Will turning off a monitor improve pc performance?
Posted by StandardBat5@reddit | buildapc | View on Reddit | 23 comments
I was thinking if the pc has any way of knowing if the monitor is off so the gpu wouldn’t do the work to render the images of a game for example.
9okm@reddit
Need more context.
sob727@reddit
He's playing with monitor turned off to improve his framerate.
Ok-Software-5381@reddit
You should give a tedtalk on concise explanations.
StandardBat5@reddit (OP)
Hahaha maybe its the new meta
Key_Science_3342@reddit
LMAO
9okm@reddit
That clears it up. Thank you.
DesperateAngle1379@reddit
Why do you have the stupid? 😢
TheBentPianist@reddit
Why would you have the game running if the monitor isn't on? I'm fascinated OP....
StandardBat5@reddit (OP)
For example if you left a rendering process runnning over night, will turning off the monitor leave more gpu power for the rendering instead of displaying for the monitor
cowrevengeJP@reddit
Not unless you have a very special headless coded system.
TheBentPianist@reddit
Okay I'm with you now. I'd have to assume yes, to an extent. Anyone with a little more knowledge may need to weigh in.
Strangepalemammal@reddit
I wish I had a program.to test this because I don't think it will matter. The graphics card is still being told to send the same data to a display and I don't think.it cares if nothing is being done with that data
Namsaas@reddit
Some monitors can make windows think that its not connected when turned off but i think this only works with display port
Strangepalemammal@reddit
If not, this needs to be a function for all the small displays on the market right now
Cursed2Lurk@reddit
Your monitor should shut off after a few minutes idle anyway just for energy and the longevity of the monitor. You can fix that in power settings in windows. My monitor is set to shut off after 10 minutes.
I don’t know why you would want to leave the monitor on to begin with, so the performance question is an interesting angle to justify ending a wasteful habit.
Kilgarragh@reddit
Rendering the gui is not much work for the gpu especially if you have something lighter(e.g. lxde). I dont study gpu architecture, but the cuda cores that render jobs like in blender are possibly different from the hardware acceleration elements used to draw gui.
Just “turning the monitor off” won’t work, you can try turning off one monitor and dragging on and off of it from another. you’d have to disconnect the monitor, but not really a good solution. Just killing the display manager(or not launching it in the first place) will save all of your rendering power of course.
If you really want to experiment with it, a server motherboard(or a pc board with a patched bios) can boot headless(no display attached) and you can launch your cycles jobs on it with the entire gpu(or gpus) dedicated to just that render job and nothing else
pojska@reddit
I wonder if it's something like Factorio, where they want the game to run to produce parts.
StandardBat5@reddit (OP)
Yes, this too, except satisfactory hahaha
Imperius_Fate@reddit
Newer GPUs like the RTX series don't have this issue of multiple monitors affecting performance whatsoever. At max it's a 1-3% performance impact and that's it. Now it may also depend on the resolution of the said monitors you're using. If they're all 1080p then it's fine, but if you're going above 1080p then I would suppose the performance impact is higher.
Anyways, it's very simple to test the performance impact by yourself. Plug the monitor, test average fps, unplug, test again.
Lone_playbear@reddit
Twenty years ago, if you had two monitors and a 128MB GPU, disabling the second display would help with framerates. Now, not so much.
Simply turning off the monitor, then or now, will not increase performance.
frodan2348@reddit
Ok seeing what you mean by your comments, no, there’s not a measurable difference.
It takes almost zero processing power to display an image on the monitor, especially when it’s just a still screen and a preview of the render in real time.
If you just dont need the monitor on or don’t want it on for some reason then there’s no issue with turning it off, but you’re not gonna get any more power doing it.
KingofGnG@reddit
Ahem, no.
BaronB@reddit
If you mean turning off additional monitors on a multi-monitor system, yes. Turning off all other monitors will improve performance of a game.
How much? Let’s just say if you have a game running with an FPS counter on screen and turn off the other monitors, you might be able to see the number change a little. But you certainly won’t be able to see it.