Originally Posted by
ryboto
If I load up ati catalyst control center while my pc is just displaying 2d graphics, the core and memory clock of my HD 3870 is 300/800...just ask any 3870 owner, it's a video card version of cool n quiet. There are third party bios editors, that were announced in the news section here. I've used it. You can change 3 different settings, since there are 3 power planes. One is idle/2d, where there's gpu/ram speed, and a voltage adjustment for the gpu, there's a middle range clock speed, can't remember it's numbers because I didn't touch it, and there's a full 3d clock speed, 777/1125?. The voltages were 1.1ish, 1.2ish and 1.37...i think. I changed the idle/2d to 0.975, considering dropping it to the lowest, 0.9v. I've seen a slight drop of 1-2W in idle, so I think it did make work, it's just that at idle, the GPU at these settings is probably already using a minimum, it's other components on the card that are drawing power. Which is why i suggesting maybe they're dropping ram clocks now too, doubtful, it could be possible that they're not just undervolting, but shutting down some of the stream processors?