VESA Display Power Management Signaling

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VESA Display Power Management Signaling (or DPMS) is a standard from the VESA consortium for managing the power supply of video monitors for computers through the graphics card e.g; shut off the monitor after the computer has been unused for some time (idle), to save power.

DPMS 1.0 was issued by VESA in 1993 [1], and was based on the United States Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) earlier Energy Star power management specifications. Subsequent revisions were rolled into future VESA BIOS Extensions.

The standard defines how to signal the H-sync and V-sync pins in a standard SVGA monitor to trigger the monitor's power saving capabilities.

DPMS defines four modes, normal, standby, suspended and off. In off some power may still be drawn in order to power indicator lights. The standard is:

H-sync V-sync Power Recovery Time[2]
Turned on On On 100 % n/a
Stand-by Off On < 80 % ~1 Sec.
Suspend On Off < 30W ~5 Sec.
Turned off Off Off < 8W ~20 Sec.

Compare to screensaver.

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ PC User Guide: Chapter 8
  2. ^ On a Targa TM 3820 PNLD Monitor

[edit] External links