URP vs. Standard Pipeline : URP has more impact on energy consumption?

[NGC6543]

Hi,
I’m testing the URP with one of my old project that uses Standard render pipeline.
I’ve tested on an iPod 7gen with Unity2019.3.0f3 and noticed that URP version consumes more energy than the standard one. Notice the GPU energy consumption.

My project doesn’t have any realtime light. It has only a baked Area light, and thus shadows are disabled.(both graphics settings and URP Asset) And related settings are adjusted so that the quality matches with one another. The visual quality (fps, rendering, etc.) seems identical. Only difference is that URP doesn’t support the projector, so the caustics and shadow blob projectors are not drawn.

So I’m curious if anyone compared their project with and without URP or LWRP and see how the change affects the energy consumption.

[JesOb]

I think it`s because Standart RP misses every 4th frame on GPU and do nothing so consume 25% less power.

70.5% * 0.75 = 52.825% you have 52.6% very likely to be true

[Tim-C]

So a lot to unpack here. URP is much more consistent across frames and is not dropping GPU frames like the built in renderer. One thing I am curious about here: What is the frame time on URP vs built-in? URP might be also rendering more fps than built-in causing more thermal usage.

On phones you normally want to cap the frame-rate to not smash thermals.

[BattleAngelAlita]

So, the way to achieve more battery life on URP is to drop every 4-th frame?

[doarp]

@BattleAngelAlita

So, the way to achieve more battery life on URP is to drop every 4-th frame?

How do you do that?

[BattleAngelAlita]

It’s a joke.

[doarp]

@BattleAngelAlita

It’s a joke.

Well you can probably do it quite easily with this:
https://discussions.unity.com/t/748602

Was wondering if there was another way.
Often running at 45 GPU FPS and using 1/3 less power consumption can be a great trade off.

[NGC6543]

@Tim-C

So a lot to unpack here. URP is much more consistent across frames and is not dropping GPU frames like the built in renderer. One thing I am curious about here: What is the frame time on URP vs built-in? URP might be also rendering more fps than built-in causing more thermal usage.

On phones you normally want to cap the frame-rate to not smash thermals.

Thanks for the reply. I can see the URP is more consistent on GPU load. I’ll check the framerate and see if there is any difference.

[NGC6543]

@doarp

Well you can probably do it quite easily with this:
https://discussions.unity.com/t/748602

Was wondering if there was another way.
Often running at 45 GPU FPS and using 1/3 less power consumption can be a great trade off.

That looks useful! Thanks for pointing that thread. I’ll look into it.

[NGC6543]

@Tim-C

So a lot to unpack here. URP is much more consistent across frames and is not dropping GPU frames like the built in renderer. One thing I am curious about here: What is the frame time on URP vs built-in? URP might be also rendering more fps than built-in causing more thermal usage.

On phones you normally want to cap the frame-rate to not smash thermals.

I’ve checked the frame time, and both of them is running at 30fps. (The target frame rate is set to 30, and the vsync option is disabled) Does that mean the URP is an overkill unless the project has heavy contents?

[Chris_Payne_QS]

That means your Standard project was failing to sustain 30fps, but the URP project mostly does.