Hello,
I am new to MSFS and this is a great game! I wonder if there is a way to lower dramatically the computer power consumption when the game is running in background ? That is to say during cruise with the plane being controlled by the autopilot.
In FS2004, which I flown for hundreds of hours, that was automatic: when the game was in the background, the PC was releasing CPU and GPU load instantly. This allowed me to do long flights without worrying too much about electricity consumption.
Nowadays, the PC I have for MSFS draws much more electricity than the old one. I am very concerned by the power consumption as the GPU alone draws about 350W and cost of energy is rising where I live.
I have tried to look for existing discussions on this topic but found nothing directly related. This thread shows however some ideas, but nothing that can be used practically in my situation: Menu (and Loading Screen) Power Consumption - #83 by JoachimJoeS
I’ve had better results leaving the frame rat limit in nVidia CP off, and using vSync in MSFS, capping frame rate at 50% of my monitor’s refresh rate of 165Hz. I get 80 FPS, and my GPU load dropped from 95% down to 70%, with power draw and temps lowering significantly. I could set my monitor to 120Hz, and get 60 FPS, but I’m happier at 80 FPS / 70% load than 60 FPS / 55% load.
OP, keep in mind that just because you are cruising along, that doesn’t mean your GPU isn’t working on terrain, textures, etc.
Thanks a lot for your quick replies DNBOF and BegottenPoet228,
these are interesting workarounds I did not know because my previous PC was very old, without these features. I will give them a try.
OP, keep in mind that just because you are cruising along, that doesn’t mean your GPU isn’t working on terrain, textures, etc.
You are right. In fact, that’s the point of my post: when the game is running in the background, there no image to render anymore, just the simulation engine to keep the flight progressing. That is why I was expecting a dramatic drop in ressources consumption, like it was with FS2004.
However, the current version of MSFS is really a major step from the older ones, programming it must rely on very different approaches, that’s why I stay very humble in suggesting a feature to release automatically workload when the game is in background.
As others have said, set vsync to 1/2 or 1/3 refesh during cruise to dramatically reduce your GPU power consumption. For CPU, you can change the power profile to power saver profile during cruise to save a few watts by it disabling the CPU’s turbo function, but just be careful it doesn’t put your system to sleep when MSFS is in the background as that’s what power saver does by default. You can set sleep time to never for the power saver profile to stop this happening.
I have actually set up hot keys to change MSI afterburner profiles to either 100% or 50% GPU power at the press of a hot key and for power profile I use the PowerPlanSwitcher app downloadable through the MS store to right click and change CPU power profiles quickly. As such, it only takes one hot key press and a right click select CPU power mode to reduce system power consumption by about half during cruise phases of flights.
