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Mad with power

I’ve been a subscriber to Maximum PC for roughly 20 years and this is the first email I’ve sent.

However, I felt compelled to chime in after having some critical feelings about certain contemporary PC and technology trends and topics.

The first one is my HUGE agreement with Jeremy Laird on his critical take on excess power consumption that is now exponentially accelerating (June 2022).

He nailed it on the head as something that needs to be circulated and pushed back against, not just from Nvidia but Intel, AMD, and anyone else that is trying to hold performance gains SUPERFICIALLY, while significantly increasing TDP and TGP. All of this excess power draw and heat generation is strangely happening at a time when energy prices are through the roof, the electric grid is more strained than ever, and most world leaders are making aggressive pushes toward mitigating climate change. Current world events and upcoming policies and legislation show that it’s time to start tapering off power consumption on virtually every kind of device.

Performance-per-watt marketing needs to ramp up again, not purely performance marketing.

I also wanted to say how awesome your feature ‘State of the GPUnion address’ was in that same issue. I really appreciated all the research and found it interesting to see how the older GPUs compare today. AMD has shown the ability to gain performance relative to Nvidia over time, and while Bulldozer never did actually pan out, sometimes its forwardlooking approach benefits users who keep their GPUs for several years.