How does power management work?

I am have to do this from an iPad so I apologize for any mistakes etc. I was wondering if someone could give a quick explanation of how the power management on these more modern cards works. I was out of computers from 2004-2011, came back into it blind and built a new machine, haven't been into it anymore and looking to build another but this power management stuff really has me turned off on upgrading the video cards.

Most of us probably remember how the old school cards worked. Ti400, 9800pro, etc etc. your card ran at max 100 percent of the time. You didn't get robbed of any processing power because the card wasnt smart enough to think you didn't need anymore.

The power management stuff is nice when not playing games. Saves on noise, heat, etc but I am extremely turned off by the way it works in game so I'm trying to see if maybe I am misunderstanding how it works. This has been my experience.

Started with a single 6970 playing bc2. Got annoying fps drops here and there, the ati software was showing it was running at 70%. Why not 100%? If it was running at 100% perhaps the fps drops wouldn't be an issue. Added another 6790 just for ****s and giggles. Fps increased a bit but nothing major with both cards not running near max.

Bf3 with the 2 6970s same thing. It was good but some maps would get pretty rough fps drops etc. check a log of the gpus and what do you both running at 60-70 percent if I remember right.

So if I understand this correctly which I very well might not. The cards had more processing power available but the power management felt it was not necessary there fore not allowing me to take full advantage of a product due to wanting to help keep heat, power bill, etc down?

Battlefield 3 and 4, most MMOs, and other multiplayer games get cpu bottlenecked in some instances. When that happens, the video card load drops because it has nothing to do while it waits on the cpu.

If your video card is not at 100% load one of a few things is true

-you are cpu limited

-you are heat limited

-you have vsync or other fps capping software running

-you are power draw limited. This is the newer one you just didn't see on older cards.

My 290 for example, will hit the tdp limit at about 1150mhz and +50mv. I know this because the powertune slider is broken in amd 14.1-14.3 beta drivers so I can't adjust it.

So long story short, it is likely a cpu bottleneck in bf3, but your card doesn't ever just lower it's load for no apparent reason when you need more gpu horsepower.

That makes sense but what's interesting is bf4 will pull 100 load on both cards. I wouldn't be surprised if this 8120 CPU @ 4.5 was a bit of a bottle neck overall though. Thanks for the info.

Yikes...

1. With power savings, you do not 'get robbed' of all your power.
2. With power savings, you run at 100%.

Your CPU is a bit of a bottleneck for those cards. What resolution are you gaming on in the first place?

1920x1080 if I remember correctly

There will be times when both cards will hit 100%. When your cpu chokes it will be during a scene with a lot of troops or explosions. The things that take heavy cpu calculations.

For example, when I used to play world of warcraft there were places where I could get hundreds of fps with my card at 100%, and places where I would get 40fps with my card at 50%. Shadows were a major cpu drag in that game. Ultra shadows would choke up even a haswell cpu core if enough people were on screen.

Supertrucker said:

There will be times when both cards will hit 100%. When your cpu chokes it will be during a scene with a lot of troops or explosions. The things that take heavy cpu calculations.

For example, when I used to play world of warcraft there were places where I could get hundreds of fps with my card at 100%, and places where I would get 40fps with my card at 50%. Shadows were a major cpu drag in that game. Ultra shadows would choke up even a haswell cpu core if enough people were on screen.

Click to expand...

Thanks that's exactly the explanation I was looking for. Going to order some new parts tonight.

Problem should be solved one way or the other. Picked up a Intel 4930, asus x79 deluxe, 2 gtx 780s, 8gb gskill trident x 2400, and other misc things.

Good luck on your gaming Rig and post back and tell how it performs.

Thanks, will do if I have time to put it together. Going for 2 weeks tomorrow after being gone for 6 then leaving again for 4-5 so I have a back log of things to do in a small period of time. Hopefully this will solve the problem I've had since day 1 with the "old" machine and alwAys thought was attributed to the power management doing something along the lines of "well the card is running at 50% but your fps is rather reasonable so no use in upping the processing".

If I play UT 2004 my FPS is 200 and the GPU is at idle and 40% GPU usage.

Just wanted to thank you guys for your help. Put the new machine together yesterday, played with it a bit and WOW what a difference.

It runs MUCH cooler. On the old one 3-4-5 hours of gaming would have the room so hot it was pretty much miserable to be in here. Not anymore.

Much quieter. I think most of it is attributed to the evga acx coolers vs the reference coolers on the 6970's.

Much faster.

So far I havent played with oc settings much - never seen a bios like this before more less know all the intel ins and outs. Just got the ram up to rated speed, used the auto feature to get the cpu to 4.1 (runs at 35c under load), and did an extra 50 on both gpu and ram with afterburner.

Cs:go pulled a solid 300 fps it was hard to get it to move. Old machine did 80-170 some dips to 70 was all over the place. I havent been able to try bf4 yet. Crappy situtation. I played a lot of bf3 in the past, got tired of it, and not to mention im only home 4-5 months out of the year due to work. So I gave my account to my brother. When bf4 came out I had to make a new account with a random email which I cannot remember. So cannot access my account. Will probably have to buy another copy.

Glade you like your system that is sweet FPS. Here is EA's number, try and get your account back.1-866-543-5435