The relatively high TDPs are putting me off Ryzen 9 a bit, even if you are getting 12-16 cores.
(Reposting a comment I made two weeks ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41043961)
In my BIOS I can activate a "ECO Mode", which lets me decide if I want to run my 7950x on full 170W TDP, 105W TDP or 60W TDP.
I benchmarked it, the difference between 170 and 105 is basically zero, and the difference to 60W is just a few percent of a performance hit, but way worth it, as it's ~0.3€/kWh over here.
From tests I've read, if you would compile something or render or encode/transcode (on CPU) or similar, there is a measurable effect. It will take only little bit longer but consume noticeably less energy.
The other positive effect: reduced noise from fan or even no noticeable noise at all.
> 170W TDP, 105W TDP or 60W TDP
I'm curious why it is not possible to adjust these values in only few watt steps.
One of my "benchmarks" included compiling a large rust project, I don't have the exact numbers, but in tge end it was such a tiny fraction (something like 5 seconds difference, with a compilation time of 2 minutes). Which is definitely not worth the ~70% increased power consumption.
> I'm curious why it is not possible to adjust these values in only few watt steps.
Don't know probably to keep it simple (and maybe nor to Fry your CPU if you swap your CPU to one which is rated for e.g. 65W TDP).
This "ECO Mode" has three settings:
"OFF" which means max TDP (in the case of my CPU 170W)
"105W",
"ON" which is 65W.
It also says in the description that "105W" mode only exists for CPUs with 170W TDP.
Also if you look at the other CPUs from AMD you'll see that they only sell CPUs with these TDP numbers and additionally 120W (the x3d variants), that's probably why they chose theese numbers.