power managment and gfx cards discussion

@All

power managment

Is that for everyone else they're the same as for me : does not matter what kind of the power management you set in the power:prefs for your card, the fans on the GFX card do have the same low speed ?

What I mean, is: if we set “low power” the speed of fan is the same. If we set “Dynamic”, then the speed of fan the same. And if we set “High power” the speed of fan the same.

Between different settings, I can see the differences in the game's by FPS counter, there are indeed a bit of differences between low and high settings.

What worry me most, is that between any settings and does not matter of how i stress it, the GFX's card fans always of the same speed. Even if i touch the card, and i feel that it hot enough, the fans of the card still the same on the same speed.

For me, it didn't look like normal thing, because as far as i remember, on the other computers (PC i mean), the bigger your power settings, the more you stress the card, the faster fans are working , so to cold the card.

Of course, maybe today's card should be that "hot" , i do not know, but i not sure we with AmigaOS stress it that much so it should be _that_ hot.

That happens on all hardwares (at least on x5000 and on sam460 for sure). For sam460 i even noticed that when i boot, and GFX card's initialized, it for a second boost the speed of GFX card's fan, and then dump it to the pretty low speed. And does not matter what you do after, the speed of Fan always remain the same. Even if card is start to be more hot, and if it stressed by some shaders based stuff.

I think, that because of that, i found that RX560 i have in the X5000 for a few years, a bit “over hot”, and x5000 start to shut-downs when i load up it with a little heavy 3d games. Then once i replace it with other RadeonRX570, those issues gone, but, the new card even more over-hot in compassion of how it was with RadeonRX560.

Isn't GFX cards Fans should be spinning much faster, when GFX card is real hot ?

the speed of different cards

I do have 2 GFX cards which i swap for tests in my x5000 from time to time:

The first one: Saphire Pulse RadeonRX 560 2GB

The second one: RadeonRX 570 ARMOR 8GB

Now, the 560 one have one cooler, wasn't _THAT_ hot in default state, so i use it for a few years until it starting acts now.

The 570 one, have 2 coolers, and _THAT_ hot by default, and continue to be more hot while you do nothing. Like, the default speed on the GFX Fans is always the same, and didn't work as expected. At least that my IMHO for now, maybe that the same on PC, didn't test it here.

But then, if take into account hardware specs, then 570 one is surely faster than 560 one, but in real live test, it just absolutely the same in all games i tries. Like there is some other kind of barrier which didn't use full power of GFX cards (and maybe because of that the fans on cards didn't raise up the speed?)

What I mean, that currently, for OS4 and current 2d/3d drivers, there are no reasons to buy a “monsters” which are over hot and have lots of power. In the end of all 560 and 570 acts exactly the same, but 560 smaller, need less power, and not that hot on the run as 570 are.

I do not know how different it will be with 580 one (probably the one i will buy next for tests), but for now can say that 570 don't beat 560 on os4 currently, speed the same, but give more issue only

@kas1e

Shouldn't the FAN be controlled by card itself based on thermal management? Maybe some register value gets overwritten which hands over thermal management to ACPI (which we obviously don't have).

Anyways, I notice definitly a difference in performance between low and high with my RX 570

In low power mode, everything feels sluggish:
- I can see the individual icons drawing from top to bottom when opening for example the Prefs drawer.
- Scolling in Odyssey and Codebench is not smooth at all.
- Night of the zombies does 41 fps in the main menu (window mode)

In high power mode it gets much better
- Icons seem to draw almost all at once
- scolling in odyssey is smooth
- scolling in Codebench is smoother but depends on amount of lines. It seems CPU limited now.
- Night of the zombies does 93 fps in the main menu (window mode)

@geenaam
Yeah, i do have difference between low and high power settings of course as well, and in some games pretty big one. That no questions there. When i say no differences, i mean there are 2 different cards, one of which should be faster than another, but still gives the same FPS everywhere, like, some block happens in the drivers which didn't give ability to use things at full.

As for Fan - i definitely can check by hand how hot the rx570 are, and i can see how not fast fan is spinning, while it's time for sure to a bit cold the card. And i think, that was reason why after few years rx560 start acts bad (like overshot happens).

@kas1e

Just tested this with my X5000, Asus Radeon RX580 with power setting high.
If I open a bunch of Shaderjoy windows with multipass shaders the fans starts to speed up on the graphicscard after ~20 seconds.

@kas1e

Is there really anything under OS4 that can stress a GFX card, compared to what they are expected to handle e.g. under PC gaming?

@khayoz
Thanks for tests, will try it as well

@daveyw
I think good stress tests its a bunch of shaders running like khayoz did

@kas1e

iirc @Hans told me that the fan speeds are not controlled by anything in the driver, especially not the power management.

It is controlled by (see @geenaam's response) by the thermal management on the cards...I guess it's not "automated" either, so, as long as the driver doesn't manage it, it stays at "default" speed.

In your case, too low for high power 3D games.
In my case, at full speed all the time.

I don't think @Hans will add fan speed management.

I worked around the issue by adding the gpu fan to the case fan controller.
My cards fan now run in sync with the case fans, never runs too hot and never runs too loud

@Raziel
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Good idea!

@geennaam

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After reading a bit google, it seems that even in PC word, GPU Fans not always rise the speed when need it. So they do have 3d party software allowing controlling of GPU fan speed. That what google says:

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Probably that what happens after few years of usage of my RX560, it just over-hot with time. So everyone else may have the same issue later…

Even google explain what happens with my rx560 now:

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Exactly like this :) using 2d and stuff all ok, but once run some heavy 3d game, then after minute or two x5000 shutdowns:)


I do find that on x86 they have a lot of different kinds of 3d party apps allowing to control the GPU Fan speed. One of them is "MSI Afterburner":



While it "MSI", it works for any cards, so there seems some standard way/registers to control the GPU fan speed.

Will be interesting to find how the GPU can be controlled manually, like maybe some preference called "GPUFanspeed", in which user may change about 5-10 levels for different DPMs , and so run it on the restart all the time to have by default decent fan speed.

Raziel wrote:
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The card's on-board power management unit controls the fan's speed in response to the temperature. It is theoretically possible to change the thermal response curves from the card's default, but requires special software.

A few people seem to have cards with fans that aren't throttled at all, i.e., they're connected directly to 5V/12V.

My RX 570 definitely throttles the fan up and down. I can make them spin up by setting dpm to high, or playing Spencer without vsync.

My RX 550 is so quiet that I can't tell if it spins up or down. It's a lower-end unit, so it doesn't have as much heat to dissipate.

Hans

@Kas1e

I have an MSI RX560 in my Windows system. I stressed the card using 3D Mark 11 while GPU-Z ran in the background recording the maximum sensor readings. Even when the card hit 74°C the fan still only runs at 40%. With the card idling and the GPU and memory clock throttled back, the temp is 39°C with the fan at 19%. If we could display this data in OS4 we could make comparisons to see if the fans run at the optimum speed.

Stupid question but have you checked the 560 is free of dust in the heatsink assembly.

@Hans

Are there any plans to read and display data from video card sensors using SensorMaster library?

@Rob
Yeah, you are right, we need some tool which will show the GPU Fan speed firstly. Then we maybe can extern it to the one who can also set the speed of the Fan.

And i also curious what is SensorMaster library for, is it of any use anywhere ?

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Yeah, it looks fine, and free of dust. I think gfx card just over hot in 2 years of usage with not so fast fan spinning.

@kas1e

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It's an API for reading values from hardwares sensors. The library is part of Enhancer 2. I remember Matthew telling me some years ago that it was intended for this kind of thing but it looks like not much was done so far in terms of using it so far.

There's no entry on the wiki but I've found there is some documentation in the Enhancer 2 SDK folder. It's aimed at programmers (something I'm not) so I can't tell you how useful it is but it might be worth your while poking around in it

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Another thing could that the thermal paste under the heat sink has deteriorated and needs fresh paste to be applied.

@rob

You are quite right.

The SensorMaster API is the best way to support temperature monitoring on the graphics cards and motherboards.

That is the method we are going to use going forward. Regrettably it has taken a lower priority over the last few years while other things have been developed.

@Rob

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As amigakit said, yes, it's planned, but there have always been higher priority tasks to tackle.

Hans