So I've been building a Ryzen unraid server/htpc. One of my goals has been to keep the idle power consumption the same as my ivybridge server I'm replacing. Anyway, I have several video cards but the main one I'm going to use for the HTPC is a 1060 3GB. But the idle power seems to be disappointing. After swapping components and taking power readings it looks like its using 14w idle. That's not horrendous but its a far cry from the number I was looking to get based on reviews. I was expecting under 10 watts. I ran the nvidia-smi utility and it happily reports its using 9w. That's still higher than I was expecting and no matter how I slice it, wrong. I'm sure the number is with taking the power supply efficiency into account. Its a gold Antec power supply but even that doesn't match up. I'm actually disappointed in this, felt like I could get better.
My R7 250 DDR3 never gets better than 6watt idle. That is with the driver loaded. As near as I can figure I have zerocore working, the fan turns off with the display. But it doesn't idle any lower than when I shut its vm down. And 6 watts isn't "zerocore" IMO. Also if I installed newer drivers than the old 14.4 ones I had? It doesn't shut off the fan at all. I couldn't find any reviews where they even extensively tested this, feels like another good AMD idea that they just sort of forgot about later.
Conversely, that garbage GT710 I have seems to be low watt for dollar king still. 5watts idle with that. Of course, its actually worse than most iGPUs but it still has its niche at least.