My 7800xt pulls about 230 watts at full bore, giving me my monitor's refresh rate in FPS, 144. Limiting the framerate to 72 results in no tearing and drops the GPU watts to 170. Worth it.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Halving your frame rate is worth approximately a cent an hour?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

Just consider! If you're gaming 80 hours a week you could save $3.50 off your monthly bill. 12 hours a day gaming, such savings!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I mean for those of us who don't need anything higher than 60, yeah

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

The comment I was replying to had a 144hz monitor

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Yeah, I read that comment. They also said it was worth reducing the frame rate to save 60 watts

[–] dlok 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Good idea thanks

[+] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

[deleted]

[–] sploosh 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Longevity. I build a computer once every 6-10 years and don't do much upgrading in between. Buying a beefier GPU means it'll play new games well for a good long while.

And it's not like I'm doing this all the time. I was curious about the power usage, so I made a script to monitor it and starting tinkering with settings to see what the delta would be. I'm a 100% ultra, max resolution 95% of the time.

[–] dlok 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I'm just thinking of using what I already have.. I also suspect there is an efficiency sweet spot than running at full capacity

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Oh, absolutely. The higher-end you go, the more the product is tuned for balls to the walls power with no consideration for efficiency.

As the extreme example, the 4090 can deliver almost 94% of it's full potential when limiting its power draw to about 70% and/or undervolting it.

(Not exactly sure about the numbers, but you get the idea)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Adding a frame limiter and dropping the resolution a bit saves me 200W. Yay RTX3090