out very often - so i'd either run Vsync on, a power limiter or both to keep the heat down until i actually need the performance.

To put it another way, i dont want a 400W screamer to run CSGO - i'd rather it become a 200W card in that situation.

Edit: with my 1080, its almost always 100% load, except for the instances i'm CPU limited. Even if its not an issue NOW, it WILL be as the cards age.

Fair point. But in cases like that, put a frame limiter on of some sort in-game... This was when you play titles like csgo hitting 300 fps, you'll cap it to your refresh, power use, noise, and temps all drop while other games where the horsepower is needed isnt then lacking.

 

[Th3pwn3r]

You have to consider whatever you do, that gpu is never gonna run its workloads serially. There is an order of magnitude power difference between running the card 99% and 100%. Are you going to pursue that 1%? It is not 99p's, or 999th's either. Just 99fps, or 100 for all disrupted case internals, cpu and psu overheating as a result. Not cool.

If your GPU is causing your CPU and PSU to overheat then you have some serious build issues and I suggest making necessary modifications. Maybe your case is one of those full glass, RGB pieces of junk with zero airflow.

You dont see the point in getting a GPU twice as fast as what i have, for future games? You may have odd views on this stuff.

No, I don't see a point in paying a premium for a premium video card now to play future games later. You'd probably be better off buying a future card when the future games are out BUT I'm saying games a couple of years out or so. Personally I don't think future proofing is really a thing. I don't always upgrade out of necessity. However, I'm also not concerned about power consumption or heat. The smallest power supply I have is a 750 watt, followed by 850s, and 1200s (this laptop excluded).

 

[mtcn77]

If your GPU is causing your CPU and PSU to overheat then you have some serious build issues and I suggest making necessary modifications. Maybe your case is one of those full glass, RGB pieces of junk with zero airflow.

Yes, because everybody who isn't using a blower type reference card is in this group together.
I don't wanna fight, since I haven't sorted which type of internet Overlord you are, but it is wildly apparent that open-bench type cases do not constitute the bulk of pc users. I agree it doesn't matter in some cases, but they aren't in the majority of cases.

 

[EarthDog]

Yes, because everybody who isn't using a blower type reference card is in this group together.
I don't wanna fight, since I haven't sorted which type of internet Overlord you are, but it is wildly apparent that open-bench type cases do not constitute the bulk of pc users. I agree it doesn't matter in some cases, but they aren't in the majority of cases.

Nor is shoehorning a 320W+ card into a shoebox and thinking it would be OK. That's a two way street.

 

[Vayra86]

Nor is shoehorning a 320W+ card into a shoebox and thinking it would be OK. That's a two way street.

Take off the top and cut out the displayports... External GPU enclosure for ultra cheap.

 

[Chrispy_]

Oh man, you guys are still trying to get your head around this, huh?
Here's a 5700XT of mine, graphed for various things, but at the lowest stable OCCT voltages for each clock:

You buy the product and can run it at any clock and power level you choose as long as it's stable. You can see that in an ideal world, best performance/Watt for this card was ~1375MHz.
AMD sold it at 1850MHz and had a much higher TDP and subsequent heat/noise levels than the 12nm TU106 it competed against. That's taking the efficiency advantage of TSMC's 7nm node and throwing it away, and then throwing away even more just to get fractionally higher benchmark scores.

You literally get a slider in the driver where you can undo this dumb decision. What you do with that slider is entirely up to you, it's not going to change how much you paid for the card, only how much you want to trade peace and quiet for performance. Clearly noise is a big problem because quiet GPUs are a big selling point for all AIB vendors, all trying to compete with larger fans at lower RPMs, features like idle fan stop etc. If you have a huge case with tons of low-noise airflow you can afford to buy a gargantuan graphics card that'll dissipate 300W quietly and let the case deal with that 300W problem seperately.

If you don't have a high airflow case, or loads of room, such cards may not even physically fit and the card's own fan noise is irrelevant because it'll dump so much heat into a smaller case that all the other fans in the case ramp up in their attempt to compensate with the additional 300W burden of the graphics card.

I haven't even mentioned electricity cost or the unwanted effect of heating up the room. Those are also valid arguments but not necessary as the noise level created by higher power consumption is enough for me to justify undervolting (and minor underclocking) all by itself.