AMD Ryzen Eco Mode Deep-Dive & Benchmarks on R9 7950X (Zen 4)
Why Hacker News recommends it
Cited as evidence that Eco Mode gives large power savings for a small performance loss on Zen 4.
What it is
Gamers Nexus benchmarks the Ryzen 9 7950X in its BIOS Eco Mode presets (65W, 105W and stock 170W). It measures the performance cost against the power and heat savings.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2023 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Recommends shmerl · 2023-02 · on “PC CPU Shipments See Steepest Decline in 30 Years”
> Add to all of that, this latest batch of CPUs are just stupid power hungry - like 240w+ under load Eco mode is a thing for AMD CPUs. There is no point really in not using it by default - benefits are very marginal with power cost being disproportionally huge. And AMD are doing it more for marketing reasons to gain some single digit percentages in benchmarks. So just enable it and enjoy way more reasonable and efficient power usage with basically almost the same performance. See some details here: [this video]
Recommends protastus · 2023-10 · on “First 96-Core AMD Zen 4 Threadripper Tests Show Utter Domination over Intel”
I have a 16-core Ryzen 7950X that I run in "eco mode 105W". This delivers performance close to an Intel 13900K but at less than half the power. It's also much easier to cool and get a quiet PC without water cooling and enthusiast shenanigans (de-lidding, etc.) I don't know if the Zen 4 Threadrippers can be similarly run with a power limit. If they can, I'd expect much better efficiency than whatever Intel offers. This has eco mode benchmarks: [this video]
Recommends mrbigbob · 2023-10 · on “First 96-Core AMD Zen 4 Threadripper Tests Show Utter Domination over Intel”
Yeah I am definitely not a fan of Intel/AMD/and even Nvidia who will completely push power to stupid levels just to get less than an extra 10% performance Gamers Nexus did a video earlier this year comparing the 7950x at different eco modes and they found that putting the 7950x at a 105 watt eco made drop the performance around 5% but shaved almost 100 watts off of power. heres the link to the video [this video] I know why these companies do it and im lucky electricity isnt too expensive in my area but i rather shave 100 + watts of heat being dumped into my room (especially in the summer months)
Cites etchalon · 2023-11 · on “M3 Max Geekbench”
Yes, if you overclock the 7590x, ignoring any "system tuning" you can get a better GB6. If we could overclock the M3 Max, we could achieve the same. The performance loss of the 7590X in 65W eco mode isn't 10-20% compared to stock. It's more like 20-30%: [this video] If we use an overlocked 7590X – ignored the additional power draw – in 65W eco mode, using a rounded up 22K GB6 score, and assume a 20% performance loss (~17600 GB6), the 7950X, at 40% higher TDP than the M3 Max, is still 10% slower than the M3 Max. Which is especially insane considering the 7950X is a desktop-class CPU, and the M3 Max is sitting in a laptop.