[PLUG] OpenGL Screensavers

[JP Vossen <jp@jpsdomain.org>]

 > Date: Sat, 13 Sep 2008 09:02:16 -0400
 > From: Casey Bralla <MailList@NerdWorld.org>
 > Subject: [PLUG] Want Video Card Recommendation
 >
 > I want to be able to have groovy GL screen savers

Why?

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that with 
halfway modern hardware using ACPI and CPU scaling, this is just a waste 
of power.  Use the "blank" screen saver set to a few minutes, then turn 
off the display totally in a few more minutes.  Anything else is just 
wasting power to a) run the display, b) crank up and run the CPU/GPU and 
c) crank up the cooling to deal with the heat from the cranked CPU/GPUs. 
  Or is OpenGL not as CPU/GPU intensive as I remember?  (I only ever use 
the blank screen.)

And as far as that goes, are screen "savers" even necessary anymore? 
IIRC LCDs suffer a lot less from "burn-in" than did CRTs.  Anyone know?

Also, who else remember the days when NT (3.5.1?) starting coming with 
those GL screen savers?  You walk past the nice pretty data center with 
all the servers wasting most of their CPU to produce useless eye candy. 
  (Yet another reason servers should not have GUIs.)  Users would call 
to complain the server was slow, so the tech would go over and jiggle 
the mouse to see what was going on.  But that would kill the screen 
waster--err-saver, and "fix" the problem.  For 10 minutes...  :-)

Later,
JP
----------------------------|:::======|-------------------------------
JP Vossen, CISSP            |:::======|        jp{at}jpsdomain{dot}org
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