OK, so this isn't a hugely Earth-shattering idea, but it's basically that when the monitor goes into standby or is turned off, it sends a signal to the graphics hardware to save the display as a PNG to RAM or backing storage (security problem there), which then completely turns off subject to not overheating. When the monitor comes back off standby, it reloads the image.
-- nineteenthly, Jan 12 2009

Except that on Windows XP at least, when you wake up the computer again you see the logon screen. Not what the old screenshot shows. Making the screenshot useless.
-- Bad Jim, Jan 13 2009


//Except that on Windows XP at least, when you wake up the computer again you see the logon screen. Not what the old screenshot shows. Making the screenshot useless.//
That depends on your settings.
-- Voice, Jan 13 2009


Indeed. I've never had a PC set up that way.
-- nineteenthly, Jan 13 2009


The image in the video ram is only of use to the DSP that refreshes the monitor. Software apps use their own buffers.
-- Spacecoyote, Jan 13 2009


//The image in the video ram is only of use to the DSP that refreshes the monitor//
I thought that in most architectures, it was the DSP (or graphics processor) that wrote into the video RAM, and a fairly simple address-generator and state machine that reads it out to refresh the monitor.
-- coprocephalous, Jan 13 2009


It does mean, though, that instead of bothering to do that you could just turn the hardware off completely after it got cool enough. Is that done already as well?
-- nineteenthly, Jan 13 2009


OK, thanks. I got the following:

S0 -> D0
S1 -> D1
S2 -> Unspecified
S3 -> Unspecified
S4 -> D3
S5 -> D3

As a certain relative once said, "This means nothing to me". I have no idea what to make of that. It's an ATI Radeon 9700 if that helps.
-- nineteenthly, Jan 13 2009


[copro], yeah that's what I meant, although that technically is still a type of DSP.
-- Spacecoyote, Jan 13 2009



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