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On the Windows desktop, Intel is about to be wiped out by the new class of AMD fusion (CPU and GPU) parts that will power the new consoles. AMD is light-years ahead of Intel with integrated graphics, GPU driver support on Windows, and high speed memory buses with uniform memory addressing for fused CPU+GPU devices.

Yet despite their allegedly superior technology, last year was an unmitigated disaster, a steady decline from Q1 to Q4 losing over 30% in revenue and where in Q4 2011 they had a gross margin of 46%, in Q4 2012 it was down to 15%. They're cutting in R&D, in 2011 they spent 1453 million, in 2012 1354 million and if they spend the whole of 2013 at Q4 2012 levels then 1252 million. Yes, hopefully the PS4/Xbox 720 will give AMD a much needed cash infusion but their technology is not at all selling so maybe they should stop bleeding market share first before "wiping out" anything. Also, AMD just recently posted a new graphics roadmap for 2013, I'll give you the summary: No new desktop graphics cards until Q4 at the earliest.

Inside Intel, senior management have convinced themselves (falsely) that they can compete with ARM in low power mobile devices. This is despite the fact that 'Ivybridge' (their first FinFET device) was a disaster as an ultra low power architecture, and their coming design, Haswell, needs a die size 5-10 times its ARM equivalent. The Intel tax alone ensures that Intel could never win in this market. Worse again is the fact that Intel needs massive margins per CPU to simply keep the company going.

While Intel may have a tough time battling ARM on the low power front, AMD is totally lost. All their x86 CPUs burn more power than an equivalent Intel and they're dividing their resources between ARM and x86, try pitting a 18W Brazos 2.0 against a 17W i7 ULV. They're totally not in the same price class, but they are in the same wattage range. Intel will milk the market of high end desktop/workstation/server chips that AMD has pretty much abandoned and use that as its war chest against ARM, if they'll win is another matter but they got billions and billions to spend on that, right now based on market cap Intel could buy AMD for about 2% of their stock. Not that Intel would want to since they'd become a true monopolist in x86 space, but in the all-out battle with ARM they might end up a casualty caught in the crossfire.

No wonder that set-top boxes don't sell.

The bad part about this is that the set-top boxes draw a very small fraction of the power as the game consoles, which are power hungry beasts. I'm just spouting crap off randomly, as is my wont, but the Wii would have to be the lowest power consumer of the 3 major console systems. However the Wii would still be vastly more power hungry than a Roku, TiVo or Apple TV.

Okay, okay. I can't believe I'm doing this here on Slashdot (backing up my assertions with references) but here you go:
http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-356-2.htm
    The Wii uses 1/10th the power of an XBox 360 or PS3. A quick search shows that a Roku uses around 5-6 watts when in use, which is half of the Wii's 11 watts.

  So the moral of the story - using an XBox 360 or PS3 for streaming is very, very inefficient power-wise compared to dedicated set-top boxes or even the Wii.

The power consumption is basically irrelevant unless you manage to use a Wii.

Funny, my PS3's DPad works just fine.

An Xbox 360 controller works out of the box on most PCs. As I understand it, a PS3 controller needs a special driver, and according to this article (found via Google ps3 windows 64-bit), your PC has to be connected to the Internet every time you plug in the controller. If you were referring to the use of a PS3 controller with a PS3 console to play PS3 games, I'll address that after Sony's TPR web site comes back online.

BTW, Microsoft responded to that letter with the pro controller.

I've read articles claiming that Microsoft was making a pro controller, but I never ended up seeing any pro controllers in Walmart. Nor do any of the top ten results from Google xbox 360 pro controller appear relevant.

While the Wii uses a mere 18 Watts or so, the PS 3 and Xbox 360 use well over 100, (earlier models can be closer to 200). If one wants to use the device for watching video, it's certainly worth comparing the Apple TV which uses less than 6 Watts. Streaming from a PC, particularly one with a power hungry GPU card, adds considerably to the consumption.

http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-356-2.htm

In areas where power costs about $.13 per kw/h, every 10 Watts used full time runs about $1/month.
Do the math, it really adds up. (Of course more consumption affects the environment more too)

The savings from using an energy efficient setup could cover the cost of new hardware or some paid content.

Power used becomes heat which was a major factor in the 360s' (especially early units) being very unreliable. Monitors/TVs use significant power too, especially with larger screens. Plasma is generally much worse than LCD.

http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-356-3.htm

And yes the PS3 is inferior hardware. Look it up.

http://www.gamezine.co.uk/news/game-types/fighting-games/street-fighter-iv-ps3-sub-hd-in-close-up-$1270459.htm

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/face-off-resident-evil-5-article

http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-348-1.htm

EVERY game that has come out on both platforms, is able to run, and look better on the 360 due to better GPU and the additional 10MB back buffer. The 360's OS has a smaller memory footprint, and provides better functionality with online gaming. It took sony forever to get features into their OS, it was already eating up a shitload of memory and providing less functionality than the 360. Its been a slow process for Sony. They're still not there yet. Their first party games beat the shit out of anything Microsoft has ever made on the 360 though. I own both consoles, and enjoy them both for different reasons.

blah blah, your moms a cunt, and she raised an asshole.

Well yes, but to be honest... I'm fairly sure the 42" TV I'm pulling the Wii up on consumes lots more power than the Wii itself, probably in the 100-150W range. In any case, for $/hour of entertainment isn't exactly breaking the bank anyway.

A Wii, no. A Wii won't break the bank. But a PS3 is an energy hog.

http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-356-2.htm

About the same as my 46" TV, which draws 185W when on.

I would disagree that Intel's power consumption has been "higher." In terms of performance per watt on the desktop, Intel has been impressively competitive.

For example, check out this review of Intel's 45nm Core2 procesors. The true consumption of the processors puts AMD's Athlon 64 X2 far in last. Even if you take into account the power consumed by a memory controller (5w or less, typical), the 45nm Core2 processors have very low power consumption, and the 65nm cores are competitive.

Now, let's read into those results. First of all, the Athlon 64 X2 6000+ listed (a typo, it's a 6400+ in the rest of the article) is a 90nm core, so it's not a fair comparison. You can add to the fray the Brisbane 5050e, which has 45w peak power consumption - this is more competitive with the Core 2 power consumption, although it's not amazing.

At the end of the day, the sad fact is this: every AMD dual core on the market will lose in a desktop performance battle with either the E8200 (27w load) or the E6550 (40w load). You need only look at the article I linked above, where an X2 clocked at 3.2 GHz cannot beat either of the above processors. Even ignoring the 45nm E8200, if you just compare 65nm to 65nm, the Intel chip offers similar power consumption (40w peak) with an incredible performance boost to boot.

And this trend isn't limited to dual-core processors. Intel's 65nm quad beats Barcelona in terms of performance per watt. On the desktop, Intel has the performance/watt leadership.

That appears to only be 43% true.

http://www.hardcoreware.net/playstation-3-80gbs-ps2-backwards-compatibility-sucks/

I assume the article is for the US/Japanese model PS3 since the 60GB PS3 had full hardware backwards compatibility while the 80GB model had the PS2 Graphics Synthesiser and software emulation as did the 60GB PAL PS3.

The article states that only 57% of PS2 games worked on the emulator models. This is untrue it is more like 85% to 90% after Firmware 1.8 came out on 24th May 2007. Of course even 85% is not good if the games you like fall in the 15% of games that have issues ranging from freezing, artefacts or just can't read the disk.

That appears to only be 43% true.

http://www.hardcoreware.net/playstation-3-80gbs-ps2-backwards-compatibility-sucks/

Guitar hero kinda sucks in the first place its just a popular fad.

Sadly, you're missing the point that the gazillion people who are playing Guitar Hero like games legitimately find them to be fun, and are willing to spend money on them. You may dislike them and think they suck. But, seriously, look at the sales figures for these games. This isn't "just a popular fad".

For a lot of people, games like this are fun, and games like FPS are annoying and tedious. These games appeal to "non-gamers". I'm one of them. You're welcome to your FPS on your PC, but you're being shockingly arrogant to think that a game like GH3 which sold 1.4 million copies in October of last year and which seem to drive actual music sales is just a fad.

Like it or not, GH3 and that kind of game are not going to go away anytime soon. I know a ton of people who fall well outside of any realm of what you can call gamers who are absolutely into the instrument rhythm games.

Cheers

You should take a look at http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-356-1.htm

This is the main information:
Power Consumption in Games
PS3: 185.9 Watt average
XBox360: 176,54
PC (see link for more information): 156,6
Wii: 16.8

Here's a comparison that shows XBox 360 vs. PS3 vs. Wii vs. PC in many different areas including standby, idle, gaming, and movies (Wii not included in movies).

45W isn't correct. (Or if it is, your Wii will be melting soon!) The Wii never crosses 20 Watts in power usage. The primary reason for this is that the chips are basically updated GameCube chips, but made with a 90nm process rather than the previous 180nm process. This makes the previously ~39 watt hardware a clean and cool ~17 watt architecture.

More info here: http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-356-1.htm :-)

That's true but then they go and spoil it by requiring the Wii to be left on standby if you want the mail & Mii moving features to work.

Except that the XBox 360 and PS3 can often use even more than the Wii. If you turn off the Wii's 'connect24' option, it's measured at 1.3 watts, as seen in this article.

With the PS3, if you leave it on 'remote play' standby, it uses 24 watts. This guy did some interesting measurements. Among the more interesting ones:

Satellite TV receiver (non DVR), standby or off: 15 watts.
ReplayTV DVR: 30 watts standby, 34 watts active.
Christmas tree, sparsely lit: 61 watts.
HP Compaq 2510p work laptop, idle: 67 watts.

So if you're really concerned about how much power your Wii uses in standby, make sure you're unplugging your receivers, DVRs, christmas trees, and computers when not using them as well.

But that's standby? What about when they're on and running? The first article mentioned shows some interesting figures - namely that the 360 averages 185 watts, the PS3 averages 193 watts, their test PC averaged 198 watts, and the Wii averaged... 17 watts?

So the Wii uses 1.3 watts idle, 9-11 watts on Connect24-idle, and 17 watts while active.

The PS3 uses as low as 1.9 watts idle, 24 watts in 'remote start' standby, and up to 193 watts while playing a game.

Sorry Greenpeace - which system is greener?

Indeed. Chuck a power meter on your devices that are in "standby"...... You'd be surprised how much more than a simple IR reciever is drawing power in these devices that are in standby. According to this hardcoreware review at idle, the xbox 360 draws 157 Watts, the PS3 177 watts, and the Wii 13.5. In standby, the Wii draws 1.3 (or 9.6 with Connect24 On), the 360 draws 2.5 watts, and the PS3 uses 1.9. 2.5 Watts, 24 hours a day, just for being plugged in. Pathetic. I could leave a light on 8 hours a day and use less power.

HCW have a more detailed article discussing power usage of the current generation, which makes the Wii look impressive from a green or financial perspective - and that's confirmed looking at the last gen numbers vs the 360 which shows the Wii does more with less juice than PS2, GC and DC. It's still using more power than any console before the DC used, but it is a step in the right direction.

A fairly capable server brain with reasonable power consumption and commodity pricing.

Reasonable power consumption? The thing draws 177W at idle!

http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-356-1.h tm

The Wii is also much kinder to the environment as articles have shown http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-356-2.h tm

The thing can practically be powered by an energetic hamster in a spinning wheel. At a time when the world is hopefully trying not to destroy the planet
so we can actually carry on playing games. I find myself wanting to buy a Wii over an Xbox360 or PS3 simply because it is the responsible thing to do.

I know many people on here probably don't think about that too much, I'm as sucked in by the thought of a 50" lcd tv as the next geek. Though I don't want
to live in a smog filled, flooded, hurricane battered future. So I'm still going to get a big tv and game console I'm just going to factor in how much power
they use. And offset the energy they use in other ways, recycling, getting a hybrid car etc.

I think if we all made slightly more thoughtful choices when making our purchases we could still have what we want and make the world a better place for us
all to live in.

It would be great if all products displayed openly how much power a device needed. The Wii should proudly display that it takes much less power than an XBox360/PS3,
I really feel we can make a difference I already see how as people increasingly buy healthier food choices companies rally to promote healthy foods to consumers. If
we buy green products companies will tailor their products to be greener i.e. buy more hybrids, more hybrids get made its that simple. If we buy devices that consume
less power it becomes a marketing factor and becomes important to large companies bottom lines.

yeah most probably wouldn't notice
according to this
http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-356-2.h tm
the ps3 uses about 200watts maximum
and if you look at the cost per kwh around the US http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/brochure/electricity/e lectricity.html
and round up for the sake of argument, so say you run it for 24 hours a day, you never play any games on it, and you are paying $0.10 /kwh, that's $14.60/month

more realistically say you pay $0.10/kwh and only run f@h when you are asleep, so 8 hours a day, less than $5 a month more than you would have paid otherwise.

You mean, like this? Do you think these people make less than $1/hour? Do you think this kind of work is done by robots in the USA?

Why don't you try to learn something about a subject before posting? You have no idea of how electronic manufacturing is done, either in China or US or Mexico or anywhere. Placing SMDs is never done by hand, no human being, regardless of salary, can place them with the needed precision in an assembly line. OTOH, there are many types of tests and inspections that need to be done by humans. Current artificial vision systems, for instance, are too unreliable to locate many types of failures that people see at a glance.

You mean, like this? Do you think these people make less than $1/hour? Do you think this kind of work is done by robots in the USA?

Why don't you try to learn something about a subject before posting? You have no idea of how electronic manufacturing is done, either in China or US or Mexico or anywhere. Placing SMDs is never done by hand, no human being, regardless of salary, can place them with the needed precision in an assembly line. OTOH, there are many types of tests and inspections that need to be done by humans. Current artificial vision systems, for instance, are too unreliable to locate many types of failures that people see at a glance.

You mean, like this? Do you think these people make less than $1/hour? Do you think this kind of work is done by robots in the USA?

Why don't you try to learn something about a subject before posting? You have no idea of how electronic manufacturing is done, either in China or US or Mexico or anywhere. Placing SMDs is never done by hand, no human being, regardless of salary, can place them with the needed precision in an assembly line. OTOH, there are many types of tests and inspections that need to be done by humans. Current artificial vision systems, for instance, are too unreliable to locate many types of failures that people see at a glance.

http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-335-5.h tm

The surface mount components are installed by machine. Large components cannot be inserted by machine.

ECS is doing the same thing you see a picture of at that other site. They install some stuff by machine, some by hand.

The machines cost about $100,000 (I asked when viewing a line). But they can insert a lot of components the one in the pic is inserting at least 40 different components (you can see from the reels), probably 100+ total SM components in the same time as one of those women inserts their components. So, it replaces 100+ women, the women make $50 a month, two shifts a day. That's replacing $10,000 worth of people a month at chinese wages.

As you can see, they can't afford not to use these machines. And really, if you care about quality at all, you especially can't afford not to use these machines. These machines are far more accurate, so your yield goes way up.

It's true that the wages in China make labor-intensive assembly feasible. But you've picked a bad example of labor-intensive assembly. Any device that is sold with a tight-fitting case on it (like a cell phone) is going to have a lot more manual labor required, because attaching subassemblies, routing flexes and stuffing it in that case can't be done by machine. A motherboard is sold to you bare (not in a case), and thus can be automated a lot more.

http://www.hardcoreware.net/image.php?src=5081&ts= 1151228420 This reminds me of factories in the USA al circa 1920 I thought we had robotics to do this kind of stuff quite reliably by not?

The last page has the completely naive part about working conditions. The reviewer, Carl Nelson, has no way to know whether the redfaced employee was just embarassed at their bad day report being photographed, or whether there are severe punishments. China's mafia government executes people for software/content piracy, among other fascist means of keeping people in line with their "discipline". They routinely torture people for interfering with official government policy.

(FWIW, I'm not comparing China to the US or elsewhere, where there is also too much torture and executions, for whatever reason. There is no relativism that justifies torturing people, certainly not over economics.)

The first page has the claim that "Pretty soon every computer you buy is going to have an ECS motherboard in it!" Although that's probably just wrong, it shows how naive is the reviewer about the real world outside motherboard specs. If it were true, I'd be worried about a single company, a single factory (which can halt or be destroyed) representing a single point of failure for every computer in the world, or even (especially) in the US.

That article is about as analytical as a videogame review. That is, not at all, after being bought off by a free trip to the factory where their toys get made.

If you google around you'll find this thing really is freaking fast . This isn't just an ad, it is the fastest flash drive around. And you can get them for $25 + S/H . I've got one and I must say, they are solid (metal casing) and noticably faster than any other flash drive I've used.

The referenced article crashes the latest version of Firefox, but not the latest version of Mozilla.

TR is good as usual. Here is another good one:

http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-263-1.h tm

... of this new CPU is how little power it uses compared to older Prescotts:

http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-263-11. htm

http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2005q1/pentium4- 600/index.x?pg=16

Load temperatures are the same levels as idle temps on the old prescotts!

Semprons are only "better" for AMD's bottom line.

Here is another article where they ran different benchmarks on SP2 and SP1. The office productivity test was the one with the biggest difference. The article puts the blame on the new firewall.

They should compare a PC with SP2 and one with SP1 with a third party firewall.

Wow! That really is the ugliest thing I've ever seen! Thanks, Slashdot, for bringing this piece of crap to our attention. Now hundreds of 1337 g4m0rz who have modded their PCs with... well the same tubes and LEDs and plexy crap, really... can feel better about their 'Tandy 30-in-One' lookalike craptastic boxes! They have truly acheived 1960s electronic chic.

Now, if we could find something to make all those airfoiled, spoilered,prismatic,fiberglass Civic, Prelude and Supra mods look like more than some 6 year old's first attempt at a Revell Mustang kit. They need love too.

Yours truly,
The Bitch

Watercools his system using a radiator from a '55 Lincoln. You gotta love it.

Not a bad looking box, either (though I usually end up looking at my monitor more than I do my computer case.)

It seems to me that with all the concern over cyber-pollution these days (discarded monitors and other computer components) maybe it's time to take a greener approach and harvest whatever relics we can from the last great love affair with speed and power: the automobile.

The trend is towards customized boxes we build ourselves anyways, right? So go to the local junkyard and shop American for a change.

Extreme Overclocking: they actually overclocked the engineering sample. ha! kind of a pricy risk if you ask me. More reviews here, here and here.

1. filters must be replaced regularly;
2. they increase air flow turbulence and therefore noise; and
3. dust builds up inside your case anyway.

• Remove all your case fans.
• Use awesome passive cooling heatsinks on both the CPU and video card.
• Use a case that's built with material with low heat capacitance to maximize passive system-cooling. All-plastic isn't a good idea.
• Take your power supply out of the case. Consider the Apple Cube: the power supply is external, so the unit doesn't contribute to the system temperature.

For a review on the fanless heatsinks (including the zalman stuff), check this out. Otherwise, just go to this review which was referred to a few days ago in this slashdot post

Well, they will run a P4 up to 2.8Ghz, and they are completely silent. So if you care about noise, then yes.

See here, how to build a silent pc.

that thermaltake case is nearly exactly like my case, my case just doesn't have the window, is different color(blue/electric blue) without logos, and doesn't have a hole on the 'door' for front panel, which is also missing from my case.

My case cost me 90e without PSU and is made by chieftec, http://www.chieftec.com/products/Workcolor/ColorDX .htm

you can see pics of the on page 6, http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/other/silent_p c/6.php that case they used is priced $169.99 USD on 'sale' at http://www.thermalmasters.com/
they have cheaper thermaltake cases also, they include still the front panel. Thermalmasters does not say is the side fan included or not, it came with Chieftec.

Inside is exactly the same according to the pictures @ thermalmasters. Although this Thermaltake case looks more awesome than the Chieftec one it is more expensive, also this Chieftec case i have can be get cheaper if you take the Black version, it does not include the fan at side.
So if you are budget i recommend selecting Chieftec instead of Thermaltake case.
if anyone is intrested i can also post pictures of my Chieftec case.

• [H]ard|OCP Intel Pentium 4 @ 2.80GHz : Intel is breaking out the big guns with their sights set directly on the competition. Will the 2.80GHz Northwood be enough for Intel to hold onto the performance crown?
• Anandtech Intel's Pentium 4 2.80GHz - Moving to the Head of the Class
• Tom's Hardware Speed Isn't Everything: P4/2800 Meets Athlon XP 2600+
• Ace's Hardware Faster Still: The 2.8 GHz Pentium 4
• FiringSquad Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz Review
• Hexus.net Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz Review
• SimHQ.com Intel "Northwood" 2.80GHz Pentium 4 Processor using .13 Technology
• Tech Report Intel's Pentium 4 2.8GHz processor - Two billion eight-hundred thousand hertz
• Hot Hardware The Pentium 4 2.8GHz Processor - Intel ups the anti once again
• xbit labs Intel Pentium 4 2.8GHz against Athlon XP 2600+
• VR Zone Intel Fastest Pentium 4 2.8Ghz Review
• HardcoreWare A Thorn in AMD's Hide
• Lost Circuits Pentium4 2.8 GHz - Another Hit And Run

from Voodoo Extreme:

Intel 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 CPU
Intel 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 CPU
Intel 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 CPU
Intel 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 CPU
Intel 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 CPU
Intel 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 CPU
Intel 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 CPU
Intel 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 CPU
Intel 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 CPU
Intel 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 CPU
Intel 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 CPU
Intel 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 CPU

Well, you might want to look at the Microsoft Sidewinder Strategic Commander