[HN Gopher] Was Rocket Lake Power Efficient?
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       Was Rocket Lake Power Efficient?
        
       Author : rbanffy
       Score  : 36 points
       Date   : 2022-12-19 15:06 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (chipsandcheese.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (chipsandcheese.com)
        
       | pcdoodle wrote:
       | Intel solutions always seem to have better idle consumption.
       | Maybe this has changed, I'm still playing with older equipment.
        
         | KaiserPro wrote:
         | From the stuff I have access too physically (xeons(well gold
         | cpus) and thread rippers) the intel stuff is much cooler until
         | you really rag it, where as the threadrippers are just plain
         | warm.
         | 
         | This isn't scientific, so I might be comparing big 64 thread
         | monsters to smaller intel jobbies.
        
         | jeffbee wrote:
         | If anything Intel has become better with each newer generation.
         | My 12700K idled at < 3W package power. My 13700K pulls even
         | less. They have a lot of good stuff going on like not enabling
         | the L3 cache if the CPU in only briefly awake, or dynamically
         | resizing L3 if they can get away with it.
        
           | thekombustor wrote:
           | Fellow 12700k owner, I am very impressed with the idle power
           | consumption. Mine reports idle at ~7W, which is pretty close
           | to my laptop's R7 4750U.
           | 
           | Came from an R5 2600, which I'm almost positive idled higher.
           | While the full-core power consumption is quite excessive, I
           | think Intel overall does a good job of efficiency under
           | idle/light load.
        
             | jeffbee wrote:
             | If you object to the K-series CPU's ability to draw
             | current, you have the option to use the linux tool
             | `powercap-set` to limit it to 65W, 95W, or whatever
             | arbitrary limit you think is best. Intel RAPL accepts its
             | parameter down to the microwatt.
        
         | selectodude wrote:
         | My Zen3 still pulls >25W at idle which is an absolute
         | embarrassment.
        
           | duffyjp wrote:
           | Is that a from-the-wall number or just the CPU?
        
             | sgtnoodle wrote:
             | My 5950x desktop pulls like 60W from the wall at idle in
             | linux.
        
               | GrayShade wrote:
               | Damn. I'll have to test again, but mine idles around 120
               | W IIRC.
        
               | ridgered4 wrote:
               | It doesn't help that the x570 chipset uses like twice the
               | idle power of the x470 it replaced.
        
           | mrguyorama wrote:
           | I found that having steam open caused my ryzen 5 3600 to go
           | from 3 watts idle to multiple tens of watts. Chromium under
           | the hood is so stupid.
        
           | eBombzor wrote:
           | One major drawback of the chiplet arch.
        
       | PaulHoule wrote:
       | I feel like a bit of a dope, but I have to go look up these
       | "Lake" chips from Intel by name whenever somebody writes about
       | them.
       | 
       | Often these are delayed so you've been hearing about "such-and-
       | such Lake" for three years and by the time it arrives you are so
       | sick of hearing it that it sounds like it is something old and
       | obsolete.
       | 
       | It looks like Rocket Lake is an advanced chip on the 14nm node
       | which is not so bad as it sounds because the process of things
       | getting better when you shrink has been derailed as of late.
       | Before 2005 you had explosive progress in hardware because the
       | clock speed and power consumption both go down. Until recently
       | the cost per transistor went down, but now it is heading up which
       | is one of the reasons why the 4090 is as crazy expensive as it
       | is. I've seen 22nm parts still running strong after 10 years, I
       | think 14nm parts will hold up, but it might be 7nm parts won't
       | have that kind of lifespan.
        
         | simpleintheory wrote:
         | Off-topic, but why do we still use nm to refer to things? I
         | assume everyone on here is already aware that it's purely a
         | marketing term, but we still use it.
        
         | gorgoiler wrote:
         | I don't know if this will help you but it is at least a nice
         | list in a plain text file -- _intel-family.h_ from the Linux
         | source tree:
         | 
         | https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/arch/x86/inclu...
        
         | duffyjp wrote:
         | I have an i7-2600 (32nm) still in service and it's shocking how
         | well it keeps up with modern tasks. The cheapest current Ryzen
         | you can buy would destroy it benchmarks but you'd never notice
         | day-to-day.
        
           | Rebelgecko wrote:
           | I'm rocking an i5-4670k with a mild overclock, and I'm _just_
           | getting to the point where it 's starting to bottleneck my
           | framerate in games (the new MS Flight Sim was the straw that
           | broke the camel's back)
        
             | duffyjp wrote:
             | It's probably a silly thing to do, but if you can pickup a
             | 4770K or Xeon 1281v3 for the price of a pizza I bet you
             | could get a a bit more life out of your machine. More cache
             | and hyperthreading always helps.
             | 
             | I had a 1271v3 in my son's PC until the motherboard died
             | earlier this year and it was still quite beefy.
        
           | buserror wrote:
           | Same here, mine has been running overclocked to 5ghz for
           | about 10 years (?) now and I refused to upgrade it by quite a
           | few "lakes". Sure now it's getting pummeled by hugely
           | multicores newer processors, but for a long time, it was top
           | of the range.
        
             | dehrmann wrote:
             | The #1 reason to upgrade is Microsoft is demanding it for
             | Windows 11. Otherwise, older CPUs with plenty of RAM and an
             | SSD still do great for non-intense workloads.
        
               | Mistletoe wrote:
               | This is so incredibly lame of Windows. So much e-waste
               | created so that secretaries can use excel and look at
               | their Facebook on Windows 11.
        
               | PaulHoule wrote:
               | It's not an unreasonable decision for an OS vendor to
               | occasionally say that a certain level of processor is
               | necessary for future versions of the OS. Apple does it
               | with MacOS. I have a 2013 Mac Mini that is going strong
               | except that it doesn't run the latest version of MacOS.
               | The only real problem I had with it is that Safari for a
               | long time didn't support WebP on that version of MacOS
               | which kept me using JPG images for a while.
               | 
               | The trouble is that Intel's rollout of the future has
               | been shambolic at best. Potentially revolutionary
               | extensions such as TSX and SGX failed. It is still too
               | early to require AVX-512 which could speed up and reduce
               | power consumption of your web browser since many of
               | Intel's "latest and greatest" client CPUs don't support
               | it. (Don't buy the false claim that AVX-512 is a power
               | pig: sure it will consume a lot of power running at full
               | clock because it is doing a lot of work... AVX-512 helps
               | "atom class" processors quite a bit because it avoids
               | instruction decoding which Intel is bad at.)
               | 
               | It's not clear that Microsoft's new line in the sand is
               | going to buy them very much extra functionality for
               | Windows.
        
               | toast0 wrote:
               | > The #1 reason to upgrade is Microsoft is demanding it
               | for Windows 11.
               | 
               | Isn't that also the #1 reason not to upgrade? In other
               | words, is Windows 11 compelling yet? As of now, mostly I
               | just hear complaints, and ocassionally tidbits about
               | better scheduling for newer chips with multiple core
               | types (which is compelling, but only if you upgraded)
        
               | jerrygenser wrote:
               | WSL 2 is significantly better on Windows 11 than Windows
               | 10. If you do remote development on WSL, it's worth
               | upgrading to Windows 11 purely for the ability to get the
               | wsl2 improvements.
        
               | frio wrote:
               | Those have all (including WSLg) recently been completely
               | backported to and made available on Windows 10
               | (https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/the-windows-
               | subsy...).
        
               | smolder wrote:
               | No, Windows 11 is not compelling. MS is trying to be a
               | worse apple, and doing a great job at it.
        
             | Arrath wrote:
             | Same here, I relatively recently* upgraded from my OC'd
             | first gen i7, that thing was great for a very long time.
             | 
             | *Good lord, has it been 3 years already?
        
           | jerrygenser wrote:
           | Interesting, because when I upgraded from a Ryzen 3000 series
           | to a Ryzen 7000 series, I experienced significant speedups in
           | various tasks: - Compiling code - Running multiple services
           | in docker containers for local development that are a mix of
           | cpu and io bound
           | 
           | Whenever I use an older laptop I have that is on intel i7,
           | 8th gen, these tasks are much much slower. I think it really
           | depends on your workload.
        
             | WaxProlix wrote:
             | For sure. I moved from setup with an i7-6700k and a gtx
             | 1070 to one with a 5900x and an rx 6900xt, and in games the
             | upgrade wasn't really as strong as you might expect.
             | 
             | Code compilation, hashing, rendering were all markedly
             | faster though. That old PC became a perfectly serviceable
             | hand me down after 5 years of service, and I hope to get
             | another 5 out of this rig. Pretty cool that we're seeing
             | longevity and some progress at the same time.
        
             | duffyjp wrote:
             | Oh, absolutely for what you describe newer chips are going
             | to make a huge difference. The system I'm describing is
             | used by my wife for Steam games, remote desktop, media
             | consumption etc.
             | 
             | My work laptop is an M1 Max and personal laptop an ancient
             | i5 Macbook. I had it upstairs recently and thought I'd do a
             | little coding but gave up after a single `brew install
             | whatever` was still going after 20 minutes and I lost my
             | motivation...
        
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       (page generated 2022-12-19 23:01 UTC)