Here's something I noticed when I had my APC utility open and I was seeing how much power draw I have when idle, and when I'm watching a movie. I was adjusting my screen contrast presets back to original when I noticed my power fluctuating in the utility. So I decided to do some investigating. This is on my FX-60 system with my video card downclocked to 250MHz core and memory viewed on my Samsung T260 monitor.



The first one is with the contrast at it's lowest preselt setting of "Text". The second one is at the "Gaming" preselect, the next one is the "Movie" preselect and the final one is the "Dynamic Contrast" preselect which seems to pull more power when viewing the desktop, but accordingly adjusts itself over the internet, text, movies and so on, though sometimes in a few instances in games it auto adjusts to something undesireable so I just manually select the BrightView options. If you're looking to save power, and maybe even screen life, adjusting the contrast can make a big difference. That, and if you have a power hog of a graphics card like mine, detuning it can really drop the power and heat.

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Edited: 11/09/2008 at 02:39 AM by PorscheRacer14

Where are you finding that? powerchute or something else??

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Yeppers. But you have to have a certain kind of battery backup that reports it's status. The battery backup I have is the Back-UPS XS 1200 which is pretty much a server/client classs backup supply, but made for home use. Of course it's also the Canadian model. The only thing it's lacking is ethernet protection, which was added onto the model that replaced this in their lineup.



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Ahhh, ok. No, I just have a backups es 500. meh, oh well

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I have the Back-UPS 500RS working and running at my parents place. Battery isn't so good now, but it still works enough to shutdown the computer gracefully when the power cuts out or over/under voltage scenarios present themselves. Definitely solid performing units and I like their battery recycling program, though since my mom works for SaskPower I can get them recycled there free of charge.

I thought I'd add a screenshot of when my GPU is at stock clocks and when the contrast is turned up so you can see the power draw and how much of a difference it makes.



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Edited: 11/09/2008 at 10:37 PM by PorscheRacer14

Of course higher contrast drains more power. The 'pixels' consume more when on high contrast.
That's why some notebooks auto-lower their contrast and brightness when they're on battery only.

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the smae thing is applied to mobile phones, lower broghtness/contrast equals longer battery life

Oh I know that, it's the only way I can scrape 45 minutes out of my Intel laptop, but maybe some others out there aren't aware of how much difference turning down the contrast a level can make. Just by going from my most extreme idle power states is a change of around 23 watts and if I underclock my video card (which still runs 2D fast enough) it's around a 40 watt difference in savings. I think ATI doesn't let some of the higher end cards clock too low so that in Windows Experience Index they score a 5.9 in the Business 3D part. When I'm underclocked I score a 5.6 which isn't a concern to me.

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