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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.
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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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.
>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.
In fact the spike in power use from turning a system on in the morning is often higher then the amount of power it will draw all night while doing nothing.
That is complete bullshit.
Let's say your PC spikes to 500 watts for an entire minute before settling down to 50 watts. This would represent a worst case senario.
In this case, your couputer would use as much power in 10 minutes as it did powering up. Show me a modern PC, laptops included, that idle at less than 50 watts. Low end centrinos idle in the low 60s.
That's being pretty generous -- The power supply of that 'average gamer system' would have to be running at peak capacity 100% of the time to use that kind of power.
A large screen CRT monitor uses somewhere around 50-70W when active, and 1-2W in sleep mode. LCD displays use less power, but they're not what the average gamer uses.
Steady state usage for the computer itself is more like 200W than 500 -- The 500W capacity on your average gamer's power supply is equal parts peak capacity for boot-up and lies told by marketing, and you would have to be playing Doom 3 all day long, every day to keep that up for the entire month. Even if you disabled power management and just let it idle all night long it would still use less than 100W.
Using these numbers, and assuming that your average gamer is playing twelve hours a day and in class or sleeping the other twelve, we're looking at an average power consumption of 175W for a total of fourty-two cents per day or $13 a month at your rates.
The back of the envelope rests, your honour.
"Low end centrinos idle in the low 60's".
... as reported by /proc/acpi. (acpi doesn't totally work in my Athlon 64 laptop, but from relative battery life I imagine it pulls around 30-32.)
That's incorrect, from my experience.
My mother's Athlon XP-M laptop idles around 25 watts. This is the complete power draw, counting the disks, LCD (on dim), and everything
Also, let's do some math. Its battery has a capacity of 4.4 amp-hours, and can get about 3 hours on a charge while idling.
The battery puts out 14.1 volts, so its total capacity should be 62.04 watt-hours. Thus, to idle for three hours, the computer has to use about 21 watts.
Now, this is a monster laptop: large disk, 15 inch widescreen, and a non-Centrino processor. The battery, natch, is pretty big as well. I think the whole thing clocks in at a little under eight pounds.
My friends' small iBooks get ~5 hours to a charge, and I bet they have lower-capacity batteries than the big M5312. They have, of course, smaller LCD's and efficient G4 processors. I wouldn't be surprised if they draw 10-15 watts.
Actually, for CRTs, active power usage depends on the rate of the dot clock.
The power usage of a monitor will increase linearly with dot clock (with some minimum accounting for the brightness of the display).
Most high-end 19" monitors (with high-speed dot-clocks) have a maximum power usage of around 140w. Those numbers you have quoted are for THE HIGHEST supported resolution and refresh rate, with the maximum brightness...they vary because the maximum brightness and maximum dot clock speed vary among them.
On the other hand, most people use the recommended resolution and brightness set by the manufacturer. That is usually 1280x1024@85Hz on a 19" monitor, for a dot clock of around 111MHz.
For comparison, if you run your 19" monitor at 1600x1200@85Hz, you'll see a clock of 163MHz, and a proportionate increase in power usage.
For example, my monitor (Vision Master Pro 454) has a maximum rated output of 135w. If we ignore the brightness issue, then we assume that at maximum frequency (1920x1440@85), or 235MHz, the power usage is 135w.
So, scale down to a more reasonable resolution like 1600x1200, and we're only using ~ 93w. Or use the recommended resolution at 1280x1024, and we're sipping a cool ~ 63w.
Of course, these numbers are probably a bit higher due to components I have not taken into account. I do recall that the instruction booklet for my 454 lists power usage at multiple resolutions, and they did display this linear relationship, but I don't have access to it now.
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