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  • Nvidia RTX 30xx series power draw limited on Linux?
Nvidia RTX 30xx series power draw limited on Linux?
Guppy Nov 11, 2021
(tldr; in bold)

My new work laptop came with a RTX 3060, not the craziest of gfx cards - but still even the mobile version should be a major step up from my GTX 970.

How ever the difference is barely perceptible, synthetic benchmarks properly will show a gain, but it with 3 generations I expected more.

So I started to investigate and quickly discovered that even under heavy load the GPU never draws more than 78-79W ( as opposed to it's 130W max ) at first I suspected Lenovo of shipping subpar components - but apparently it's common issue, where windows does infact draw 130W but Linux cant

https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/has-anyone-been-able-to-run-an-rtx-3060-laptop-gpu-at-more-than-80w-on-linux/192959

It's annoying but not a massive issue as it is after all a work Laptop, how ever I'm curious if the powerdraw issue is limited to laptops or if similar issues plague the desktop versions.

I mean if a christmas miracle occours and GPUs become available at sane prices it would make the choice between AMD and Nvidia easier if one is stuck at 60% performance.
Xpander Nov 11, 2021
what does nvidia-smi -q | grep Power report?

you can set the new powerlimit with nvidia-smi -pl <number> if for some reason it defaults to lower than it should.
Guppy Nov 11, 2021
Quoting: Xpanderwhat does nvidia-smi -q | grep Power report?

you can set the new powerlimit with nvidia-smi -pl <number> if for some reason it defaults to lower than it should.

That's where I got the 78-79W power draw figure from :) every thing else is N/A :

 
$ nvidia-smi -q | grep Power
        Power Management Object           : N/A
        SW Power Cap                      : Active
            HW Power Brake Slowdown       : Not Active
    Power Readings
        Power Management                  : N/A
        Power Draw                        : 78.52 W
        Power Limit                       : N/A
        Default Power Limit               : N/A
        Enforced Power Limit              : N/A
        Min Power Limit                   : N/A
        Max Power Limit                   : N/A

this is under load - keeping an eye on it with watch "nvidia-smi -q | grep Power" it fluxuates between 76W to 82W once the actuall game starts

trying to alter the power limit reports

 
Changing power management limit is not supported for GPU: 00000000:01:00.0.
Treating as warning and moving on.
All done.

which apparently is expected
Xpander Nov 11, 2021
ohh yeah, it looks like firmware issue as it doesn't even report the default powerlimits.

my desktop 1080Ti for example

xpander@archlinux ~ $ nvidia-smi -q | grep Power
        Power Management Object           : N/A
        SW Power Cap                      : Not Active
            HW Power Brake Slowdown       : Not Active
    Power Readings
        Power Management                  : Supported
        Power Draw                        : 75.77 W
        Power Limit                       : 270.00 W
        Default Power Limit               : 270.00 W
        Enforced Power Limit              : 270.00 W
        Min Power Limit                   : 135.00 W
        Max Power Limit                   : 326.00 W

edit: i neve owned laptop with optimus, so i actually don't know if thats normal for those.
but it looks like yours reports SW power cap also.. which is sofware power cap and its active.. so does that mean some sort of lenovo app should control all that?

edit2: Do you have the laptop plugged into AC power? maybe software cap will change when its on AC power vs on Batteries.

Last edited by Xpander on 11 November 2021 at 3:25 pm UTC
Guppy Nov 11, 2021
I disabled Optimus / "dynamic graphics" in bios, and am running in "dedicated graphics" mode.

I've only ever tested with the AC plugged in, though I'm not hopefull that unplugging it will unlock the power cap it's worth a shot to do so later
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