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AMD 90nm Evaluated
muyuubyou writes "The Tech Report has measured the new 90nm A64 3500+ against its 130nm counterpart and a Pentium 4 3.6Ghz 90nm.
AMD looks way ahead in the 90nm process especially when it comes to power consumption.
Note these are consumptions for the entire system including GeForce 6800 GTs and hefty PSUs. RTFineShortArticle for more detail on the configuration.
Leaving the PC on overnight is probably not a good idea with these new Pentium 4s."
That's impressive. Of course, since it's total system wattage, it'd be nice to have some information about disk usage over the period of time, etc.
I like, though, that the 130nm Athlon 64 is still better than the 90nm P4. It might just be time to buy another desktop.
It' snot going to make THAT much of a difference on your electric bill.
Now what I want to see is an analysis of the possible benefits to notebooks, specifically in extending battery life. Intel's Centrino seems to be doing fairly well in that department, but where is AMD's response?
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
With every computing consuming more and more power, its looking like we will need a wind turbine or solar PV array for anyone to run a decent sized network of computers at home.
Anyone currently doing this? I'm thinking of installing a turbine, but unsure of where to start out.
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Can someone elighten me on this? Is there a reason why the SpeedStep and other power-saving methods that are used in most laptops can't be adapted to desktop systems?
The old joke is that all CPUs sleep at the same speed, but after seeing the power consumption graph on this site, it's obvious that "power-hungry CPU" doesn't just mean high heat during gaming. This suckers are hungry even while doing nothing at all
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Buy an Intel Prescott based system if you live in the Artic Circle ...
Looking at the data in the article, would I be mad in assuming that a 90nm 3500+ uses around 23W in idle mode?
Assuming power supply is 75% efficient:
112W * 0.75 = 84W getting to system
179W * 0.75 = 134W (130nm under load, near TDP of 89W, let's assume 84W)
134W - 84W = 58W Mobo, Gfx, IDE, etc power consumption
84W - 58W = 26W
26W * 0.9 (motherboard VRM efficiency) = 23W
I suppose that system power usage also drops in idle mode though as well.
Yes, these figures are extremely dodgy and vague and aren't worth much more than the speculation they are. It looks like the 3.4GHz P4 uses over 100W under load though - that is shockingly high.
The ambient temperature in his office was 85 degrees F? I'm breaking a sweat at 72F. When the A/C turns off in our office over the weekend the ambient climbs to about 85 and all of my servers fans are on overdrive. I wonder if that had anything to do with the power consumption in this test, I'm curious to see what the diference is at a more normal operating temperature, say 69 degrees F.
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
they'd bill this as a "feature." Buy the processor and we'll bundle the radiator for free. Remember, supplies are limited, so hurry before winter approaches.
>How fast can the 90 nm Athlon 64 core go before it dies?
At least 3.6GHz. That's a 130nm(? I assume) Athlon FX-53, so the 90nms will do better.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
A friend of mine, an overclocking expert (inventor of the "Goldfinger devices" if anyone remembers those) said that the new shrunk cores overclock to around 3GHz if you can get your FSB high enough (though this won't be an issue with the FX chips, which aren't clock-locked).
To those paying attention, 2.2GHz in an Athlon64 can generally outperform a 3.4GHz PentiumIV, so this is a big deal.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
The ambient temperature in my office was about 85F/29C,
The *ambient* temp was 85F? Lord, I'd hate to think how much I'd be sweating in an 85 degree office with limited air movement...
This magazine writer works at a place that can't afford air conditioning? Or does he have so many computers in there that he's just cooking himself voluntarily?!?
What *does* roast-geek smell like?
151W (idle) * 12 hours * 360 days * 15c/unit = $100 a year extra on your electricity bill BEFORE you factor in the power used in your A/C to remove that heat.
If you are nice and do Folding or SETI or RC72 or whatever it is now, then you're looking at $150 at least.
If you are in an office, you can see how the costs could rapidly ramp up!
The P4 system he was running was running at about 150 watts at idle.
Now, if you are running an A/C unit then you will not only have to consider the 150W your computer is using, but also the power that your A/C is using to fight the heat that it produces.
100% of the power used in the PC becomes heat (I think). So that is 150 W of heat. Your A/C, however is not 100% efficient. I really have no idea what the numbers are there. But it can't be more than 100% efficient so that is another 150 Watts (at least)
So your 150W computer is costing you 300W at the least.
Now, if you on the other hand live up north, then it looks much better. The heat produced will actually help your heating system, so that it doesn't have to run as much. My physics knowledge is a bit rusty, but I think you can say that if your heating system is based on electricity then it will cost you nothing extra to run your PC.
Please let me know if/where I'm wrong.
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The one place where your figures aren't quite right is in the air conditioning department. An air conditioner, being a heat pump, just needs to move the heat from one spot to another, and the "typical" phase-change A/C unit is fairly efficient at it.
To put some figures on it, an air conditioner with an EER of 12 means that it can move 12,000 BTUs with 1000 watt-hours of electricity.
Now, 12,000 BTUs is equivalent to 3516 watt-hours of heat. So for every 3,516 watts of heat generation, you'll be expending 1,000 watts to move that heat to the outside of your building. And that's with an EER of 12, some units exist with EERs as high as 17.
So, for every 150 watts of power your computer is using, figure 40 to 60 watts for your A/C.
On the other hand, were you using a peltier device for cooling, you'd be in bad shape. If the EER figure were applied to them, it would be less than 1. For example, to move 30 watts of heat across a peltier, you'd need to apply approximately 45 watts of heat to it - meaning you'd be removing 30 watts from the cold side, but you'd need to remove 75(!) watts from the hot side.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
This seems a poor comparison between the AMD CPUs. Given they have taken a 130 nm chip and underclocked it, that means the chip is capable of higher clock speeds and therefore has "hotter" (from a speed sense) transistors as we used to say at AMD (used to work there). Since the transistors can deliver more current when on (leading to the higher clock speeds), by definition (subthreshold slope is limited by physics to ~60 mV/dec of current) they will "leak" more in the off state than transistors that don't supply so much current (and therefore run slower). I wish they had had equally rated (by AMD) chips to remove this uncertainty, although everyone seems to be focusing on the difference between the Intel and AMD boxes (which opens up a world of concerns....is it the motherboard under load increasing its demand, they have different memory systems which could contribute when stressed, is the PCI-E bus not as efficient as the (assumed) AGP, etc.).
Even if their chips eventually become cheaper and better, again? That sounds like a stupid strategy. In general, all strategies of the form "I will never/always do X" are stupid.