Saving power with gaming PCs: Why everyone needs a frame limit

Saving electricity on the gaming PC is very easy in just a few steps, without the need to purchase particularly efficient hardware or time-consuming airflow tuning. The graphics card is the biggest heating block in a gaming machine, so we’re taming it a bit, but it’s worth it. It doesn’t always have to run at 100% capacity. Because the last few percent in particular cost significantly more electricity. So if we cut them by ten percent, for example, we save a whole thirty percent in power consumption. A compromise that can definitely be worthwhile.

With a frame limit, we smooth out the frame times and get a smooth, even frame rate. [Quelle: PC Games Hardware]

Especially the last upper percent of GPU performance consumes a lot of electricity. [Quelle: Nvidia]

We do this with a simple frame limit, which makes sense for a number of reasons. Not only because the graphics card then runs more efficiently, but also because a consistent frame rate delivers slightly smoother gameplay. Chasing max fps doesn’t always make sense. For example, if you gamble beyond 100 fps, who will notice 10 fps less? In fact, fluctuating fps can be more annoying than this minimal clipping.

Why does a gaming PC need a frame limit?

Anyone who has also worked with Adaptive Sync, i.e. Freesync or G-Sync, knows that a frame limit can also be necessary for this. Because if the frame rate exceeds the maximum Hertz limit of the screen, Free or G-Sync is simply no longer active. Therefore, it is basically correct to activate Vsync in addition to the dynamic refresh rate. Yes, you heard right. The tip often causes confusion, here the question always arises: Why do I need Vsync if I have G-Sync? Simply because it is intended to have both active: Don’t worry, if that’s the case, Vsync is not active, but the dynamic refresh rate is. Without Vsync, it can occasionally happen in practice that image tears still occur despite active G- or Freesync – therefore: always switch on Vsync as well. No matter whether in the driver or in the game menu.

But why this digression to V-, G- and Freesync now? If a game scratches the fps at the upper Hz limit, i.e. with 144 fps at 144 Hz, unfortunately Vsync is active and no longer Free- or G-Sync. Therefore, the Vsync disadvantage of a higher input lag also occurs here. At 144 fps, this is no longer too wild, but it can also be easily avoided. To prevent this, a system-wide frame limit of two fps below this limit is recommended, i.e. 142 fps at 144 Hz. The colleagues at Blurbusters recommended this procedure a few years ago after extensive measurements and research. On the Blurbusters website there is a detailed report to read.