Low power graphics card

[JonHollis]

My weekly shopping basket has apparantly gone up 150%, my lecky bill certainly has. Anyway, I'm thinking about saving some money. I've got a 8800 GTX graphics card which I only need for games and I only do about 2 or 3 games a year. 99% of the time my computer is either downloading some TV show overnight or being used for business. So it makes sense to use a low-power graphics card when I don't need the frame-rate.

My question, therefore, is what's the lowest power-hogging dual-screen graphics card on the market? I'd use the internal grapics if I didn't need 2 screens.

I want to be able to put the 8800 GTX in storage until Far Cry 2 comes out.

 

[Lanz]

You can get hybridXfire/SLI that will use you onboard GPU for desktop stuff and it switches to your dedicated card when you want to run games. I think the 780G or 8200 chipsets support it, and all new chipsets should.

With a AMD 780G board, you can run dual monitors from the onboard gpu, one via the DVI and one via the HDMI.

And i know what you mean about bills, we got an energy monitor installed, and it goes up from like £30 a month with normal stuff on, to around £50 when you turn on the pc....

 

[bledd]

it's a joke that gfx cards don't have a 'game mode' switch

 

[waso_dude]

They do have a low power mode... AKA 2d mode.

But it makes hardly any differnace

 

[Lanz]

Yup, I would like my PC to idle at around 70W idealy (like my media center does), and I dont see why this isnt possible even on a meaty spec.

 

[Van_Dammesque]

You could always underclock it in 2d-mode.

 

[bledd]

They do have a low power mode... AKA 2d mode.

But it makes hardly any differnace

exactly, what i mean is it should make a difference, they should shut off things that aren't being used