• Graphics card question about heat production / power usage
    9 replies, posted
I've been messing a bit with my notebook card clocks (Mobility HD5850 in my MSI GX640 laptop) and I was wondering what adds the most to the power usage / heat production of the laptop. Say you have these two cases: Core clock / memory clock / voltage case 1: 300mhz / 400mhz / 0.9v case 2: 150mhz / 400mhz / 1.05v In which case would the card pull more power (with the higher core clock or the higher voltage)? Also in retrospect don't ever touch your notebook drivers when they're working because I now can't start Catalyst Control Center any more (CLI.Implementation / MOM.Implementation won't load. Trying stuff I find on Google but not much luck).
Voltage will increase the heat of course. Hell, increasing anything will increase the amount of heat you have. The power use is probably attributed to the clocks of the card ramping up when there is more graphical power attributed. It's why laptops are generally cool until you start up a game of League of Legends or something like that. It automatically throttles the clocks to save energy and heat. I really have no idea if that's what really happens, but it's my best educated guess. Do with it what you will.
Yeah, I know that increasing any of the variables will lead to increased heat (which ramps up that noisy fan of this thing). Wonder which case would affect it the most though. The reason why I have to choose between these scenarios is quite an explanation (I hope you guys can give some more insight): the MSI manufacturer graphics drivers don't allow me to change the clock profiles (there's no appdata/local/ati/ace/profile.xml to edit). At default it is 300/400/0.9v on lowest in power saving mode, and 625/1000/1.05v on highest. I can use the AMD GPU clock tool to force the clocks to 150/400, but I can't change the voltage from 1.05v for some reason (probably because the tool hasn't been updated in ages. All these type of tools are outdated or incompatible!). Now when I grab the latest reference notebook drivers from the AMD website I get the fancy new CCC, which back when it still worked, allowed me to tweak the profile.xml file to a nice 150/400/0.9v profile for idle mode. But for some reason the laptop kept jumping between profiles (from idle to full 3D mode) when browsing in Firefox etc, which made my screen jitter every half a second. So after a few install / deinstall cycles I somehow fucked up and now CCC won't start after driver installation.
All power used by computer gets turned into heat except the power used in Fans, HDDs, Lights, display. Voltage increases power if the amperage stays same, but not sure if amperage stays the same because it has lower clock speeds.
[QUOTE=TheTiger;29225142]except the power used in Fans, HDDs, Lights, display.[/QUOTE] It gets turned into heat too, HDDs produce very little heat because they only consume 8 W, compared to your average CPU that consumes ~90 W, it's nothing. Same with fans and lights, except for Delta fans. These things can use up to 50 W :byodood:
After wasting my whole evening on fixing my Catalyst installation, it seems that manually setting the clocks using the AMD GPU clock tool is the best option. At 150/400/1.05v it's hovering around a nice 52C. Just below 55C where the fan decides to kick it up a notch.
[QUOTE=ze beaver;29225259]It gets turned into heat too, HDDs produce very little heat because they only consume 8 W, compared to your average CPU that consumes ~90 W, it's nothing. Same with fans and lights, except for Delta fans. These things can use up to 50 W :byodood:[/QUOTE] Yea part of the power used by HDD and fans get turned into heat yes, but some of it is still mechanical power needed to move the fan or HDD disks drive head. Also lights/LEDs produce small ammount of heat.
The higher core clock will use more power because it draws more amps but you should also be able to lower the voltage when you underclock the gpu.
[QUOTE=sbradford26;29230100]The higher core clock will use more power because it draws more amps but you should also be able to lower the voltage when you underclock the gpu.[/QUOTE] The AMD GPU clock tool's last update added support for the HD5870. I'm just lucky it can still adjust the clocks of the (later released) Mobility HD5850, I just can't touch the voltage. Is there any good GPU clocking tool out there anyway? RivaTuner, the AMD GPU clock tool and MSI afterburner are either outdated, or don't support mobile GFX.
Just wondering, but does ATI chipsets have any equivalent technology to nVidia's Optimus?
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