Graphics State of the Union

Tom's Hardware has put out a nice recap of where computer graphics have been and where they are headed in the near future. While there are some definite shiny toys being displayed in new product releases and on the test beds, the overall problem of power consumption continues to rear its ugly head demanding attention. From the article: "while all of these things are interesting, exciting and new, the problem remains the same. Getting smaller and faster only makes sense if the design also is less demanding on the wall socket and cooling system. We all want different things when it comes to advancements, but first and foremost we need better power management. The bottom line is simple: graphics makers must take a step back from feature brainstorming until the power issue is resolved."

Comments

Power & Physics

[JPFitting]

I do agree that power is becoming quite an annoyance these days with the video cards. I would like to say that I believe that to move forward we need to take a step back. I am finding more and more games that are simply pleasing to the eye but lack the originality, functionality, and creativeness of older games. These video card makers focus too much on realism and tend to encourage game makers to focus on the like. Let's make cards that are functional, less power hungry, well-rounded (physics), and cooler.

Re:Wrong.

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

If consumers continue to purchase ever more power hungry graphics cards, what is to stop the companies from making them?

And what choice do we currently have? If the companies made Watt-Friendly cards, I'm willing to bet people would buy them especially for laptops. But they don't. We don't have the choice BUT to buy these double bay, amp eating, juggernauts we have today.

It is the noise, not the power that is killing me

[Laz10]

When the new equipment requires more and more power, I am forced to add more and more fans to my system.

I wouldn't care a bit about power consumption if it wasn't so closely connected to noise levels.

Re:Price & performance will always be more imp

[Red Flayer]

When it comes to gaming etc, price and performance will always be considered more important than power saving (except for battery devices).

Until prominently labeling approximated cost of power consumption is mandated by law, that is. When people are blatantly shown the cost to their pocket, they'll wisen up. It's working for appliances (well, at the mid and upper income ranges, anyway).

For people who don't pay for their electricity directly (like most college students) this won't be as big a factor, but for the rest of us...

Is the problem even tractable with current trends?

[Superfarstucker]

Consider:

1. GPUs have higher transistor counts than modern CPUs.

2. The development cycle for GPUs is much shorter than CPUs

3. The shelf life of GPU designs is much shorter than CPU designs (the C2D is a direct descendant of the P5, (pentium 4 arch is a dead end evolutionarily).

Given the preceding, it is unlikely that a reduction of power consumption will be the focus of GPU companies in the future, it would be suicide in a market which demands performance above all else. nVidia has shown that there are significant gains to be made from G70>G71, but nothing to the order necessary, R580 (ATI) has proven to be a bloated SUV with respect to power consumption but performs quite well. Considering the difference in die size between R580 and G71 I think the mandate in this regard is profits, ATi's die is nearly twice the size of nVidia's and they are priced similarily (G71 actually pulls bigger money). Still, their power consumptions are not seperated by such a divide (a 60 watt differential would be generous). Honestly, to a great extent, this call for chip engineers to focus on poower consumption is equivalent to asking top fuel dragster engineers to focus on fuel consumption. It is not a priority, and modern graphic cards draw very little power when they aren't doing anything, which is most of the time. A situation will manifest itself if top end systems start to surpass 10 to 15A draws on the 120v line (1200-1800 watt peak), but that is a way off yet. Heat dissipation will become a problem long before we hit those kind of limits I would suspect.

Re:What AMD can bring to the ATI deal?

[MADnificent]

I stated this in the amd+ati deal, but somehow it didn't get modded :)

AMD had to go together with ATI to get _low power_ systems up. They won't make it on the processor line alone, they need to have a chipset+cpu solution (which is the most important anyway). ATI has just that, low powerconsumption (I believe their GPUs use less power too). Add to this that in the recent presentation they gave clue of what could be done to use less power. Namely the scaling of systems, this would optimise the computer for the use it will serve.

and then, intel can take a shot at it again

Re:Older GFORCE does the trick

[General_Crespin]

If you want to play the latest games at 1800 x 1400 or whatever than yes you will need a giant heat producing card with a fan that sounds like a jet taking off.

FUD, pure and simple.

For $30 (and less) you can buy a nearly noiseless heatsink that will cool your card better than most stock heatsinks (e.g. Zalman VF(7/9)00, Arctic Cooling Silencer line), and if you don't want to go the DIY route there are more and more cards coming out that have quality quiet heatsinks preinstalled (e.g. ICEQ3 by HIS).