# How to change power consumption of AMD \ NVidia cards?



## goshanecr (Sep 3, 2021)

Good day Friends!

There is a often situation when PC which acts as server has a minimal video card (NVidia GT710, etc). And all what needs from VCard are - initial setup screens. 
But when server works that cards are hot, and also I see it stops working. 

So my question: Is it a way to down frequency and/or voltage on videocards on FreeBSD? 

P.S. I'm check wiki (https://wiki.freebsd.org/TuningPowerConsumption#A2._Screen_.2F_Video) but it only for case optimus and intel cards, and seems outdated.


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## shkhln (Sep 3, 2021)

Nvidia's power limits are controlled through the `nvidia-smi` utitlity, which is _not_ applicable to a video card that old, weak (TDP 19W) and, most importantly, _idling_. Seriously, either your card is defective or the case has very poor airflow.


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## PMc (Sep 3, 2021)

19 Watts is quite a difference to ... 


```
Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3570T CPU @ 2.30GHz
                       (Arch: Ivy Bridge, Limit: 36W)



  19.43W [====================================>                              ]



 Package:           Uncore:             x86 Cores:          GPU:
 Current: 19.43W    Current: 17.36W     Current: 2.07W      Current: 0.00W
 Total: 57.68J      Total: 52.08J       Total: 5.60J        Total: 0.00J
```

... zero Watts.

These add-on graphics cards do get hot when idle.

But for a server board you may need one. Or if a server board runs in a desktop, then that GT710 would still be more than enough for browsing and x-terms.

When I decided to put my server board into the desktop for now, I needed to get such a piece. What I finally got was not the GT710, but a Radeon 7470: 27 Watts. 
And it gets terribly hot with passive cooling, no matter if it does something or not.
Gladly, for this one there is a patch, the "low" setting doesn't work, but "middle" does work.
I had to search around for that - it seems not an area of turnkey supposrt.


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