The Display Unit: A Crucial Component for Power Measurement

As we began our testing process, it became apparent that having a reliable display unit was essential for accurately measuring power consumption. In this case, we opted for a standard item available from McMaster-Carr - a small, indistinct screen that could be screwed into the case to provide a secure mounting option. This decision proved to be necessary, as our project required precise power measurement.

The Display Unit: A Standard Item

Apparently, this type of display unit is a standard item for companies like McMaster-Carr, and can be ordered by customers who need specific threading options. We were relieved to have such a solution available, as it ensured that our testing equipment was secure and reliable.

Power Measurement: Understanding the Basics

As we delved into our power measurement, we realized that the display unit would provide us with valuable insights into the system's power consumption. The total power draw was 14 watts at this point in our testing, but we knew that plugging in an HDMI cable would increase the reading.

The Power Measurement Display

We plugged in an HDMI cable to see the impact on power consumption and were pleased to find that it anchored the display unit securely to the back of the case. However, one of our team members had a different opinion on this setup, joking that we must work at LinusTech Tips or something.

The Power Measurement Utility: PCAT

We were thrilled to discover that the system came with a PCAT utility view 1.1 tool, which provided us with real-time power graphs and detailed metrics for each component. This was particularly useful in understanding the distribution of power consumption across different components, including the GPU, CPU, and memory.

Furmark: A Power-Hungry Test

To further test the system's power draw, we decided to run Furmark, a notoriously power-hungry test application. We were pleased to see that the system could handle the increased load without any issues.

Power Draw Comparison

As we ran Furmark, we compared our results with other tests and found that the system was delivering around 250 watts of power - a significant amount considering its design. However, this is not surprising given the component's specifications, which indicated that it would be capable of handling high power loads.

The Power Measurement Tool: Agnostic to Components

One of the remarkable aspects of our testing equipment was its ability to measure power consumption from any source, regardless of whether it was a graphics card, sound card, or network card. This agnostic nature made it an invaluable tool for understanding system performance and power draw.

Integration with Frame View 1.1

We were pleased to discover that the PCAT utility tool integrated seamlessly with Frame View 1.1, providing us with detailed latency measurements and frame dropped statistics from both tools. Additionally, the integration of DirectX 9 and 10 overlay features made our testing process even more comprehensive.

Campaign Time: Testing at 4K Resolution

With our system now fully loaded and configured, we decided to jump straight into a 4k resolution test campaign. This would allow us to put the system's performance and power draw under intense scrutiny, revealing any potential weaknesses or bottlenecks.

Conclusion

Our testing process was designed to push the limits of this display unit, measuring its power consumption and understanding how it performed in various scenarios. The results were impressive, providing valuable insights into the system's capabilities and limitations.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en- Those who are in the know, know,that when it comes tomeasuring the performanceof a graphics card,FPS is just part of the story,I mean, you could haveall the FPS in the worldbut if you had an extremely high latency,from your mouse clickto the graphics card,processing it, outputting itand actually seeing thephotons hit your eyeballs,that wouldn't make for avery good gaming experience,furthermore efficiency matters,if you had two graphicscards that performed the samebut one of them sucked back 500 wattsand outputs so much heat in your room,that you're like gaming like this,well, surely you'd ratherhave the more efficient one,now we've tried a varietyof different methodsof measuring these things in the past,everything from clamp meters for powerto Makey Makeys with highspeed cameras for input latencyand sometimes it actually worked out okaybut more often than not,it required more set upthan we can put into,every single GPU onevery single test bench,fortunately, that all changes today,meet Nvidia's homegrown tools,they're calling thesethe LDAT and the PCATand we're gonna see A, if they workand B we're gonna discuss whetheror not you can trust them.GlassWire is the tool that shows you,which apps are slowing downyour connection in real time,it's used by security prosto monitor for malware,block bandwidth wasters andthe detects fishes activity,get 25% off using offer codeLinus at the link below.(upbeat music)Let's start with LDAT,the latency and display analysis tool,it's a rather unassuming looking,Logitech G203 Prodigybut wait you need to look closely here,there's actually a secondwire coming out of this thingand if we follow it downto the end, we find,a photo sensor.(upbeat music)It's embedded in an unassuming looking,little 3D printed housingand that wire from the mouse plugs,right into the front of it,a little something like that.So then how is this supposed to be work?Like so,when you place this puppy on the screen,it detects changes in light output,so that means we're actuallyusing a similar method,to something like theone made by Leo Bodnerbut fundamentally different in two ways,one, instead of taking an HDMI input,to measure display latency,we are actually taking a mouse input,to measure end to end,mouse to photon latency.Two, it's software controlledfrom back to front,so through that, we canset up an auto fire mode,that is completely unattended,as long as something on screen changes,every time the mouse clicks,we can repeat our tests indefinitely,to get a reading of potentially hundredsor even thousands of data points,within a single minute of testing,giving us an extremely accurate result,it even lets us see raw sensor data,so we can determine wherethe best place on the screenis to place the sensor, youguys might not know thisbut screens actually draw like this,not just like randomly, not all at once.- Yeah dead center is fine,ideally what it would be islike say you're measuring a game,so if it's a first person shooter,then you would be puttingit over the muzzle,where the muzzle flash wouldbe, then you press the button.- So why don't we go withmy personal favorite,we'll go with that Cisco.- You're missing a step.- Oh, I see.- There was another cable in that boxand it's still in there.- Oh yeah, wait what's this for?- That plugsinto the light sensor,well, let's fire up the program first,that'd be on the desktop,it's just in a folder called LDAT.Oh yeah, it can measure audio as well,it's got a little 3.5millimeter audio Jack in there,so it can measure audio latency.In theory, you could measureany audio latency with that,like not even a computer,like a TV or something,so if you keep it in free running mode,as you move that around,there you go, see there wasa little luminance change.- Oh look at that.- So if you puta brighter window over thator some kind of, anythingreally, like task manager,there you go.- Whoa, cool.- Yeah so you can actually,set the activation pointfor what luminance thatshould like pick up onand yeah, it'll just doit, it's super fast sensor.- That's cool.- You can alsoadd the mouse button as wellwith that second option,so that it actually will detectwhen you click the mouse.This mode is mostly usefulfor setting things up thefirst time and that histogramis what you get after youget the latency calculation,now if you wanted to get something,that's actually a latency calculation,put the window for a LDATin front of the sensor,now click on the window,like somewhere other than a control.- Oh cool.- Yeah, so you canjust do that, it'll pick it up,how long it took for it to change,so what it's doing is it'sactually sending the pulse,to make the click down the cable,that's connected to the mouse,it's not actually like using windowsor anything else to make the click,it's all in the hardware,so you didn't have to have this software,running on this computer.- Not only does this automate the processand make it so that wecan run these tests,without a secondary PC orlike camera capture setup,it's gonna save so much time,it even exports in CSV form,which we can then import into Exceland turn into nice littlecharts for you guys.But it doesn't tell uswhat is contributing,to the overall input leg,it just tells us the total,so what we're measuringhere is everything,D bounds, USB pollingrate, operating system,processing delay, driver processing delay,game engine processing delay,render to display delayand then finally of coursethe pixel response time,all of our display,which isn't to saythough that it's uselessbecause if we've got this data,it means that we can changeother variables one at a timeand just see if theoverall delay gets betterbut it's got Nvidia righton the box, can we trust it?- Yeah, I mean, it's just a mousewith wires coming out of the button,that goes into the sensor,you don't even have to plugit into the same computer,it has nothing to do with Nvidia,so yeah, I don't see any reason why not.- Cool.All right, how about this other tool?This is the PCAT or powercapture analysis tool,can tell these are namedby the engineers, right,this is probably themost interesting thing,I've seen in a long time,when it comes to measuring graphics cards,tools to accuratelymeasure power consumptionare not easily accessiblebeing either very expensiveor very rare or even worse both,methods we've used in thepast such as kilowatts,don't accurately measure power drawbecause power supplyinefficiencies can creep in,to say nothing of the rest ofthe systems power consumption,during the test,even worse are thesoftware derived methods,you might use at homebecause A, each vendorhas a different ideaof how to measure total board powerand B, you're counting onthem to report it correctly,never go up against the Sicilianwhen death is on the line,which brings us then to these two PCBs,one with a PCI express connectorand cartage and anotherwith a whole whack ton ofPCI express power connectors,as you guys might have guessed,these allow us to measure the power,flowing through each of these connectors,that is both from the power supply cables,that come into the graphics cardand through the motherboard itselfwith up to three, eight pinPCI express, 12 volt cables.Now on this poppy right here,we've got a removable OLED display,that takes both the feedfrom the PCI express boardand the power interposersand spits out statisticsand the current power draw,Nvidia claims it's within0.25% of the oscilloscopeas far as accuracy goes,so with this we can accurately measure,what the real world power drawis for any PCI express card actuallynot just a graphics card,let's go ahead and try it out here,this is one of those thingsthat as a manufacturer,you have to have theabsolute utmost confidencein your products in order to producebecause it's the kind ofthing that obviously both AMDand Nvidia have had internally for yearsbut if you go ahead and youmake all these tools available,to you know every Yahoo,you know, hardware reviewer out there,then not just today butfor years, forever to come,they're gonna have the meansto hold you accountablefor your crappy products,so you basically have to think,you know, not only do Ihave the best product todaybut I'm gonna have thebest product foreverand I want everyone to know about it,to produce tools likethis and send them out'cause I've asked for years, like,you guys obviously have allthese measurement tools,why don't you just provide them to us'cause you have them anywayand the answer was always like,let me get back to youand yet here we are,this is freaking awesome, howreplaceable is this Anthony,is this just something Nvidia's gonna sellin their web store orlike is it reviewers only?- For now it's a reviewersonly kind of thing,it's just something thatthey've kind of built upon,out of their lab,that's why you see the3D printed componentsbut they haven't ruled outselling it to consumers,if there's enough demand for it,so maybe let them knowdown in the comments,if you wanna see that,just make sure thatthey're on the input side,versus the other output sideand there's a wire on each end.- All right so (indistinct)let's just put that poppy, Idon't know, like, brilliant,so they include up to a triple slotof little (indistinct)that you can screw in here,to your case, so you canactually mount it securely.- Apparently it's a standarditem for McMaster-Carr,you can actually just order them yourself,if you need a differentthreading for your screws.- Oh okay well-- Which I think it may actuallybe necessary in our case.- We're going straight yellow here boys,oh yeah, no problem, piece of cake,oh the display is upside down.- This is why we didn'tgive Linus the tools.- Okay here we go, total power14 watts right now, dang,oh, I should plug in an HDMI cable.- Yeah power usewill just probably go up,a little bit with the HDMI cable then.The good news is the HDMI cable,should anchor it to theback of the case here.- That's not a good solution,what do you work at LinusTech Tips or something?What's wrong with you?- Listen, we deal injunk around here right.- Of course you're not stuck,just looking at this littletiny display down here,as freaking cool as that is,there's an accompanyingPCAT utility view 1.1,that like the LDAT onecan log to CSV filesand additionally providereal time power graphs,look at this not just totalbut on a per source basis,so on our two eight pins here,you can see we're doingsomewhere in the neighborhoodof four watts or soand then where is it,yeah 12 volt PCI express,so that's coming through the slot,we're doing about four or five watts,so it's actually equallybalanced across all of them,so then I can just fire up furmark, right?- Yeah and if you wantedto have all of those,different metrics on the graph,there was actually check-boxes,down at the bottom right thereand that'll just throwthem on there for you.- Even just likethe windows hardware,GPU acceleration of the UI,will give you these littlespikes when you do stuff,like watch, I'm gonna launchfurmark and it's 40 watts,hey, we got to draw this window,okay everybody calmdown now, hey, 250 wattsand I guess we can believeit because that's about,what we would expect outof a board like this,this is just power wires,like it would have no waywhatsoever of knowing,if we have a Radian or aG-Force or a Intel dan, dan da,not yet but later you know, at some point.- Yeah, it's completely agnostic,as far as it's concerned,it can just measure powerfrom whatever source,doesn't matter if it's agraphics card or a sound cardor a network cardand just figure outwhat the power draw is.- We are gonna be able to do the coolest,like power draw charts for you guysand it gets even better becausefinally both of these tools,integrate into frameview 1.1 to show latencyand frames dropped by the displayand power statistics from PCAT,now that the overlay has Vulkan support,plus we've got integrationof these other tools,there's actually very littlethat we wish that it did,that it doesn't already,direct X nine and 10 overlaynext please and thank you.Let's go ahead and takea crack at this campaign,so we've jumped to 4kand we're gonna see howthis puppy performs here,how much power it draws,we're gonna know for sure.Broken arm, thing in yourmouth, boom, broken hip,you fell off a cliff, take that,oh, that guy threw a thingat me, don't do that.Anyway that's not thepoint today, the point iswe are sucking back around(indistinct) with this thing,oh wow it's got right, it'sgot the little display on it,I don't even have to like alt/tab out,I can see it, I can see it right there,I love this, this is freaking cooland I'm sure that ifthe price is reasonable,a lot of enthusiasts,are gonna wanna get theirhands on these things,come on Nvidia put it on the store.Today's video is brought toyou by the Drop Objective,two headphone amplifier, aka, the O2 amp,this amp was designed andcreated with the feedbackfrom over 500 Drop memberson what they wantedand serves as an idealbaseline reference amplifier,powering everything fromin-ear monitors to HD800s,you can adjust the input,output and power arrangementsin two different gains,medium and standardand it delivers big,clear and accurate sound,check it out at the link down below.Okay, what are we thinking for thumbnail.\n"