AMD's Turion 64 on the Desktop

Toasty16 writes "SPCR has an overview of using an AMD Turion 64 mobile processor in a desktop system. There's a good bit of info about motherboard compatibility and power consumption as compared to a Pentium M processor. There's also links to articles from the Techreport and LaptopLogic on the same topic. If you've been thinking about building a low power HTPC or file server, mobile processor on desktop is an interesting option."

Comments

XP-M

[imboboage0]

I've been using Mobile Athlon XPs for a couple years now. Picked it up on the premise that they ran cooler, on lower voltages, and didn't have a multiplier cap. Worked wonders for hitting an 800MHz overclock on air (2.0 to 2.8). They also seem to work in all the mobos i tried, although some needed a BIOS flash.

Re:...or use a Via chip

[zenmojodaddy]

Via's Mini-ITX motherboards are best described as adequate. I built myself an M10000-based mini-desktop a while back and while it is useable for web browsing, word processing etc, it certainly doesn't blow me away.

A desktop pc with a decent performance, but low power requirements, really appeals to me - the idea of cranking up a 3+GHz PC with half a gig or more of RAM just to write a letter or pick up email seems terribly wasteful.

Re:neato-keen

[eekygeeky]

That's a good question- unless that Compaq board was designed by a far-thinking engineer, it probably won't support the CPU automatically. if it diod, our you can find a BIOS update, then I'd expect you'd cut your CPU chip power consumption in half and heat transfer energy costs correspondingly. that's a $250 experiment, though, and getting it out of the notebook might be a challenge- the heatsink is integral to the case/motherboard and often glued on to the core. disassemble methodically and carefully.

Not true

[Andy Dodd]

Modern video cards accelerate a decent portion of MPEG-2 playback, but you still need a decent amount of CPU.

I think with the most recent video cards, it's something like 50/50.

Note: I'm not counting hardware resolution scaling here. Output scaling is one aspect of video playback that is historically EXTREMELY CPU-hungry, but has been supported in hardware on any video card made in the past decade or more. Even with hardware scaling, you need a 2-3 GHz+ CPU to play back high def MPEG-2, and additional HW acceleration (IDCT, MoComp) offloads 20-30% at best. VIA's video chipsets offload much more of MPEG-2 playback than most other video cards, but until the CN400 series, they were only able to offload standard def content. (90% of hardware MPEG decoders on the market only support MPEG-2 MP@ML, i.e. standard def content. MP@HL decoders for high def content are rare and expensive.)

Re:Energy Savings - why not turn it off?

[Skater]

I don't agree with the $23/month figure.

My power bill is split into two parts, HVAC and everything else. "Everything else" includes two computers running, lights, TV, monitor, refrigerator, stove, microwave, toaster oven, various battery chargers, DVR, laser printer, etc. (The computers run full time, the laser only runs when I need it, and everything else has a fairly normal usage pattern.) That part of my bill is always $22 or $23 per month. When I started running the second computer continuously, I looked for but didn't find a jump in this part of my bill.

Both computers are relatively high-powered models, too - Athlon XP 1900+ and a Sempron 2500 (I think). I'd say $23/year is a more realistic figure.

Looking at the link, I see he's in California, where rates are "rather expensive and calculated using a byzantine rate structure". I pay 6.3 cents per KWH, less than half his, but that doesn't explain the huge discrepancy. (I don't have my own Kill-A-Watt to check my computer's consumption.) I wonder if he's including the monitor being on continuously - I have mine set to turn off after 10 minutes of no activity, which certainly reduces power consumption, and I turn it off when I'm at work or asleep.

Replaced my servers for this reason..

[xtal]

I was running two very old machines for fileservering and routing/firewall duties. My estimate put these machines at about ~$30-40/mo to run depending on what I was doing. I was able to drop this down by about half moving to a mini ITX board with the via C3 processor, and it only cost about $150. I could have spent less, but I upgraded the power supplies as well.

You can easily measure how much power your computer draws with a multimeter from the hardware store - last time I was there I saw them for about $10. Put the meter on the AC amps scale, make sure the wires are plugged into the amp reading ports, and then wire it in series with your computer.

I guarantee you'll be suprised. I was.

Re:Replaced my servers for this reason..

[HappyUserPerson]

You can easily measure how much power your computer draws with a multimeter from the hardware store - last time I was there I saw them for about $10. Put the meter on the AC amps scale, make sure the wires are plugged into the amp reading ports, and then wire it in series with your computer.

Yieks, that's about as bright as sticking a fork in the electric socket for most people. For crying out loud, buy something like this and don't kill yourself, thank you.

Re:Replaced my servers for this reason..

[drgould]

You can easily measure how much power your computer draws with a multimeter from the hardware store - last time I was there I saw them for about $10. Put the meter on the AC amps scale, make sure the wires are plugged into the amp reading ports, and then wire it in series with your computer.

Don't forget, what you're measuring is apparent power, which is really volt-amps. Computer power supplies have a significant power factor, so what you really want to do is measure the corrected real power which is in watts.

Go to ThinkGeek and pick up a Kill-A-Watt, which will not only tell you how many watts your computer actually consumes, but also things like power-factor and kilowatt-hours, which is a much more accurate measure of power consumption.

Re:Replaced my servers for this reason..

[DShard]

If you consider a system with a constant draw of 300 watts for 24 hours and 30 days (since your bill is most likely covers only 30) you get 216 kilowatthours a bill. At 7.1 cents (Department of Energies average cost per kwh) you get $15.33. That is a huge system with a high load and constant usage, so these numbers are very pessimistic. When considering average usage of a system that is less efficient but also less expensive, I can't see where you are saving any money in a in home scenario.

Re:Details?

[zenmojodaddy]

Have a look at www.mini-itx.com - they tend to stock Via integrated motherboards. That might be a good jumping-off point.

You can use cpufreq under linux instead.

[ponos]

I'm currently running my Athlon64 3200+ at 1GHz (VCore also lowered by a significant amount). The clock frequency never jumps above 1000 while I'm writing text, browsing, listening to MP3s (or all of these together). As a matter of fact, you need to really pound the machine to force it to go above 1GHz. The power consumption is very very low and the CPU temperature is almost equal to the case temperature (should be less than 40C for the CPU right now).

Installing and running cpufreq is relatively easy and the savings are considerable. For newbie linux users I have an explanatory step-by-step post http://pkt3141592.blogspot.com/2005/07/fun-with-li nux-cpufreq-driver.html on the subject in my (almost abandoned) blog.

Running a Turion is a hard-core option, but PowerNow should be enabled in ALL Athlon64 desktops.

P.

What's the advantage?

[sm8000]

Without having RTFA or the replies, I present the above question. Venice doesn't consume more than 30 watts from what I read. See this thread: http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid =29&threadid=1780053&enterthread=y