High gpu idle power with dvi

[Denis2509]

I always had a high idle power consumption but really never thought anything of it. Now because I pay like 0.36€ per kWh i wanted to lower my power consumption and found sth weird. 
I have 4 monitors in my setup. When all 4 are on the GPU needs about 45W in idle. But when I disconnect one specific monitor it drops to about 20W.
So any combination of plugged in monitors draws about 20W except when the DVI Monitor comes into play. 
 

It's an Dell FP1908 with DVI. Not the latest or greatest but it works. Now my question is why only with that one monitor plugged in does the GPU need so much power? Maybe no power saving features in comparison to HDMI/DP? And is there would be some solution to that

[FalseControl]

Why not switch NVidia control panel, go to Manage 3D settings and find Power Management mode switch to adaptive.

[Kid.Lazer]

Have you tried the DVI monitor all by itself? Is the power consumption still high when it's all alone?

[Denis2509]

Dell Monitor alone is by 15~20W 
Dell with second Monitor goes up to about 30W

with a third one it goes up to 40W
But i can turn on all other monitors EXCEPT the Dell one and the Power draw is 20W. Sooo...

[mariushm]

If it's an AMD card, it's a (sort of) known issue ... if my memory is correct, the circuitry inside the chip that produces the DVI signal is slightly different than HDMI/DP and due to some reasons the memory on the card must run at higher frequency when DVI is used.  (ex the memory idles at 300 mhz or something like that normally, but needs 800 Mhz or more with DVI)

Use GPU-Z or HWInfo and check the video card's ram before and after you add DVI.

 

[Denis2509]

I have a 2060S. And adding the monitor adds about 15MB of video memory but that amount seems rather normal for an additional display.

8 minutes ago, mariushm said:

and due to some reasons the memory on the card must run at higher frequency when DVI is used

but that at least explains why my R9 280 never clocked it's memory down back in the day

Edit: just noticed that my gpu and memory clocks are locked with the DVI display on. With it diabled the drop siginifcantly 

Edited May 17, 2022 by Denis2509