Idle power usage problem [GTX 1060 6GB]

Power usage in P8 mode is increased when application exits.
List of applications that cause the problem: mpv (version 0.28), darktable (version 2.0.3).

nvidia-smi, before application launch:

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 390.25                 Driver Version: 390.25                    |
|-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name        Persistence-M| Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp  Perf  Pwr:Usage/Cap|         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|===============================+======================+======================|
|   0  GeForce GTX 106...  Off  | 00000000:01:00.0  On |                  N/A |
|  0%   40C    P8     8W / 200W |     51MiB /  6075MiB |      0%      Default |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
                                                                               
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                       GPU Memory |
|  GPU       PID   Type   Process name                             Usage      |
|=============================================================================|
|    0      1175      G   /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg                            49MiB |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

nvidia-smi, after the application exits:

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 390.25                 Driver Version: 390.25                    |
|-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name        Persistence-M| Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp  Perf  Pwr:Usage/Cap|         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|===============================+======================+======================|
|   0  GeForce GTX 106...  Off  | 00000000:01:00.0  On |                  N/A |
|  0%   42C    P8    12W / 200W |     62MiB /  6075MiB |      0%      Default |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
                                                                               
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                       GPU Memory |
|  GPU       PID   Type   Process name                             Usage      |
|=============================================================================|
|    0      1175      G   /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg                            59MiB |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

The power usage is stuck at 12W until the system reboot or enter to sleep mode (restarting X session does not help).

I have reproduced the problem on two different systems (desktop pc and laptop), both with GTX 1060 6GB.
On the laptop, running in PRIME Sync configuration, idle gpu power usage is normally 2-3W. After the exit from problematic application, P8 mode is stuck at 5W.

Steps to reproduce the problem:

  1. Run one of the folowing commands:
$ mpv --hwdec=vdpau video.mkv

or

$ darktable
  1. Wait (~40 seconds), until the performance level drops to P8.
  2. Close the application window.

nvidia-bug-report.log.gz (92.9 KB)

This seems to be an issue in general. As of upgrading to 390.25 from 387, I’m seeing higher temps, power usage but more importantly a permanent 14% GPU usage even when it’s completely idle.

This is the readout on a completely empty/idle X session:

Mon Feb 26 11:15:53 2018
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 390.25                 Driver Version: 390.25                    |
|-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name        Persistence-M| Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp  Perf  Pwr:Usage/Cap|         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|===============================+======================+======================|
|   0  GeForce GTX 106...  Off  | 00000000:01:00.0  On |                  N/A |
|  0%   44C    P8     7W / 120W |     38MiB /  6075MiB |     14%      Default |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                       GPU Memory |
|  GPU       PID   Type   Process name                             Usage      |
|=============================================================================|
|    0       671      G   /usr/lib/xorg-server/Xorg                     15MiB |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Normally the GPU-Util would be 0% and power would be 5w, as opposed to the 14% and 7w seen here.

I can confirm that the problem with GPU-Util started after upgrade to 390.xx.
It occurs when the “Force Composition Pipeline” setting is enabled.

The problem mentioned in the first post can also be reproduced using an earlier driver 387.34.

Can anyone else reproduce this problem on GTX 1060?
I tried driver 415.25. It seems that the problem isn’t fixed yet.
Another simple way to reproduce the problem:

$ clinfo

After that nvidia-smi reports 4W higher idle power consumption. 6W (instead 2W) on laptop and 12W (instead 8W) on desktop pc.
I hope this will be noticed and fixed soon.

Did you ever check with a power meter if the power draw is really higher or just the displayed values are bogus?

I can second. The higher power use is real.

Details:
I see the same problem, especially with “Force Composition Pipeline” ON. It stays in higher power modes idling at 32W or so. The effect is real: GPU is hotter and fan constantly goes on/off at 55C during a normal desktop use. In fact, I have noticed the issue exactly due to an audible fan going on/off (higher power modes), but initially I thought that a higher consumption is normal with composition ON.

It has been around for a while now and is still the case with 415 series.

BTW, “Force Composition Pipeline” creates a performance hit in video games of ~10%, which is somewhat consistent with an additional ~10-W power draw, this is partly the reason why I thought this is expected.

Power meter actually confirms the increase of power consumption.

odysei, the high gpu load when using forcecompositionpipeline is a known issue, the composition pipeline has been changed starting with driver 390. To return to the pre-390 behaviour, you can use

Option "UseNvKmsCompositionPipeline" "false"

in your xorg.conf.
But this has nothing to do with the issue reported by user_0462, in that case there’s no gpu usage but a higher power consumption and no composition pipeline involved.

I recently performed a clean install of Linux Mint 19.1 on a laptop.
I see the same behavior also when graphics is configured to use a bumblebee config.

Steps to reproduce the problem:

  1. Keep Nvidia card turned on:
$ optirun nvidia-settings -c :8
$ optirun nvidia-smi
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 390.87                 Driver Version: 390.87                    |
|-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name        Persistence-M| Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp  Perf  Pwr:Usage/Cap|         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|===============================+======================+======================|
|   0  GeForce GTX 1060    Off  | 00000000:01:00.0  On |                  N/A |
| N/A   30C    P8     2W /  N/A |     37MiB /  6078MiB |      0%      Default |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
                                                                               
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                       GPU Memory |
|  GPU       PID   Type   Process name                             Usage      |
|=============================================================================|
|    0     27842      G   /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg                            35MiB |
|    0     27890      G   nvidia-settings                                0MiB |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
$ optirun clinfo
$ optirun nvidia-smi
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 390.87                 Driver Version: 390.87                    |
|-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name        Persistence-M| Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp  Perf  Pwr:Usage/Cap|         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|===============================+======================+======================|
|   0  GeForce GTX 1060    Off  | 00000000:01:00.0  On |                  N/A |
| N/A   31C    P8     6W /  N/A |     37MiB /  6078MiB |      0%      Default |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
                                                                               
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                       GPU Memory |
|  GPU       PID   Type   Process name                             Usage      |
|=============================================================================|
|    0     27842      G   /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg                            35MiB |
|    0     27890      G   nvidia-settings                                0MiB |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Power consumption does not drop below 6 watts until the Nvidia card is turned off.
This happens with processes that have type “C” in nvidia-smi. Processes of type “G” do not cause this problem.