vista power saving option save energy

kmufc77 · 29 Aug 2008 at 17:08

hi all i have just got my anually electric bill in and not happy to say the least a £40 month rise!
so in the power options on vista do the power saver and balanced save that much energy that you will notice it in your electric bill?
if i choose a lower power setting will my CPU and GPU run at a lower speed that will affect performance that i will notice in everyday desktop ,gaming?

MadMatty · 29 Aug 2008 at 17:20

If you run Power save profile, youll get a 50% cpu throttle amongst other things, so you will feel the difference as well as maybe save a pound or two each month

no major difference between full throttle and balanced profiles. balance profile does allow things like hd and usb devices to sleep. This profile will probably save pennies each month comapred to full throttle.

kmufc77 · 29 Aug 2008 at 18:18

so not really worth me changing anything really just to save a few pounds then
will buying a 80%+ energy efficiency psu make a big difference?

james.miller · 29 Aug 2008 at 18:23

your fps is probably very efficiant anyway. probably better buying a new low power cpu. oh and ditch the gtx if your worried about power, they are monsters. i got my usage down from ~300w browsing the net to ~35w by going to a laptop and only using the pc for gaming (3.2ghz e2160,8800 gtx ect). of course, you do have the initial cost of buying the hardware to think about lol.

kmufc77 · 29 Aug 2008 at 18:25

james.miller said:
your fps is probably very efficiant anyway. probably better buying a new low power cpu. oh and ditch the gtx if your worried about power, they are monsters. i got my usage down from ~300w browsing the net to ~35w by going to a laptop and only using the pc for gaming (3.2ghz e2160,8800 gtx ect). of course, you do have the initial cost of buying the hardware to think about lol.

hi i have got a brand new 4870 sat here next to me,which i will install tommorow and i think they are worse for power than the GTX especially on idle :eek:

james.miller · 29 Aug 2008 at 18:30

yep thats about right lol.

Greenlizard0 · 29 Aug 2008 at 18:31

See if you can underclock your graphics cards. I imagine for desktop use and web browsing etc., you can probably get away with halving the clock speeds.

kmufc77 · 29 Aug 2008 at 18:32

Greenlizard0 said:
See if you can underclock your graphics cards. I imagine for desktop use and web browsing etc., you can probably get away with halving the clock speeds.

would i be able to set up a profile one for gaming and one for desktop usuage where i can lower clocks for desktop?

Greenlizard0 · 29 Aug 2008 at 18:47

You might be able to using Rivatuner or something like that. I have never used it myself but a lot here do I think.

v0n · 29 Aug 2008 at 18:49

My Q6600 with 6 hard drives, 1 DVD and 3870x2 draws at this very moment 215W on full power Vista profile while typing this post (it's plugged in through a meter thingy). It means that if I left it on 24/7 at fairly rip off price of 10p per kWh it would cost around £200 a year. Switching it off for 8 hours a day would save around £5 a month. Almost as much as if I stripped it down and made it a 150W PC... In other words - underclocking and underspeccing doesn't save much. Letting it hibernate when you sleep/go away saves more.

Lanz · 30 Aug 2008 at 11:28

MadMatty said:
If you run Power save profile, youll get a 50% cpu throttle amongst other things, so you will feel the difference as well as maybe save a pound or two each month

A modern cpu with speedstep will change its fequency according to cpu load, so you'd notice very little difference in performance when running in power saving mode.

But in reality it doesnt save you much energy, probably about 10-20 watts at the most.

The biggest drain is your GPU, you need to get a modern Nvidia/ATI motherboard and card that uses Hybrid Power, so when you're idling or doing desktop stuff, the GPU uses NO power. So you could possibly have a top of the range PC that instead of using 300W when just sitting there doing nothing, will use about 100W.

james.miller · 30 Aug 2008 at 11:40

Lanz said:
A modern cpu with speedstep will change its fequency according to cpu load, so you'd notice very little difference in performance when running in power saving mode.

But in reality it doesnt save you much energy, probably about 10-20 watts at the most.

The biggest drain is your GPU, you need to get a modern Nvidia/ATI motherboard and card that uses Hybrid Power, so when you're idling or doing desktop stuff, the GPU uses NO power. So you could possibly have a top of the range PC that instead of using 300W when just sitting there doing nothing, will use about 100W.

i know of no card that draws 200w at idle. thats far too optimistic. my 8800gtx doesnt use that at load. the GPU is the biggest part of it, yes, but not that big. you'd need far more efficiant components all round to drop it that far, which was part of the reason for me wanting to stop using my pc so much when i wasnt actually playing games.

kmufc77 · 30 Aug 2008 at 11:52

james.miller said:
i know of no card that draws 200w at idle. thats far too optimistic. my 8800gtx doesnt use that at load. the GPU is the biggest part of it, yes, but not that big. you'd need far more efficiant components all round to drop it that far, which was part of the reason for me wanting to stop using my pc so much when i wasnt actually playing games.

i think your find that the 4870 idles nearly at 200watts!
correct me if im wrong somebody?

james.miller · 30 Aug 2008 at 12:01

kmufc77 said:
i think your find that the 4870 idles nearly at 200watts!
correct me if im wrong somebody?

no it doesnt lol. 4870's use less power than an 8800ultra in idle and full load. tom's measured 150w at idle for an entire pc, but they didnt mention what the rest of the components were.

TheVoice · 30 Aug 2008 at 12:07

MadMatty said:
no major difference between full throttle and balanced profiles. balance profile does allow things like hd and usb devices to sleep. This profile will probably save pennies each month comapred to full throttle.

Balanced allows the CPU to reduce its clockspeed when not needed and increase it to normal when it is needed, whereas High Performance just keeps it locked at full speed.

Lanz said:
A modern cpu with speedstep will change its fequency according to cpu load, so you'd notice very little difference in performance when running in power saving mode.

Indeed, but you have to have it on Balanced for that to work properly, and have any appropriate options in your BIOS enabled.

The power saving options are more effective for notebooks really, where they can make a significant difference to battery life.

kmufc77 · 30 Aug 2008 at 12:12

james.miller said:
no it doesnt lol. 4870's use less power than an 8800ultra in idle and full load. tom's measured 150w at idle for an entire pc, but they didnt mention what the rest of the components were.

im sure i read somewhere that the 4870 use 160-170 on idle my mistake then?

Mattus · 31 Aug 2008 at 02:38

No way a GPU alone is gonna use 160w at idle. That sounds more like an entire-system power consumption.