GTX500 series question

[sean458]

This may be a stupid question, but will a graphics card of this power always be performing at it's best, or will it be underclocked when only browsing the net (for example)?

 

[geofelt]

They will be underclocked when performance is not demanded.

 

[ko888]

The graphics card has a 2D mode and a 3D mode.

Browsing the net, as in your example, would use 2D mode which requires considerably less graphics processing power. When Windows starts up it's already in the default 2D mode.

Games use 3D mode which may use all of the graphics card's graphics processing power. The graphics card will switch into 3D mode when the game is launched and revert back to 2D mode when you exit the game.

 

[sean458]

Perfect, thanks

 

[17seconds]

The 500 series has three speed modes it can enable. The highest speed is reserved for 3D gaming only, but the lower and middle speeds can kick in while doing simple web browsing, depending on the graphics demand. The new GPU accelerated Adobe Flash applet can cause the GPU to kick into mid-speed mode.