GPUs & CPUs & Enthusiast hardware: Questions, Discussion and fanboy slap-fights - Nvidia & AMD & Intel - Separe but Equal. Intel rides in the back of the bus.

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

I think they are going to have to in the laptop market. My Ryzen-based laptop can't even survive for 3 hours, even in eco mode. My M1 MB Pro goes all day.

You're getting 3 hours instead of 30?

AMD Phoenix and Intel Meteor Lake add machine learning accelerators, which Apple has been using since A11 Bionic in 2017 and the M1 in 2020.

 

[The Ugly One]

You're getting 3 hours instead of 30?

AMD Phoenix and Intel Meteor Lake add machine learning accelerators, which Apple has been using since A11 Bionic in 2017 and the M1 in 2020.

Yes, although it's a 6800H, not a 6800U. Still, though, modern CPUs don't suck down much energy when they're not doing anything, and it runs in low-power eco mode when you unplug it. Right around 3 hours with the discrete GPU disabled.

 

[Susanna]

Yes, although it's a 6800H, not a 6800U. Still, though, modern CPUs don't suck down much energy when they're not doing anything, and it runs in low-power eco mode when you unplug it. Right around 3 hours with the discrete GPU disabled.

Get the APU tuning thing. My 5800H runs fine on a -60 curve optimiser, which makes it both cooler and longer lasting.
The OLED screen still accounts for most of the battery drain though, and even with how much cooler it runs now it still kicks the fans into maximum overdrive a few seconds after boot.
Apple really do make the only tolerable laptops this decade, don’t be an idiot like me and just pay the Apple tax, it’s more than worth it.

 

[The Ugly One]

Get the APU tuning thing. My 5800H runs fine on a -60 curve optimiser, which makes it both cooler and longer lasting.
The OLED screen still accounts for most of the battery drain though, and even with how much cooler it runs now it still kicks the fans into maximum overdrive a few seconds after boot.
Apple really do make the only tolerable laptops this decade, don’t be an idiot like me and just pay the Apple tax, it’s more than worth it.

This?

https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/ryzen-master

I also found this:

https://ryzencontroller.com/

Agreed on the Macs, but I need x86 for my dumb bullshit. The wife loves her M1 MB Pro, though (which is how I am painfully aware of just how bad my laptop's battery life is compared to hers).

 

[Just Some Other Guy]

Eh, if I was using a laptop as an actual portable device it'd matter more. Thankfully 99% of the time it's going to locations I can plug mine in, so I know nothing about battery life nowadays. Would rather have the wider range of capability of a non-Apple device.

 

[Susanna]

This?

https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/ryzen-master

I also found this:

https://ryzencontroller.com/

Agreed on the Macs, but I need x86 for my dumb bullshit. The wife loves her M1 MB Pro, though (which is how I am painfully aware of just how bad my laptop's battery life is compared to hers).

Unfortunately Ryzen Master won't work, because these stupid things aren't overclockable, so we can't practically undervolt them either.
You have to get a sketchy third party software (Windows-exclusive, of course) and then start that every boot, and keep it running, for it to work. It's utterly sickening.

https://github.com/JamesCJ60/Universal-x86-Tuning-Utility/releases

Words can't express my disdain for Windows laptops and everything about them. My first computer was a MacBook Air, as was my second, and my third. I then moved to Linux desktops. Having to use a Windows laptop now is torture, everything keeps shoving stupid popups and nagging at me, even though LTSC is supposedly the no-bundled-malware version, and for some reason Microsoft insists on making every single thing as complicated as possible. But running the APU tuning thing does noticeably boost my cinebench scores, so somehow it does work. I really wish I could just cap TDP at a level where the thing can just run passively 24/7, but dumb AMD won't let me. What buffoon came up with the idea of aggressive PBO2 by default on ultrabooks? I'm honestly this close to just unscrewing the bottom, cutting the fan PWM wires, and wiring them up to my own pulse generator to run at a constant 10% or something. I hate this laptop.

 

[The Ugly One]

Unfortunately Ryzen Master won't work, because these stupid things aren't overclockable, so we can't practically undervolt them either.
You have to get a sketchy third party software (Windows-exclusive, of course) and then start that every boot, and keep it running, for it to work. It's utterly sickening.

https://github.com/JamesCJ60/Universal-x86-Tuning-Utility/releases

Words can't express my disdain for Windows laptops and everything about them. My first computer was a MacBook Air, as was my second, and my third. I then moved to Linux desktops. Having to use a Windows laptop now is torture, everything keeps shoving stupid popups and nagging at me, even though LTSC is supposedly the no-bundled-malware version, and for some reason Microsoft insists on making every single thing as complicated as possible. But running the APU tuning thing does noticeably boost my cinebench scores, so somehow it does work. I really wish I could just cap TDP at a level where the thing can just run passively 24/7, but dumb AMD won't let me. What buffoon came up with the idea of aggressive PBO2 by default on ultrabooks? I'm honestly this close to just unscrewing the bottom, cutting the fan PWM wires, and wiring them up to my own pulse generator to run at a constant 10% or something. I hate this laptop.

The laptop actually comes with an application to customize the CPU operating profile, but I can't seem to get it to run cooler than it already does on eco mode. Maybe I should mess with it more. I really want the CPU to go as low as possible, preferably not over 1 GHz. I would rather have an application run badly on battery than quietly devour all my charge.

 

[Susanna]

The laptop actually comes with an application to customize the CPU operating profile

Mine did too, but all it did was switch between Microsoft’s built in CPU governors (for which I still can’t find any descriptions for what they are and what they do) and show ads. I could achieve exactly the same setting change by clicking the taskbar battery icon and moving the slider.

I can't seem to get it to run cooler than it already does on eco mode.

Same here. Even with my curve optimiser it will eventually reach 80 degrees and thermal throttle with the fans running at like 8krpm or something, making it absolutely unbearable to be around.

I really want the CPU to go as low as possible, preferably not over 1 GHz. I would rather have an application run badly on battery than quietly devour all my charge.

You can try Ryzen Master, but almost definitely it won’t work. If it does work, obviously that’s going to be preferable to the sketchy GitHub one. Limiting the CPU to 1GHz isn’t necessarily going to make it more efficient though, mostly what you want is to keep it cool. Heat makes inefficiency, and a CPU with cycles to spare can park cores and stay ultra cool, whereas one slowly but constantly working may ultimately produce more heat. AMD aren’t wrong to boost on laptops, I just really wish they’d let me change the settings to limit the tau so it won’t instantly heat up so much, the fan on this thing really is insufferable. If I could severely undervolt it and change the boost behaviour to stop once a heat threshold of 40 is reached, I’m sure I’d be happy with this laptop. But the only behaviour it permits seems to be MAXIMUM OVERBOOST FANS GO NNYYEE, and the best I can do to stop that is set a curve offset, which really just delays the problem a few seconds every minute.

 

[The Ugly One]

Mine did too, but all it did was switch between Microsoft’s built in CPU governors (for which I still can’t find any descriptions for what they are and what they do) and show ads. I could achieve exactly the same setting change by clicking the taskbar battery icon and moving the slider.

Same here. Even with my curve optimiser it will eventually reach 80 degrees and thermal throttle with the fans running at like 8krpm or something, making it absolutely unbearable to be around.

You can try Ryzen Master, but almost definitely it won’t work. If it does work, obviously that’s going to be preferable to the sketchy GitHub one. Limiting the CPU to 1GHz isn’t necessarily going to make it more efficient though, mostly what you want is to keep it cool. Heat makes inefficiency, and a CPU with cycles to spare can park cores and stay ultra cool, whereas one slowly but constantly working may ultimately produce more heat.

My impression was that since power draw grows like the square of clock speed, running something at 2x clock and taking half as long will consume ~2x energy. Or does keeping the temp down pay for it?

AMD aren’t wrong to boost on laptops, I just really wish they’d let me change the settings to limit the tau so it won’t instantly heat up so much, the fan on this thing really is insufferable. If I could severely undervolt it and change the boost behaviour to stop once a heat threshold of 40 is reached, I’m sure I’d be happy with this laptop. But the only behaviour it permits seems to be MAXIMUM OVERBOOST FANS GO NNYYEE, and the best I can do to stop that is set a curve offset, which really just delays the problem a few seconds every minute.

So this one is an ASUS, and it actually stays in passive cooling mode when off the battery. Unfortunately, that's still not enough to use a web browser for more than about 2 hours, maybe 2.5. I should take a sweep through the machine and find everything I can disable.

 

[Susanna]

My impression was that since power draw grows like the square of clock speed, running something at 2x clock and taking half as long will consume ~2x energy. Or does keeping the temp down pay for it?

You're right, higher clocks will use exponentially more power, but keeping the temperature down will reduce resistance, which improves efficiency and also keeps the temperature down, letting you get more performance for each watt of waste heat, and nothing reduces temperature like parking a core for a few seconds. It's basically how extreme overclocking works, where the CPU is operated (relatively) efficiently at very high clocks, because the resistance is kept artificially low with liquid nitrogen. Room temperature superconductors would be amazing for our compute power for the same reason, push all the clocks but gain almost none of the heat.
In practice, there's a point where the increased power draw from briefly boosting to higher clocks is offset by the reduced overall power draw from low temperatures you get by parking a core. It's not a field I'm specialised in, I don't want to say something foolish.

So this one is an ASUS, and it actually stays in passive cooling mode when off the battery. Unfortunately, that's still not enough to use a web browser for more than about 2 hours, maybe 2.5. I should take a sweep through the machine and find everything I can disable.

Mine's a Lenovo. Absolute garbage.
I installed Linux at first and all was well, I could switch it to the conservative governor and set some flags to make it extra hesitant to boost, keeping it quiet and still working pretty well. Then I had to dualboot Windows because the iGPU can't be passed through to a VM, and discovered that if any .efi file on the boot partition matches with a Microsoft hash, the BIOS will refuse to boot anything else. So my GRUB, which had options for NixOS or chainloading Windows, was inevitably skipped over in favour of Microsoft's bootloader, which offers absolutely zero options but "boot windows". I mutilated the Microsoft file and all was well, but then Windows updated, un-mutilated half it's boot folder, and broke the entire computer.
"Thank you for reporting this problem. We are aware of the issue but have no plans to issue a fix at the moment."
Also the keyboard is mushy and the trackpad is worse than the one on my ten year old macbook. About five hours of battery life using a web browser in whatever passes for "battery optimised" on Windows. Still haven't a clue what that setting does other than immediately dim the screen if I don't constantly stroke the trackpad.

 

[Just Some Other Guy]

Who wants to see the 3070 get absolutely gutted like the 2nd rate overpriced card it was?

"B-b-but 2080ti for $500!" Lmao. Pour one out for the bros who firesold their 2080tis for $300 or so when this thing got announced.

 

[The Ugly One]

Mine's a Lenovo. Absolute garbage.
I installed Linux at first and all was well, I could switch it to the conservative governor and set some flags to make it extra hesitant to boost, keeping it quiet and still working pretty well. Then I had to dualboot Windows because the iGPU can't be passed through to a VM, and discovered that if any .efi file on the boot partition matches with a Microsoft hash, the BIOS will refuse to boot anything else. So my GRUB, which had options for NixOS or chainloading Windows, was inevitably skipped over in favour of Microsoft's bootloader, which offers absolutely zero options but "boot windows". I mutilated the Microsoft file and all was well, but then Windows updated, un-mutilated half it's boot folder, and broke the entire computer.
"Thank you for reporting this problem. We are aware of the issue but have no plans to issue a fix at the moment."
Also the keyboard is mushy and the trackpad is worse than the one on my ten year old macbook. About five hours of battery life using a web browser in whatever passes for "battery optimised" on Windows. Still haven't a clue what that setting does other than immediately dim the screen if I don't constantly stroke the trackpad.

Selling business off to Chinese companies should be illegal. I remember when IBM Thinkpads were great laptops. Unrelated, I wonder how much energy Apple is saving by having the RAM on the package instead of SODIMMs.

What I really want a laptop to do is absolutely nothing it doesn't have to do while on battery. I just turned off as much stuff as I could find to turn off (background apps, notifications, that sort of thing), and now the battery says it has ~5 hrs of life while just sitting there. I'm sure that'll drop to 3 if I start browsing.

 

[Susanna]

Selling business off to Chinese companies should be illegal. I remember when IBM Thinkpads were great laptops. Unrelated, I wonder how much energy Apple is saving by having the RAM on the package instead of SODIMMs.

What I really want a laptop to do is absolutely nothing it doesn't have to do while on battery. I just turned off as much stuff as I could find to turn off (background apps, notifications, that sort of thing), and now the battery says it has ~5 hrs of life while just sitting there. I'm sure that'll drop to 3 if I start browsing.

You can also reduce your refresh rate. It has a surprisingly high impact on battery life, and if you're only reading and writing on the machine, you can probably go as low as 30 and barely even notice most of the time. No idea how you do that in Windows but I'm sure it's possible.

 

[The Ugly One]

You can also reduce your refresh rate. It has a surprisingly high impact on battery life, and if you're only reading and writing on the machine, you can probably go as low as 30 and barely even notice most of the time. No idea how you do that in Windows but I'm sure it's possible.

Lowest it goes is 60 Hz. At least I can shut off the TRUE GAMER POWER keyboard LEDs. But since the laptop is dripping TRUE GAMER POWER, I can't see the keys unless the LEDs are on, as the symbols are transparent, not white.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

You can also reduce your refresh rate. It has a surprisingly high impact on battery life, and if you're only reading and writing on the machine, you can probably go as low as 30 and barely even notice most of the time. No idea how you do that in Windows but I'm sure it's possible.

If advanced display settings won't allow you to do it there's a utility called Custom Resolution Utility that allows it. It's meant for "overclocking" monitors by creating a new monitor profile with user defined refresh rates that is then accessible in the advanced display settings. The idea behind it is that some panels on regular non-gaming monitors can go way above 60hz, certain ones can go up to 100-120hz without having to pay the RGB tax. I tried it once out of curiosity and my cheap AOC IPS would get to 74hz before freaking out, not great but the program works. I can't imagine that it won't allow you to try to force a lower refresh rate.

 

[Susanna]

Lowest it goes is 60 Hz. At least I can shut off the TRUE GAMER POWER keyboard LEDs. But since the laptop is dripping TRUE GAMER POWER, I can't see the keys unless the LEDs are on, as the symbols are transparent, not white.

But Ugly One, surely you are a touch typist?

If advanced display settings won't allow you to do it there's a utility called Custom Resolution Utility that allows it. It's meant for "overclocking" monitors by creating a new monitor profile with user defined refresh rates that is then accessible in the advanced display settings. The idea behind it is that some panels on regular non-gaming monitors can go way above 60hz, certain ones can go up to 100-120hz without having to pay the RGB tax. I tried it once out of curiosity and my cheap AOC IPS would get to 74hz before freaking out, not great but the program works. I can't imagine that it won't allow you to try to force a lower refresh rate.

I know you can do this directly in Intel's iGPU driver settings program, so it stands to reason that you can also do it in the Nvidia and AMD counterparts.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

But Ugly One, surely you are a touch typist?

I know you can do this directly in Intel's iGPU driver settings program, so it stands to reason that you can also do it in the Nvidia and AMD counterparts.

Oh, you're right! Thanks, did not know that. I had to click through some EULAs to enable override and found it under custom resolutions.
There's also this option that I didn't know about.

 

[The Ugly One]

But Ugly One, surely you are a touch typist?

Yes. It's things like the PgUp and Fn-[volume up] that I have to hunt for.

I know you can do this directly in Intel's iGPU driver settings program, so it stands to reason that you can also do it in the Nvidia and AMD counterparts.

This laptop screen supports 60 Hz and 144 Hz. But hey, now that I looked, I discovered it switches from 60 Hz to 144 Hz when going from wall outlet to battery, and I had switched it to 60 Hz when it was plugged in. Sounds retarded, but it's because the discrete and integrated GPUs appear to have totally separate settings files. I disabled nearly every startup app, and now the system claims it has 6.5 hours of battery left.

AMD's software is undistilled shit, nothing like custom refresh rate in there.

 

[Susanna]

AMD's software is undistilled shit, nothing like custom refresh rate in there.

https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/dh3-032

 

[Just Some Other Guy]

https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/dh3-032

Hey man, google is hard work.