[SOLVED] Amazing Results Using Eco Mode (Ryzen 5000 Series)

[Nathaniel_9]

I've been messing with my CPU settings for the past couple weeks and have tried out AMD's Eco Mode. I love it. By dropping the TDP from 105 to 65 watts, the CPU runs about 20ºC cooler while doing Cinebench R23 multicore and retains about 95% of its performance. And it's still boosting to 4.85GHz like the stock 105w TDP. The computer is much quieter now because the fans don't ramp up and it isn't dumping nearly as much heat into the room. With temperatures like this, passive cooling would be a totally viable option.

Of course every silicon is different and results probably vary, but I'm pretty sure these results are normal. It really goes to show the diminishing returns that are achieved by increasing power to the CPU. The market is obsessed with speed, even at the expense of heat, noise, and stability. In my mind, Eco Mode should be a stock setting, and the higher TDPs should be reserved for those who want to squeeze out as much performance as possible. I haven't used this setting for long, but being an AMD feature, I'm assuming that stability won't be an issue.

Have any of you used Eco Mode? If so, which CPU have you tried it with and what were you thermal and performance results? Are you still using Eco Mode? Would love to hear from you guys on this one!

Thanks!

 

[hotaru.hino]

This is the issue with Ryzen processors, and probably most processors going forward with turbo boost: in order to get these frequencies, efficiency is thrown away. It's basically speed at all costs.

While I don't use Eco mode, I did tune my 5600X with PBO Curve Optimizer to undervolt it. I still get full performance but consuming something like 15-20% less power. However, the real kicker for me is when I did an overnight Handrake run, I left Turbo Boost off by accident (I have something set up in my Windows Power Plan that lets me do that). I found out that the CPU would consume about 45W @ 3.7GHz, compare this to 75W @ 4.5GHz. So I'm basically spending 60% more power to gain about 20% more performance as Handbrake performance roughly scales with frequency.

 

[drea.drechsler]

This is the issue with Ryzen processors, and probably most processors going forward with turbo boost: in order to get these frequencies, efficiency is thrown away. It's basically speed at all costs.
...

Nothing really new there. It's always been the case that operating at the edge of any semiconductor device's power envelope means running at higher temperature. Enthusiasts and overclockers have pushed their processors that way for a long time: the advent of liquid cooling and even phase-change/sub ambient coolers came on way back in the 90's, before even Netburst came on the scene with it's heinous power consumption (for the time).

But even without Eco-Mode Ryzen is remarkably efficient for modern high power desktop processors. Most people look at "temperature" and conflate that with power consumption, which is wrong.

 

[Nathaniel_9]

Nothing really new there. It's always been the case that operating at the edge of any semiconductor device's power envelope means running at higher temperature. Enthusiasts have been pushing things that way for a long time: the advent of liquid cooling and even phase-change/sub ambient coolers came on way back in the 90's, before even Netburst came on the scene with it's heinous power consumption (for the time).

But even without Eco-Mode Ryzen is remarkably efficient for modern high power desktop processors. Most people look at "temperature" and conflate that with power consumption, which is wrong.

Well, efficiency is an extremely relative concept. Given that my 5800X is configured out of the box to consume an additional 40 watts of power over its 65-watt Eco Mode only to provide an additional 5-8% performance gain (as measured by Cinebench) while generating substantially more heat, I would say that Ryzen is configured remarkably inefficiently for its architecture if the metric is performance per watt. But you're probably right if you mean to compare Ryzen 5000 series over Intel's 11000 and 12000 series CPUs in terms of performance per watt. Chips have begun to progressively consume more and more power over the years, and I think that is partly the consumer's fault, as we have collectively demanded high performance over cool operation and low power consumption. Nvidia is probably the worst. The RTX 30-series consumes far more power than its previous generations, and adjusting for performance per watt, the 30-series isn't nearly as impressive.

 

[drea.drechsler]

... performance per watt...

That's the USUAL measure, and really the only one that's rationally quantitative (depending on your measure of performance, of course). What you are looking at is really an example of diminishing returns as it's pushed further along it's operating curve. The question of whether it's worthwhile becomes more qualitative, philosophical even, since it's actually perfectly OK to consume 50% more power to achieve 10% more performance as we make similar tradeoffs all the time in life. Fuel efficiency losses at 70MPH vs 40MPH on the freeway, for instance because no one wants to arrive late to the party.

As far as chips consuming more power: that's inevitable too. After all, we now speak of GPU's with billions of transistors and adding even more circuitry every cycle for more acceleration features. If those 'features' add qualitative value then it's arguably more efficient even if consuming more power.

But beyond that, what AMD seems to have done is manage to briefly operate much further into the knee of the frequency/voltage operating curve than typical with a highly dynamic boosting algorithm. All Eco-Mode does is not push into the knee, or not so far.

 

[Nathaniel_9]

As far as chips consuming more power: that's inevitable too.

This is not true. Today's chips are consuming more power than their predecessors, but it is far outpaced by their relative performance. Chips are consuming more power these days because consumers have made it clear that they're willing to tolerate increased power consumption for increased performance. There's no reason that AMD and Intel couldn't fabricate a modern desktop processor that only operates on 5 watts, for instance, if that's what the market demanded.

 

[drea.drechsler]

This is not true. Today's chips are consuming more power than their predecessors, but it is far outpaced by their relative performance. ....

I agree, but only to a point because mobile CPU's (phones/tablets) use way less power than comparably performant CPU's from the not too distant past.

But even high performance desktop you have to be careful.Just compare a Ryzen 5800X consumption to FX8300. Both 8 core...but clock-for-clock the FX is in a league apart for power consumption and it's not even multi-thread capable nor possessing of 8 full capability cores (among other things, it has only 4 floating point units).

Both AMD and Intel indeed do make very low power processors for low-end desktop use, harvested from their mobile/laptop lines I'm pretty sure. Intel markets a NUC, for instance, which fully integrates a low-power processor into a tiny chassis with matched components. And AMD has something similar. I don't know if 5 watts, but it may have operating modes that run that low if wanted. It's occurred to me that instead of building a high-end desktop and then neutering it by finding ways to undervolt and lower clock, people should just buy one of those. It's a bit perplexing to me.

 

[kognak]

Well, efficiency is an extremely relative concept. Given that my 5800X is configured out of the box to consume an additional 40 watts of power over its 65-watt Eco Mode only to provide an additional 5-8% performance gain (as measured by Cinebench) while generating substantially more heat, I would say that Ryzen is configured remarkably inefficiently for its architecture if the metric is performance per watt.

None of the other 5000-series Ryzen are like 5800X. The rest are efficiently configured. Only 5800X is pushed completely to the limit. Also TDP is not same as power consumption nor it's any kind of limit. For 105W TDP ryzens limit is 142W(PPT) and 5800X does get there in heavy all-core workloads. Eco mode set limit to 88W on 5800X turning it essentially to 5700X with boost override on. In my opinion not that useful if playing cinebench isn't a hobby. In gaming stock 5800X consumes around 90W, even if CPU utilization hits 100%. So if you don't run heavy all-core workloads, eco mode doesn't really do anything. And if you do, there's always so much better 5900X for that.