I keep looking for, and failing to find, any metrics that suggest that GPUs or CPUs have gotten more efficient and less energy intensive over time. Simple intuition would suggest "yes, obviously, of course", but I would love to see a simple line graph indicating so. Toms Hardware seems like a good place to look, but their comparisons dont overlap backwards very far
I think they have gotten more efficient. Just by the fact that pretty much every laptop today has a much better battery life then any had many years ago. Of course the difference is also in the battery tech, but the change and improvement is still visible.