Hello to CbtTechs forum dwellers!

I am curious about PC (and server) video cards, and whether they use consume power and processing "power" if a monitor is turned off.

Same question, for when video memory is "shared" (not a separate card) ?

Yes they do.

But like a cpu, the gpu scales so if you are not crunching numbers the consumption will be low.

The card will always have some power going to it, however, not necessarily "processing" power from the cpu. If it is a good card with a lot of memory (256Mb or above) it will only take processing power from the cpu when needed. this will have little impact on you machine if you have a "modern" processor. do not use shared video memory if possible, that will have an impact on performance.