FooAtari said:
I have a spare box lying around that I'm going to use for messing around
with different Linux distro's.
However it has an 8800GTX in it which seems a bit like overkill for such
purposes, but I do not have any other video cards. So I was wondering if
it's possible to reduce the amount of power drawn from the card?
Would simply not using any hardware acceleration do this, or using a
particular driver?
Power consumption is proportional to clock speed and the toggle rate
of nodes in the silicon.
In the Windows world, a particular software module detects whether
the user is playing a 3D game, and "kicks up" the logic clock if that
is the case. When the game stops, the clock is kicked down again.
This makes a difference to idle power, as the card is operated no
faster than is needed to do simple 2D desktop functions.
Not all GPU power dissipation is dynamic. Some is static or "leakage"
type. You can't get rid of that, as that is a function of how the
silicon is designed. An example of how badly that can be done, is
the Intel Prescott processor, which wasted 25% of power as leakage.
Leakage current does no work, and doesn't contribute to the desired
output. It's basically like a light bulb that is running all the
time, and pouring out heat.
The industry now does a better job on leakage, as can be
seen in the Xbitlabs link below.
You can likely find a video card, in the $25 to $50 range, that
will satisfy your needs. And then you can keep the 8800GTX for
a real gaming machine.
In this chart, a Geforce 210 has pretty low consumption (whether
run in Windows or Linux).
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/gpu-power-consumption-2010_3.html#sect0
There is one here, with an absurd faceplate, for $39. (I'm not
including the available rebate, which you might never see.) If you
were pinched for cash, you could sell the 8800GTX for more than $39,
to pay for it. The 8800GTX is still a nice card (if you don't want
it, I'll take it
)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121385
Paul
