When GPUs aren’t tasked with heavy graphics or compute workloads, they are intelligently managed to power down to their minimum working states through a number of techniques such as engine/memory clock reductions, reduced voltages and power gating. This works to minimize power during static screen and other very low workloads where graphics cards can idle at less than their peak power.
However, in the long idle state – where the display is blanked but the rest of the system remains in an active power state – AMD ZeroCore Power technology takes GPU efficiency to a whole new level. When systems enter the long idle state and applications are not using background GPU resources, AMD ZeroCore power technology powers down all major functional blocks of the discrete GPU and reduces overall chip power consumption to well under one Watt.
