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AMD PowerPlay

Brand name by AMD From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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AMD PowerPlay is the brand name for a set of technologies for the reduction of the energy consumption implemented in several of AMD's graphics processing units and APUs supported by their proprietary graphics device driver "Catalyst". AMD PowerPlay is also implemented into ATI/AMD chipsets which integrated graphics and into AMD's Imageon handheld chipset, that was sold to Qualcomm in 2008.

Quick Facts Design firm, Type ...

Besides the desirable goal to reduce energy consumption, AMD PowerPlay helps to lower the noise levels created by the cooling in desktop computers and extend battery life in mobile devices. AMD PowerPlay has been succeeded by AMD PowerTune.[1]

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History

The technology was first implemented in Mobility Radeon products for notebooks, to provide a set of features to lower the power consumption of the laptop computer. The technology consists of several technologies; examples include dynamic clock adjustments when the notebook is not plugged into a power socket and allowing different backlight brightness levels of the notebook LCD monitor. The technology was updated with the release of each generation of mobile GPUs. The latest release is ATI PowerPlay 7.0.[2]

Since the release of Radeon HD 3000 Series, PowerPlay was implemented to further reduce the power consumption of desktop GPUs.

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Supported products

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The official ATI support list[3] lists only the ATI Radeon 3800 series desktop cards, but PowerPlay is also a listed feature of all Radeon HD 3000/4000/5000 series products. Independent reviews indicated that the latter was already lower power compared to other 3D cards, so the addition of PowerPlay to that line was clearly intended to address an increasingly power, heat and noise conscious market. The ATI Radeon HD 2600 line – which does not support PowerPlay – was being phased out in favour of the 3000 series at the same price points that also support PCI Express 2.0, DirectX 10.1 and faster GDDR3 memory.

The entire ATI Radeon Xpress line is also supported for single board computers which tend to be power sensitive and used in large installations where configuration and boot image control are major concerns.

Support for "PowerPlay" was added to the Linux kernel driver "amdgpu" on November 11, 2015.[4]

Desktop versus laptop

The main difference between the desktop and laptop versions is that the desktop version cuts the features which are aimed at notebook usage, including variable LCD backlight brightness. The PowerPlay technology for Radeon desktop graphics features three usage scenarios: normal mode (2D mode), light gaming mode and intensive gaming mode (3D mode), replacing notebook scenarios (running on AC power or battery power). Tests indicated that the lowest core clock frequency of an RV670 GPU core can reach as low as 300 MHz with PowerPlay technology enabled.[5]

Feature overview for AMD APUs

The following table shows features of AMD's processors with 3D graphics, including APUs (see also: List of AMD processors with 3D graphics).

More information Platform, High, standard and low power ...
  1. For FM2+ Excavator models: A8-7680, A6-7480 & Athlon X4 845.
  2. A PC would be one node.
  3. An APU combines a CPU and a GPU. Both have cores.
  4. Requires firmware support.
  5. Requires firmware support.
  6. No SSE4. No SSSE3.
  7. Single-precision performance is calculated from the base (or boost) core clock speed based on a FMA operation.
  8. To play protected video content, it also requires card, operating system, driver, and application support. A compatible HDCP display is also needed for this. HDCP is mandatory for the output of certain audio formats, placing additional constraints on the multimedia setup.
  9. To feed more than two displays, the additional panels must have native DisplayPort support.[15] Alternatively active DisplayPort-to-DVI/HDMI/VGA adapters can be employed.
  10. DRM (Direct Rendering Manager) is a component of the Linux kernel. Support in this table refers to the most current version.

Feature overview for AMD graphics cards

The following table shows features of AMD/ATI's GPUs (see also: List of AMD graphics processing units).

More information Name of GPU series, Wonder ...
  1. The Radeon 100 Series has programmable pixel shaders, but do not fully comply with DirectX 8 or Pixel Shader 1.0. See article on R100's pixel shaders.
  2. R300, R400 and R500 based cards do not fully comply with OpenGL 2+ as the hardware does not support all types of non-power of two (NPOT) textures.
  3. OpenGL 4+ compliance requires supporting FP64 shaders and these are emulated on some TeraScale chips using 32-bit hardware.
  4. Vulkan support is theoretically possible but has not been implemented in a stable driver.
  5. The UVD and VCE were replaced by the Video Core Next (VCN) ASIC in the Raven Ridge APU implementation of Vega.
  6. Video processing for video frame rate interpolation technique. In Windows it works as a DirectShow filter in your player. In Linux, there is no support on the part of drivers and / or community.
  7. To play protected video content, it also requires card, operating system, driver, and application support. A compatible HDCP display is also needed for this. HDCP is mandatory for the output of certain audio formats, placing additional constraints on the multimedia setup.
  8. More displays may be supported with native DisplayPort connections, or splitting the maximum resolution between multiple monitors with active converters.
  9. DRM (Direct Rendering Manager) is a component of the Linux kernel. AMDgpu is the Linux kernel module. Support in this table refers to the most current version.
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See also

References

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