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    Disabling dedicated card to save power?

    Discussion in 'Gaming (Software and Graphics Cards)' started by Sir Punk, Feb 21, 2019.

  1. Sir Punk

    Sir Punk Notebook Deity

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    I have disabled the AMD card in device manager and left the Intel card enabled. I have tried to find a way if this actually reduced battery drain or power consumption but I can't find any tool that tells me the actual power consumption of the laptop.

    Does anybody know if disabling a video card in device manager actually turns it off, or is it just a software effect?
     
    Sir Punk, Feb 21, 2019
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  2. NuclearLizard

    NuclearLizard Notebook Deity

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    I don't think it really does anything tangible other than make it dissapear in the software side of things.

    Sent from my LM-Q710.FGN using Tapatalk
     
    NuclearLizard, Feb 21, 2019
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  3. Vasudev

    Vasudev Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    well, In Intel graphics panel and AMD Crimson driver, use Max battery savings for GPU to make sure Intel card is used 99% of the times, unless the app you're running asks for radeon card.
     
    Last edited: Feb 22, 2019
    Vasudev, Feb 22, 2019
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  4. Sir Punk

    Sir Punk Notebook Deity

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    Thanks but not worthy the answer was looking for.
     
    Sir Punk, Mar 19, 2019
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  5. Jdpurvis

    Jdpurvis Notebook Evangelist

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    There is a device for measuring power consumption (Kill a Watt), available on Amazon for about $25. It will measure power consumption. As long as your battery is not charging (fully charged or removed), you could try with and without the card disabled to see if there is any difference. My guess is that the difference will be small. You could also see how much the power consumption increases if the card is being asked to process graphics. Try running a graphics intensive program via the Intel card, and again with the AMD card and see the difference in power consumption.
    Let us know what you learn.

    Best,
    Joe
     
    Jdpurvis, Mar 19, 2019
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  6. pete962

    pete962 Notebook Evangelist

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    I would imagine your purpose of doing all this is to extend laptop on battery run time, so I would just charge battery 100% and run it down to 0, both ways, measuring time and that should give you all the info as long as the computer is under exactly the same load. The problem with Kill a Watt is that it can only measure power drawn from AC and if properly set, laptop will run different on AC and different on battery (for example turbo mode, max current load etc). So even if KillaWatt shows larger power savings on AC, those savings maybe much lower when run on battery: that's when it counts and that's when you can't test it.
     
    pete962, Mar 21, 2019
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