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General Discussions

bgttje
Journeyman III

idling power

Why is the Zen CPU idling at such high frequencies? Intel CPU's idle at 800Mhz vs the 2200 of my 3600X f.i. No wonder temps are high as is power draw. Please insert a tyool in your driver software to adjust this or in Bios.

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3 Replies

Are you using Windows Balance Power plan and set the CPU minimum to 5% and CPU Maximum to 100%?

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leyvin
Miniboss

Cool'n'Quiet Mode should be enabled by Default as a CPU Option.

Now there are a few things to keep in mind when it comes to AMD CPUs...

AMD CPUs lie about their Operating Frequency... well they don't., but how most programs report it means you have a false sense of what the CPU is actually doing.

I've added a Screenshot of my R5 1600 as it is right now.

Keep in mind I keep my house (as it's Winter) at a fairly 'warm' 25c, so that's likely the ambient right now; and my case doesn't exactly have "Great" Airflow (Coolermaster E500) but it's not the worst... aside from that I'm using the Stock Wraith (Spire) Cooler that it came with; and Conductonaut Thermal Compound (which does improve temperatures but not too dramatically).

CPUID.png

As you can see., despite my system reporting it's running at 3.14GHz (and HWMonitor claiming 3,492MHz., but you can't see that on the screenshot) … it's ONLY drawing 21.16w @ 34c with the Fan Operating at 1318RPM (42%) 

Typically speaking it will sit at 1800-2000RPM "Under Load" (depends if I'm Gaming or doing Workstation tasks, like Compiling, Rendering, Photoshop Effects, etc.) but the Max is 3100RPM. 

Now clearly at 22w., it isn't ACTUALLY running at 3.495GHz (or even 3.14GHz) … especially not if 3.5GHz will generally use 72±5w (depending on workload).

That's 30% Power Draw., so we can actually assume it's Parked itself at ~1GHz. 

With this said AMD CPUs have a bit of a Party Trick., as when it needs a Higher Clock... well because the Infinity Fabric is always at (or slightly below) the desired Frequency; the Cores will instantly be able to hit Peak Clocks "On-Demand".

Intel Processors tend to need to take a Dozen Cycles in order to Synchronise before hitting the Desired Frequency; and this can actually lead to Application or Gaming "Jitter" when starting / handling new tasks. 

Still because of how they're reported typically, it's easy to see why most would assume that "Idle" isn't actually any slower. 

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I wanted to add something as well, as ASUS AI Suite reports the frequency as well as the CPU power consumption. The displayed power is for the entire CPU, not just one core. Note I have a Ryzen 1800X, which is 14nm and far less power efficient than the Ryzen 3000 series.

This is the CPU under stress (AIDA64 System Stability Test, stressing CPU, cache, and FPU)

This is after about 30 seconds after stopping the test

And this is after about a minute

And after about 2 minutes when an "idle" state has been reached, or as much of an idle state as you can get, and all core clocks are starting to drop to the lowest P state, in my case 2133mhz at 0.900v.

I'm going to reiterate AMD stated that back with the Windows 10 1903 update and May chipset drivers, the CPU can shift power and clock states exceedingly quickly, 2ms, which is why you're not going to see every little change, as measurement effect will cause higher clocks and power consumption. Also, AMD CPUs are made on a more advanced, power efficient process node as compared to Intel, 7nm for the Ryzen 3000 series vs 14nm+++ for Intel.

It should also be mentioned that the CPU cores at idle are consuming the least amount of wattage, as you have the memory controller, PCIe controller, and other functions which reside in the CPU, as well as the Infinity Fabric tying it all together, and none of that is affected by the core frequencies. As you can see by the HWiNFO readout, the cores themselves are using fewer than 8w, but the rest of the functions are consuming 18w.

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