This Third-Party Tool Lets Users Limit NVIDIA GPU’s Power Usage
This Third-Party Tool Lets Users Limit NVIDIA GPU’s Power Usage
The tool provides more granular control over the GPU’s TDP than what is officially provided.
Image: simonmacer
An independent developer who goes by the name of ‘simonmacer’ has developed a tool for users to manage their NVIDIA GPU’s power usage. The app, called NVPMM (NVIDIA Power Management), uses the GPU’s System Management Interface (SMI) to work – which is originally designed as a command-line tool for users to monitor GPU’s various telemetry.
The existing NVIDIA Control Panel already have some level of power management features built-in, however it’s nothing more than a power profile switch like you see on Windows, and you can’t lock it down to a specific TGP either. NVPMM exposes the options from SMI to allow users to define the TGP, and store it as per-app basis. Of course, this doesn’t mean you can go beyond the power limit that has been predefined for the GPU itself (with RTX 4090 being the sole exception capable of going beyond its 450W limit somewhat).
Image: simonmacer
It also features something called Power Group Limit Management (PGLM): this allows users to put applications into three ‘groups’ with different power limits defined for each one. The limit will only be enforced when the game or application is active – meaning, exiting it will revert the power limits back to its original state. This should be helpful for older games that do not necessarily need all the graphics horsepower to drive frames beyond what the monitor delivers.
Source: Tom’s Hardware
Pokdepinion: Interesting tool – though NVIDIA probably should’ve integrated this feature a long time ago (the control panel interface is archaic for one).
