How GPU computing affects your battery (save battery using DXVA, CUDA etc)

We all know the difference between the CPU and GPU. Central Processing Unit carries out basic instructions of applications, while the GPU handles computations only for computer graphics, e.g. rendering. But the GPU has evolved and modern graphics cards now have dedicated hardware components, which allow to offload video decoding processes and video post-processing from a computer’s CPU to the GPU.

The world’s top GPU manufacturers NVIDIA and ATI, plus Intel with its cheap embedded graphics solutions are constantly developing their technologies. Recently these companies have implemented their achievements in CUDA and AMD FireStream technologies. These technologies represent what is now known as GPGPU computing, which stands for General Purpose computing on Graphics Processing Units. GPGPU can handle general computations as well as accelerate video decoding.

For the user GPU computing is generally better than typical CPU computing, because it makes applications run faster. Another benefit of GPU is that this technology extends your PC battery life drastically.

So how exactly GPU computing affects your battery? To find out this we’ve performed a little test with the playback of 1080p Full HD video on Dell Studio 1735 (Core 2 Duo T8300 processor, ATI Mobility Radeon 3650 Video Card and battery capacity of 56 Watts) in terms of PC power consumption in DXVA and software decoding modes:

PC power consumption during the playback of the video in DXVA mode is much lower than that in software decoding mode. Thus during our test we’ve calculated that actual battery economy using DXVA technology is about 33%. That means that GPU technology has a positive effect on your battery by improving its life up to 33%, thus extending overall battery life noticeably.

Original article published at: 3D Media Revolution on Facebook