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Does the GTS 450 not have a low power mode?

Vesku

Vesku

Diamond Member
With my GT 220 I had to run it at full speed 24/7 otherwise it would get stuck in low power mode. Now with this GTS 450 I picked up it doesn't even seem to have a low power idle setting, I was kind of hoping the 400 series would have better idling characteristics. I'm using the nVidia drivers that were on their website as of 2 weeks ago, not at that computer right now so can't give exact driver version. Are these known issues with published solutions?
 
What is telling you that it's not going to an idle mode?
It should downclock in 2D mode to something low like 50/100 or similar (no idea on exact clocks).

Do you have dual monitors hooked up?
You might also want to download something like GPU-Z to check what the clocks are.
 
Yes I do have dual monitors, is it not capable of a lower power setting with a dual screen setup?
 
I have dual monitors hooked up to a GTX 460, and my clocks never go down to what they would if I had one monitor hooked up. They go down to 405MHz in 2D from my 850MHz overclock, so a little over half. However, when my displays are turned off via Windows it clocks down to nearly nothing.
 
Runs at full speed even when just on the desktop.

r1EYB.png


rGted.png
 
Could use some insight from nVidia expert types here. Pretty annoyed at the card running full blast to render 44MB of Aero.
 
Could be vendor specific how each card implements power saving during idle. Maybe someone with another GTS 450 EVGA card can post their GPU-Z results.

I know with my older PNY 9600GT it runs at full clocks during idle. I have a watt meter and when I load the Nvidia drivers it drops the idle wattage considerably compared to standard Win7 default drivers. The Nvidia drivers themselves should control the power savings.

If I down clock manually with Rivatuner as low as the clocks will go with the nvidia drivers it only saves about 4 watts over full clocks.
 
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I'm using the forceware drivers off of nvidia's website from 3-4 weeks ago, GPUz screenshot lists the version. The fan is running at 30% so I really doubt it's secretly operating in an energy saving manner.
 
When I run GPU-Z, it shows my OC'd clock. However, when looking at the log from Afterburner, it only shows a spike when I opened GPU-Z and then it clocked back down after it loaded. This is probably your problem.
 
Vesku said:
I'm using the forceware drivers off of nvidia's website from 3-4 weeks ago, GPUz screenshot lists the version. The fan is running at 30% so I really doubt it's secretly operating in an energy saving manner.
Click to expand...

The only way to know what's happening is to use a power meter. If you want to drop it manually with Rivatuner you can, but you have to experiment. I suspect it probably won't drop much power wise compared to full clocks. Some cards though dropping the clocks manually can drop idle wattage by quite a bit, such as the ATI HD 4770.

In my case I didn't mind since it was only 4 watts difference between full clocks and a manual drop as low as it would clock.
 
96Firebird said:
When I run GPU-Z, it shows my OC'd clock. However, when looking at the log from Afterburner, it only shows a spike when I opened GPU-Z and then it clocked back down after it loaded. This is probably your problem.
Click to expand...

I thought this at first, but if you look at how long he has GPU-Z open (red bar graph), it should be enough time to clock back down.

I throw in an EVGA 450 for physx and it clocks 2D and low power to match my 580s. It's not installed right now, but when installed, all 3 GPUs downclock to these speeds:
nv2.jpg


Check nV control panel to make sure adaptive power saving is enabled:
nv.jpg
 
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Ah yes, Hauk, you are correct. I didn't even bother to look at the charts, I was just looking at the numbers on the main screen. Weird that those don't change when it clocks back down though...
 
Looks like he's got an EVGA superclocked model. I've not read of any bios problems; it should downclock to same speeds as my vanilla. Power saving not set to adaptive will run any/all cards at their full 3D bios (or oc'd value in Precision). Check it op and lemme know..
 
Vesku said:
I'm using the forceware drivers off of nvidia's website from 3-4 weeks ago, GPUz screenshot lists the version. The fan is running at 30% so I really doubt it's secretly operating in an energy saving manner.
Click to expand...

30% is default fan speed. Sitting at idle (even with 3D clocks running), fan is not likely to spin up as temps increase only slightly.
 
Dual display the culprit then? Not sure if it'll help but you may try uninstalling/reinstalling drivers. Sorry, hoped it was a quick fix with that setting..
 
I used driversweeper and all that when I installed this card. Where are all the nvidia focus group members when you need them?
 
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