Power consumpsion

JHMarshall
JHMarshall
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Another method to cut the

Another method to cut the power bill is to undervolt and downclock your GPUs.   I have several Radeon VII GPUs that I run 24hrs/day mostly on Milkyway.   These cards pull around 300 W at the out of the box settings.  Just by lowering the voltage in small incremental steps and dropping the clock by a couple of hundred MHz your can cut power drastically.  My Radeons now pull only 150 Watts but are still incredible double precision performers on Milkyway.   I have also run them on Einstein with really great performance.  You can cut power in half but only sacrifice 10 to 20 percent in performance!

I also do this for other cards, Nvidia and AMD, for several project.  Not only do the cards run much cooler but this should also increase their crunching lifetime.

I use MSI Afterburner to tune the cards.

 

Joe

mikey
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JHMarshall wrote: Another

JHMarshall wrote:

Another method to cut the power bill is to undervolt and downclock your GPUs.   I have several Radeon VII GPUs that I run 24hrs/day mostly on Milkyway.   These cards pull around 300 W at the out of the box settings.  Just by lowering the voltage in small incremental steps and dropping the clock by a couple of hundred MHz your can cut power drastically.  My Radeons now pull only 150 Watts but are still incredible double precision performers on Milkyway.   I have also run them on Einstein with really great performance.  You can cut power in half but only sacrifice 10 to 20 percent in performance!

I also do this for other cards, Nvidia and AMD, for several project.  Not only do the cards run much cooler but this should also increase their crunching lifetime.

I use MSI Afterburner to tune the cards.

Joe 

I had not thought of that...thanks!!

archae86
archae86
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JHMarshall wrote:Another

JHMarshall wrote:

Another method to cut the power bill is to undervolt and downclock your GPUs.   I have several Radeon VII GPUs

<snip>

I use MSI Afterburner to tune the cards.

I strongly agree with Joe that GPU underclocking and undervolting can give quite substantial power efficiency improvement.  My most recent experiences have been with Radeon VII, 570, and 5700 cards.

For all of these, I have preferred to use MSIAfterburner as my user interface, though my cards were not MSI. (so I'm agreeing with Joe again)

For all of them, I simply use the Power Limit % control.  Effectively this lets the combination of card hardware, firmware, driver... decide what combination of undervolt and underclock to use at any given moment.  In my case it seemed generally to make good decisions, and running Einstein Gamma-ray work (a lot) and GW work (just in the last couple of weeks on one card), I've not gotten into either system crash nor Einstein wrong answer trouble that way.

But some trouble is part of the prospect when you go delving in this mineshaft.  So pay attention, and go gradually.

Just how much you can save varies widely with model of card, and also somewhat with the specific sample of that model you happen to be running.

 

robl
robl
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Does a MSI Afterburner tool

Does a MSI Afterburner tool exist for Linux?

JHMarshall
JHMarshall
Joined: 24 Jul 12
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I don't see a Linux download

I don't see a Linux download on the MSI web site.  I would hope that there are some similar tools for Linux, but I don't know for sure.

 

Joe

robl
robl
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JHMarshall wrote: I don't

JHMarshall wrote:

I don't see a Linux download on the MSI web site.  I would hope that there are some similar tools for Linux, but I don't know for sure.

 

Joe

I too had looked but saw no Linux download option.  Guess I will keep looking.  

mikey
mikey
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archae86 wrote: JHMarshall

archae86 wrote:

JHMarshall wrote:

Another method to cut the power bill is to undervolt and downclock your GPUs.   I have several Radeon VII GPUs

<snip>

I use MSI Afterburner to tune the cards.

I strongly agree with Joe that GPU underclocking and undervolting can give quite substantial power efficiency improvement.  My most recent experiences have been with Radeon VII, 570, and 5700 cards.

For all of these, I have preferred to use MSIAfterburner as my user interface, though my cards were not MSI. (so I'm agreeing with Joe again)

For all of them, I simply use the Power Limit % control.  Effectively this lets the combination of card hardware, firmware, driver... decide what combination of undervolt and underclock to use at any given moment.  In my case it seemed generally to make good decisions, and running Einstein Gamma-ray work (a lot) and GW work (just in the last couple of weeks on one card), I've not gotten into either system crash nor Einstein wrong answer trouble that way.

But some trouble is part of the prospect when you go delving in this mineshaft.  So pay attention, and go gradually.

Just how much you can save varies widely with model of card, and also somewhat with the specific sample of that model you happen to be running. 

MSIAfterburner for Windows works on both AMD/ATI and Nvidia brand gpu's but I too have not found a Linux alternative.  There must be a reason they haven't made one though...hmmmm.

ProDigit
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For Nvidia GPUs, under Ubuntu

For Nvidia GPUs, under Ubuntu 18.04, if you have multiple GPUs, you can execute command:

sudo  nvidia-xconfig --enable-all-gpus

Then do following command (must also be done on single GPUs):

sudo nvidia-xconfig --cool-bits=28

 

Then reboot.

You now have options to overclock and adjust fan curves in Linux

 

Then set the power limit by doing:

sudo nvidia-smi -i 1 -pl 150

Where '1' equals your second GPU (0 = the first),and '150' is the target wattage of the GPU (usually between 125W and 275W, lower on GTX GPUs).

 

Power limiting goes well with an overclock. The more you cap the power, the higher you can set the overclock and run stable (but also, the lower your overall boost speed is).

 

On most my RTX GPUs, I cap power by about 25-40%, and overclock to get about the same boost frequencies as a stock GPU (usually between 1785Mhz and 1875Mhz).

Increasing to stock power, the GPUs could do 2100Mhz max for short durations, before being throttled down due to heat.

If you're using PCs to heat the house, you can combine overclock and power cap, and add a few GPUs in the process. Usually 50% more performance per watt is not unheard of.

DF1DX
DF1DX
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With Linux I use the tools

With Linux I use the tools from Ricks-Lab.

The script for my Radeon VII is here:

#!/bin/sh
###########################################
## amdgpu-pac generated script to modify GPU configuration/settings
###########################################

###########################################
## WARNING - Do not execute this script without completely
## understanding appropriate value to write to your specific GPUs
##########################################
#
#    Copyright (C) 2019  RueiKe
#
#    This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
#    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
#    the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
#    (at your option) any later version.
#
#    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
#    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
#    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
#    GNU General Public License for more details.
#
#    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
#    along with this program.  If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
##############################################
#
# Card0   Vega 20 (rev c1)
# /sys/class/drm/card0/device/
#
set -x
# Powercap Old:  250 New:  190 Min: 0 Max: 300
sudo sh -c "echo '180000000' >  /sys/class/drm/card0/device/hwmon/hwmon3/power1_cap"
# Fan PWM Old:  20 New:  45 Min:  0 Max:  100
sudo sh -c "echo '1' >  /sys/class/drm/card0/device/hwmon/hwmon3/pwm1_enable"
sudo sh -c "echo '114' >  /sys/class/drm/card0/device/hwmon/hwmon3/pwm1"
#sclk curve end point: 0 : 808 MHz
# Sclk curve point 0 unchanged, skipping
#sclk curve end point: 1 : 1801 MHz
# Sclk curve point 1 unchanged, skipping
#mclk curve end point: 1 : 1000 MHz
# Mclk curve point 1 unchanged, skipping
#vddc curve point: 0 : 808 MHz, 740 mV
# *** sudo sh -c "echo 'vc 0 808 740' >  /sys/class/drm/card0/device/pp_od_clk_voltage"
#vddc curve point: 1 : 1304 MHz, 793 mV
# ****sudo sh -c "echo 'vc 1 1304 807' >  /sys/class/drm/card0/device/pp_od_clk_voltage"
#vddc curve point: 2 : 1801 MHz, 1000 mV
sudo sh -c "echo 'vc 2 1801 1000' >  /sys/class/drm/card0/device/pp_od_clk_voltage"
# Selected: ID=5, name=COMPUTE
sudo sh -c "echo 'manual' >  /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_dpm_force_performance_level"
sudo sh -c "echo '5' >  /sys/class/drm/card0/device/pp_power_profile_mode"
sudo sh -c "echo 'c' >  /sys/class/drm/card0/device/pp_od_clk_voltage"

 

Chooka
Chooka
Joined: 11 Feb 13
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ARCHAE86, myself and a few of

ARCHAE86, myself and a few of you have discussed the undervolting on the Radeon VII thread.

https://einsteinathome.org/content/all-things-radeon-vii-vega-20?page=12

Thanks to Archae86 and others, I run mine undervolted. Fan noise drops off and barely any loss in performance. It's great.

I did the same with my Vega 56's but I've taken a guess at the settings. They probably aren't the best but it's a reduction non the less.

Sharing this info to help cut power bills is something we should all empower with each other. There's heaps of tips & tricks out there.

Different teams but BOINC united!


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