GTX 1070 @12.5 MHz: using only 13 W running Folding@home
imgur.com/a/jziL8
imgur.comPosted Sep 14, 2016, 8:24 PM UTC
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imgur.comThinking about leaving the PC running doing something useful while I'm browsing the web (I like Folding@home):
I didn't like the fact that even at the minimum "power limit" of ~50% the card was using about 75 Watts and thus running the fan at a somewhat high speed.
So I was trying to find a way to lower the frequency/voltage enough to get the fan near idle speed, 27% for this Founders Edition card (MSI).
After getting frustrated that the common tools would only allow me to lower the clock speed by 400 MHz I was playing around with the voltage/frequency curve edititor of MSI Afterburner (open it by pressing ctrl+f). By accident a combination of moving the points (drag and drop) while holding ctrl / shift after applying the changes the curve was completely outside the frequency range, which is only 1000 - 2500 MHz.
Taking a look at the monitoring (HWinfo/Afterburner) I was surprised to find it running at the lowest possible speed of 12.5 MHz, which is exaclty one "frequency bin" of the pascal cards.
I didn't do any benchmarking and it is difficult to reproduce. Getting way lower frequency was somewhat repeatable. (400-800 MHz max. speed).
Finally I found a sweet spot at about 1075 MHz (0.800 V), the card uses ~52 W while folding and the fan is running near idle speed (37%), pretty quiet. Screenshot: http://imgur.com/a/i7wK7
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Have you just started folding? It looks like you aren't getting any fast completion bonus points.
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Yes I was just starting again after a long pause (one reason being the noisy GPU fan in the past), it's only the second work unit.
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Thanks for sharing this. Seems it's only possible on GPU Boost 3.0 cards (Pascal). I'm still using an old 780 (EVGA FTW) and it's always bothered me that the only safe and effective way I have to control the core clock is via a temp limit. I just want to tell the thing to stop its automatic overclocking above the normal "max boost" of ~980MHz. It wants to go to 1150MHz and all it does it get really hot and noisy without offering any proportionate benefit. Oh well. It's at least nice to see what may be at my disposal once I get around to upgrading.
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you need to run 3DMark2001SE on it at 12.5 MHz
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I actually did that as it interested me, seems it doesn't really scale well with current hardware:
@12.5 MHz: 38768 points
@1075 MHz: 99078 points
@default MHz: 100261 points (~1600-1800 MHz)
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That's similar to this score of SLI 7800GTX cards. Unfortunately I doubt it's actually at 12 MHz
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I let HWinfo log the data while running the benchmark, reported power usage was at 12-13 Watt while the benchmark was running, between scenes it was at 10-11 Watt. Voltage was reported as 625 mV the whole time, which is the lowest voltage the card can manage (usually used at the idle frequency of 139 MHz).
Of course these could be faulty readings, too.
The part that convinced me it is indeed a very low frequency was that the temperature was reported as a constant 42 °C with the fan at idle RPM, confirmed by my ears. Secondly the unusually laggy experience when scrolling websites/moving windows and sometimes screen flickering (TFT connected via displayport), which doesn't happen at 139 MHz.
I will run Unigine Heaven benchmark to see how much the difference in frames per second actually is, as far as I know it could also be running at 139 MHz the whole time and just add additional lag when using Chrome/Windows.
Edit: Unigine Heaven results (1920x1080. DX11, high quality, medium tesselation):
"12.5 MHz": 266 points / 10,6 fps
670 MHz: 2161 / 82,6
1075 MHz: 3072 / 121,9
1252 MHz: 3492 / 138,6
1594 MHz: 3967 / 157,5
Calculating the frequency needed for 266 points from each result: 82 MHz / 93 MHz / 95 MHz / 107 MHz
I think the first or second one is nearest to the truth so the card is using very low clock rate but not anywhere near 12 MHz.
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I'm surprised the clock generator can handle that low of a frequency.
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Yeah I was sure the displayed frequency was incorrect until I noticed the extremely low power consumption and that there was noticeable performance issues when scrolling websites or moving windows (desktop resolution: 3440x1440).
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Thanks for your contribution
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What is folding?
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Official: http://folding.stanford.edu/
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Oh cool! I was thinking like bitcoin mining. Good to see this is for a cool cause!
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One side effect of using an unusually low frequency (I used 1075 MHz) after resuming from hibernation mode:
The card will stick to its default idle frequency of 139 MHz until I make a change in the voltage/frequency curve (selecting one point and pressing L is sufficient, it will lock the card to that point, can be released again directly afterwards).
Sidenote:
It's using 15 W when folding at 139 MHz, I might try to make a small graph frequency/power consumption to see where the highest efficiency is achieved. Another user reported that point is at about 1.2 GHz ~75 W.
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My first PC was clocked only a little bit higher than this.
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12.5mhz and 13w but still 60 degrees?
The fan probably doesn't spin until the GPU hits 60 degrees.
The card was still cooling down from running at a higher frequency a minute earlier. I took the screenshot very early as I wasn't sure the setup was stable (very noticeable lag when scrolling websites or dragging windows).
On the founders edition cards the fan won't stop completey, minimum is at 27%, which is less noise than a typical HDD.
Man, the fans use like 10W on full speed on my 1070 G1 Gaming, which is quite humorous considering it powerlimits the GPU.
The 480 does the same thing. Letting the GPU run hot makes it use more power due to leakage, but you are using less power for the fan.
fucking equilibriums. how do they work
Nvidia cards use measurements of the power input to the card as a whole at the PCIe slot and the power connectors to determine power limits, so in includes fans.
AMD cards including the RX 480 base the power limit on GPU core power consumption, which excludes fans.
I'll believe that, but is there a reference supporting that?
Seems like AMD would have just as much reason to monitor whole card power consumption as Nvidia would. I'm a scrub and find it pretty obvious to do that, so it seems odd that AMD wouldn't be measuring that way.
I was using a significantly higher frequency shortly before hitting the 12.5 MHz, the card would have cooled down further (you can see it on the lower right, temperature is going down).