[SOLVED] secondary idle GTX980 expected power consumption

[mStuff]

Hi,

Lately I have had a lot of heavy graphics processing to do on my workstation, rendering it almost useless while working.

I currently have a single GTX 980 in it, and I am looking to get a GTX1060 as a primary graphics card and reserve the 980 for processing.
That means the gpu will only be used as a processing unit, and never be ultilized for anything else.

From my research, the GTX 980 uses around 80W idling, though this I expect is while running the monitor and system graphics.

Can I expect a 980 to spend less power when simply just registered as a passive processing unit?

Thanks,

 

[Barty1884]

I wouldn't expect it to, no.

While yes, "idle" would have rendered an output, that's a negligible load and is essentially fully idle. I would fully expect ~80W to be the absolute minimum draw a 980 would use, regardless of what it's doing.

 

[mStuff]

Update:
It seems like the idle consumption reports I found was the power draw of the entire system, I have found this piece of research on the 980Ti here on https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-ti,4164-7.html
Shows a more healthy 5-30W power draw

 

[Barty1884]

Sorry, I hadn't independently verified those numbers - they seemed about right to me, but the TDP of a 980 is substantially lower than a 980TI that I was thinking of.

Even then, minimum power draw is mostly irrelevant if you're actually having it do something, anything.