Why does sometimes my 3080TI draw only half of 350W under full load?
James
Posts: 1,025
Why does sometimes my 3080TI draw only half of 350W under full load?
It becomes very slow when rendering.
Post edited by James on
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Rendering does not require the same "power" that gaming does. The rendering uses more complex code, for accuracy, unlike a game that uses "tricks" to fake basic rendering.
For the most part, CUDA and RTX and TENSOR are doing the majority of the work, when rendering. As opposed to all the Direct-X garbage, which is the other 80% of the GPU's core. (That is where your card starts pulling TONS of power to run.) Also, though you are using a lot of memory, most of the memory is "stagnant", holding data to be analysed. Unlike a game, which most of the memory is constantly holding temporary data that is flying in and out of it, trying to produce 120fps-60fps, etc... as opposed to 1 frame, per minute.)
Yes, it is normal for a card to draw only a fraction of the wattage, under "rendering" loads.
When things start shifting around in memory, or if you use d-force or strand-hair or things that ALSO use (GL code), then you may get a few bursts of higher wattages for a moment or two. Chances are, it is "windows" which has Direct-X built-in to the OS graphical processes now, which is causing those bursts you see. Yes, windows is almost completely Direct-X now. (Previously it was based off GDI and old-school bit-blit methods. Now GDI uses DX to do almost everything too. That is why DX games try to use "dedicated access", so the games don't fight windows for refresh rates and processing desktop garbage.)
Also, when rendering, anything that NEEDS that space, and those processes, which your card is using to render, has to wait for the process to yield. You can setup process affinity or adjust windows to "offer more to background processing", but you would expect your whole computer to be slower when rendering, in any situation. Rendering is not a "casual event", it is a "data-thirsty and CPU-thirsty event". You shouldn't be doing anything else, honestly, while rendering.