Nvidia looking into problem high IDLE power usage vs high refreshrate
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Webhiker
With or without G-Sync. If I switch to 2560x1440x144 my GTX 980Ti goes to 963 MHz idle clock. If I stay at 120 Hz it idles at 135 Mhz. Acer XB270HU monitor.
Fox2232
Considering average PC user/gamer has it running quite a lot on idle (browsing, watching movie, listening music, ...), I would say this is not nice.
But I am not one to bash it since I am running CPU at permanent 4.5GHz, no power states, nothing to conserve energy. But it eats only 15W more on idle than having speedstep and down-clocking to 1.6GHz.
HonoredShadow
Is that even worth doing Fox?
SetsunaFZero
Fox2232
southamptonfc
Wow. Mine runs at over 800mhz at the desktop. I just assumed it was normal, I never knew it was burning so much power!
I am running 2 monitors, 144hz Gsync and a 120hz secondary.
fantaskarsef
I wonder if people will eventually realise that we used to have 100W light bulbs around just a few years ago. Two of those in your apartment / house, and you are where your PC is.
Or if you compare how increadibly much your idle PC uses in power, while some people's air condition is working all it got to get your room to a low temperature in summer... people are sometimes getting out of track just because they could save 100W with the PC yet blowing out a couple of hundreds for other comfort.
Fox2232
crashburn162
Yep same here ASUS PG278Q Swift if it's idle only first card stays at 823mhz the second is at 135mhz. Although if the monitor is off it goes down to 135mhz. Yep good thing someone caught it this will save a lot of money.
Juliuszek
I hope they will not brake the graphics card... I just need those components to operate properly, I am aware they consume power. Since I assume we are talking about few Watts - I can have 2 beers per year less - no problem.
cryohellinc
Thank you guys for this tip. My IDLE temperatures straight away dropped from 43c to 34c once I have switched from 144hz to 120hz. This is amazing. However it has to be fixed.
zipper
Nothing new - years back Nvidia drivers did the same when connecting ordinary HDMI external screen to my laptop even when laptop screen was switched off.
Turanis
This story was covered here and they discover the Radeon R9 Fury did not have this problem:
http://www.pcper.com/news/Graphics-Cards/Testing-GPU-Power-Draw-Increased-Refresh-Rates-using-ASUS-PG279Q
"The AMD Fury does not demonstrate the same phenomenon that the GTX 980 Ti does when running at high refresh rates. The Fiji GPU runs at the same static 300MHz clock rate at 60Hz, 120Hz and 144Hz and the power draw on the system only inches up by 2 watts or so."
fantaskarsef
SSD_PRO
Shocking story... displaying higher resolutions at higher refresh rates consumes more power. I don't think anyone wants a "fix" to this; if they determined product Y needs X to produce acceptable visual display I don't want them to try .5(x) resulting in subpar visual display. I sense some tearing coming to high refresh dislays at idle clocks. They might patch current cards at the expense of quality but the only real "fix" will be engineering with this issue being considered - i.e. the next gen cards.
nhlkoho
Noticed this on my system a while back. Changing the desktop resolution to 120hz fixed it for me. Now I idle at 135mhz instead of the 900mhz it idled at 144hz.
fantaskarsef
alanm
Szaby59
AMD should do the same with the R9 Fury/X/Nano Display Corruption issue
Forebode