ASPM Compatibility and Idle Power Draw

[Rover4444]

Hey guys, just wanted to know the ASPM compatibility of the AIB Arc cards and what you guys do about Arc's high idle power consumption. I've been looking around and it looks like the first-party Intel cards are compatible, and the Acer and ASRock cards aren't. l'm really interested in the Sparkle cards in particular, they look awesome and are priced phenomenally right now.

If anybody has underclocking info I'm also all ears.

Also first post and thread ever haha

 

[Wirko]

What you're asking about probably isn't ASPM. ASPM powers down the PCIe bus. It can save a watt or so in a SSD with 4 PCIe lanes, so maybe four times as much in a GPU. Not a huge saving, however it matters a lot in notebooks.

But independently of ASPM, the graphics card also lowers the memory frequency and voltage as much as possible (there's a minimum memory bandwidth necessary just to refresh the displays). This can save tens of watts. AMD is sometimes really bad at that, I suspect it lacks proper hardware support and the issue can be only partially fixed in firmware. I don't know about Intel Arc, though.

 

[Rover4444]

I'm talking about Intel's fix for high idle power draw on Arc https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000092564/graphics.html which is ASPM. Power consumption goes down from something like ~40W to ~10W which is indeed very substantial seeing how even the 4090 uses "only" ~20W at idle.

Unfortunately though, according to this guy in https://libreddit.privacydev.net/r/...fortunate_news_for_acer_predator_bifrost_arc/ even if your motherboard properly supports ASPM, the card might not actually work with it.

 

[Wirko]

I see people have had some success with the suggested fix, more so with the A750 than the A770. Intel also issued a driver update that was supposed to bring down idle power, but only when driving one or two monitors. Have you seen this?

Intel Quietly Fixes High Multi-monitor Power Draw of Arc GPUs

Without mentioning it in its driver change-log, Intel Graphics has quietly addressed the issue of unusually high power-draw for its Arc A-series GPUs in multi-monitor setups. The older 101.4091 drivers had a typical single-monitor idle power-draw of around 11 W, which would shoot up to 40 W idle...

www.techpowerup.com

It appears that the power issue with Intel GPUs is somehow linked to ASPM settings (and hardware compatibility), as if Intel had taken some shortcut in their HW/firmware/driver design, which Nvidia and AMD didn't.

 

[Rover4444]

I haven't seen it, it's news to me! Gonna be going headless so I hope I can benefit. Anybody able to see what their idle power draw's like with an A770 on the current drivers?

And yeah, it's a shame Intel didn't get this right in the beginning. Hoping Battlemage is a knockout and priced well.

Edit: I checked the sources, looks like it still requires ASPM?

 

[Magic Cube]

My experience with ARC(Asrock Challenger A750) and ASPM. My MSI B550 Carbon wifi(something) had bios update with ASPM settings revealed in bios. I did enable it and I did try different settings. Those settings didn't have any effect on idle power consumption. It was always about 40 watts.

On my MSI x670 Tomahawk has ASPM settings in bios, but those are hidden. Without those settings revealed, no power savings for ARC. Now I am running with 7950x3D's integrated gpu, because I haven't really played anything with my Arc or other gpu's I own->I will save some electricity.

 

[GerKNG]

from my limited experience (a streamer that builds PCs, retro stuff and actually has several intel ARC gpus for streaming, video encoding and testing)
he often shows that ASPM (L1 L2 ? some advanced settings when ASPM is enabled) drops idle power consumption on ARCs by a lot.

 

[Rover4444]

My experience with ARC(Asrock Challenger A750) and ASPM. My MSI B550 Carbon wifi(something) had bios update with ASPM settings revealed in bios. I did enable it and I did try different settings. Those settings didn't have any effect on idle power consumption. It was always about 40 watts.

On my MSI x670 Tomahawk has ASPM settings in bios, but those are hidden. Without those settings revealed, no power savings for ARC. Now I am running with 7950x3D's integrated gpu, because I haven't really played anything with my Arc or other gpu's I own->I will save some electricity.

That's too bad, looks like the ASRock cards for sure aren't compatible then.

from my limited experience (a streamer that builds PCs, retro stuff and actually has several intel ARC gpus for streaming, video encoding and testing)
he often shows that ASPM (L1 L2 ? some advanced settings when ASPM is enabled) drops idle power consumption on ARCs by a lot.

Do you know which one that was? The Intel LE cards all work with ASPM, but the AIB models are up in the air when it comes to compatibility.

 

[Magic Cube]

That's too bad, looks like the ASRock cards for sure aren't compatible then.

I am not sure if it ASPM should work on AMD systems with these cards. As Asrocks ARC powersaving FAQ talks mostly about Intel systems https://www.asrock.com/Graphics-Card/Intel/Intel Arc A750 Challenger D 8GB OC/index.us.asp#FAQ

 

[GerKNG]

That's too bad, looks like the ASRock cards for sure aren't compatible then.


Do you know which one that was? The Intel LE cards all work with ASPM, but the AIB models are up in the air when it comes to compatibility.

It was a bunch of cards, asrock challenger?, a low profile one, intel LE.
That was over several months.

 

[Rover4444]

I am not sure if it ASPM should work on AMD systems with these cards. As Asrocks ARC powersaving FAQ talks mostly about Intel systems https://www.asrock.com/Graphics-Card/Intel/Intel Arc A750 Challenger D 8GB OC/index.us.asp#FAQ

Scroll down. It works fine on 600/500 series AMD motherboards (from ASRock anyways). I'm surprised though, I guess that means they fixed the idle problem? Guess MSI just needs to step their game up, in that case.

It was a bunch of cards, asrock challenger?, a low profile one, intel LE.
That was over several months.

Thank you for the info.

 

[archie_kaos]

On my Mainboard is no Option in the UEFI to select or configure ASPM ("old" Asrock X370 Killer SLI) avaible. But its activated by Default (L1). My Desktop-Idle could drop down to around 12 Watt. I've checked it with HWinfo and the Intel Tool:

 

[DavidC1]

It appears that the power issue with Intel GPUs is somehow linked to ASPM settings (and hardware compatibility), as if Intel had taken some shortcut in their HW/firmware/driver design, which Nvidia and AMD didn't.

Intel says it can't be fully fixed using software/firmware because the silicon doesn't have fine grained power management features to independently power down all blocks.

 

[archie_kaos]

Looks good! Values from GPU-Z. Intel has done some very good Optimization with the newest Drivers and the recent Firmware.

 

[Wirko]

View attachment 323385

Looks good! Values from GPU-Z. Intel has done some very good Optimization with the newest Drivers and the recent Firmware.

This doesn't look so good. Maximum memory clock on idle, RAM temp higher than GPU temp, and 5.3 W just for the GPU chip - I assume it doesn't include RAM power consumption. What is that "59 RPM"? Do the fans stop in the idle state?

 

[Magic Cube]

Do the fans stop in the idle state?

Arc's have zero fan speed feature, atleast my Asrock A750 Challenger has.

 

[Wirko]

Arc's have zero fan speed feature, atleast my Asrock A750 Challenger has.

Stopped fans are a more reliable indicator of low total (GPU+VRAM) consumption than just "GPU chip power draw" of 5.3 W in GPU-Z, that's why I asked.

 

[archie_kaos]

Stopped fans are a more reliable indicator of low total (GPU+VRAM) consumption than just "GPU chip power draw" of 5.3 W in GPU-Z, that's why I asked.

You should work as a Fortune-Teller. You don't even know my Room Temperatures - but okay... not even the ATX-Case, what Fans are in this Case or better how this Graphics Card passive Cooling is designed. Well done. You could make People become Billionaires with your Talent.

 

[Rover4444]

Thanks archie, what make and model is your card?

 

[archie_kaos]

Its the Arc A750 from Intel (Limited Edition).

 

[Rover4444]

Had a feeling that'd be the case.

 

[archie_kaos]

Had a feeling that'd be the case.

No Problem, Mate.

And the 4090 got some real bad Ones too with spinning Idle-Fans: https://www.reddit.com/r/ZOTAC/comments/zydbdp

How could this be happening? The 4090 from God-Mode Nvidia is the absolute Perfection in Innovation. How dare they?