graphics card power saving while doing webbrowsing?

[alalio86]

Hello dudes.
Im currently have an amd 7700k apu, cpu+integrated graphics. while i only webbrowse, youtube etc i go on windows power save features and select energy saving instead of balanced. this greatly reduces my power consumption and since i have integrated gfx its all fine. But im looking to either get a discrete gfx card, or to get a new computer with full gfx card and so my question is, is there a way to greatly reduce power consuptiom of the gfx card while i am only webbrowsing etc? like the windows 10 power features where i can put energy saving mode for my CPU is there an equivalent that lets me greatly reduce power for webbrowsing and by 1 click enable balanced/full power when i try loading up a game? It can be either nvidia or amd gfx cards. hope you can help me

 

[Eximo]

That will happen automatically with pretty much every GPU out there.

If you really wanted to prevent the browser from using the GPU you can turn off hardware acceleration. That might make certain video playbacks a bit iffy.

 

[alalio86]

i dont mean automatically little saves, i mean basically reduce power to absolute minimum, the gfx card can use 100 watts under heavy work, i aim for 5 watts like an apu would do when the power is not needed, is that possible too? lets say a 1050 or 1060 average card, is that possible in that extreme power comsuptions im looking for for pure word,emailing purpose or cant it reach onboard levels? what can i except with what kind of feature? what is minimum wattage if i try to go minimum for desktop mode? still way higher than apu/onboard or comparable if done right?

 

[Eximo]

Depends on what you are doing. I don't have any exact figures, but my older GPUs used to downclock all the way to 20Mhz with a max default boost of 782Mhz.

Idle figures aren't all that common to see, but I think Tom's power consumption charts often do, but it is more of a system total.

A discrete GPU won't consume much more than an APU at idle. In many cases those GPUs are identical to discrete ones, just packaged differently. R3-2200G is basically an RX540 without independent memory or power delivery. I would say the vast majority of GPUs these days have silent modes where the fans don't spin up until a certain temperature.

You can certainly set the power and clock limits to practically nothing with something like MSI afterburner, though I can't say I have ever tried that.

Windows will let you select amongst graphics devices on a per application basis. Comes from the laptop's with both integrated and discrete graphics. To save power they don't use the discrete graphics when not in use. You can set integrated graphics as the default and only launch games with the discrete card.