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

...or use a Via chip

[Paul Bristow]

I have used fanless Via C3 chips for several years now. One is running a Linux Fileserver at home, the other a DVB multi-tuner PVR.

Last I saw they are on the C7 chip. Not so famous as AMD, but for certain tasks, get the job done nicely.

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:...or use a Via chip

[kesuki]

i'm pretty sure that in a 'modern' pc all video decoding is handled on the video card. that's why when you try to 'screen grab' you just get a pink or blue image all the decoding is being done by the video card. so as long as you have a gpu capable of decoding HD video, and a media player that supports hardware decoding, the cpu overhead should be pretty low.

Re:...or use a Via chip

[zenmojodaddy]

Actually, the M10000 motherboard has a fan. It sounds like a bunch of bees bitchslapping a hovercraft.

Re:...or use a Via chip

[default luser]

What I don't understand with this Turion story is why AMD are not pushing desktop usage for this processor themselves.

They already are. Did you even read the review? Turion processors are low-voltage Athlon 64 processors. They run at 1.35v for the ML line at full speed, 1.2v for the MT line at full speed, and 0.9v at 800 MHz idle.

The "Newcastle" core they compared the Turion to is VERY OLD, 0.13 micron, with an operating voltage of 1.5v. The Turions are based on a second-generation, highly refined 0.09 micron process. So are all of AMD's current desktop processors.

Modern desktop Socket 939 Athlon 64 single-core processors use the Venice and San Diego cores, which are based on the same process as the Turions, and are VERY LOW POWER. Venice chips run at 1.35v, the same as the Turion ML, and with Cool 'n Quiet enabled, they idle at 1GHz with 1.1v, for a power usage of ~ 4w. So, expect equivilantly-clocked Athlon 64s to use the same power as Turion MLs.

I thought this review was a stupid waste of time, and here is why:

1. They originally stated they did the review because Socket 754 motherboards could be found cheap, and thus you could make a cheap, powerful and low-power box. But the MSI RS482M-IL they settled on sells for more in the $70-80 range. Socket 939 boards can be had for that.

2. The Turion ML is no lower-power than its desktop counterparts (except in idle, but the difference is so small it only matters to a notebook), but it has a price premium of about $80 for the same performance level. For example (from Pricewatch), the Socket 939 3200+ sells for around $140, and the Turion ML-40 (its performance equivilant) sells for around $230. The MT-40 has an even higher premium, costing an additional $40 over the ML-40.

Oh, and a few quick answers to your questions:

They can't just sell everyone Turion MTs. Those cores are cherry-picked for low-voltage operation, and they are in much shorter supply than the ML / desktop voltage chips.

And the single memory channel on the Turion was the obvious choice. Dual memory channels would require every Turion notebook to ship with two sticks of DDR1. As I have mentioned earlier, the DDR2 used on the Pentium M platform is a lot lower power than DDR1. Thus, with a single channel, AMD has encouraged manufacturers to use only a single stick. Later this year, when AMD moves to DDR2, expect to see dual-channel memory on the Turions.

Enjoying it

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been using a turion based PC for a little while. For what I do (no gaming) it has been brilliant. Its good to see that there are other people writing articles about using Mobile chips on their desktop.

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.

neato-keen

[eekygeeky]

I love the idea of low power, high-concept CPUs on desktop machines.

I love the fact that these chips are 754 pin and thus compatible with an existing socket- motherboard manufacturers won't have to ramp up any new hardware to start selling boards for these in every color of the rainbow.

Turion Shuttles/insert small FF MB here/, anyone?

and there are loads of legacy boards available. Socket 754 boards are dirt cheap. here's a handy list of compatibles from the article:

http://angelfall.s39.xrea.com/area2ch/turion-e.htm l

I would have jumped all over the P M, except there was no desktop gear for it; unless I bought a notebook PC and did some expensive hacking, which, ad publicae geekio, is a contradiction in terms.

score +one for AMD.

Re:neato-keen

[j-cloth]

I had no idead they would have make the Turions compatible with older 754 MBs. Back to the laptop world here, I have a Compaq (R3000z) with what is basically a desktop Athlon 64 chip (Clawhammer 3200+). Any theories on possible gains from swapping in a Turion?

The possibility of cutting CPU power by 75% while gaining SSE3 support, VMware 64bit guest compatibility and possibly some performance seems like a good reason to pull out the screwdriver.

Thoughts?

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.

Energy Savings - why not turn it off?

[PoconoPCDoctor]

Speaking just to the power-savings benefit of using a mobile CPU in a home system, unless you are running a home server, the best way to conserve power in any PC would be to turn it off.

This link notes one person's cost of leaving systems powered up, a little more than $23.00 USD per month.

So boot it up each morning, make the coffee and toast, and by the time you sit back down in front of Unbuntu, Mandriva, BSD, SUSE or that friendly chair-throwing group from Redmond, you can feel better about not burning up more oil to play solitaire (YOU'RE FIRED).

Re:Energy Savings - why not turn it off?

[pgfault]

For those who have a domain name and IP bound to there home systems, they're probably running 365/7. Minimizing the power consumption with a mobile CPU is a good start, as the article points out. There are other avenues for power reduction: do you really need that GeForce 7800? If so, can it be powered off when not in use? How about those 15000rpm mirrored disks? Perhaps 4200rpm is a bit slow, so you have to make tradeoffs. There are plenty of compromises that can be made in building such a system. It appears from the article that the tradeoff in the CPU department isn't really in performance, as the Turion 64 appears to perform on par with its non-mobile siblings, so it's probably in the price difference.

For some, a savings of 50-60W over the course of 3 years may pay for itself.

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.

Have had a good experience with Turion 64

[BigTimOBrien]

I've had a great experience with Turion 64 chips in a laptop. High frame rate on graphics-intensive applications and, in general, good responsiveness even when running a whole boat load of RAM and CPU-heavy apps like Eclipse and Server JVM. I've used these chips from the ML-26 to the ML-44, and the cost/benefit analysis of AMD Turions versus the alternative just makes more sense. For the dollar, it seems like I can get 30% more performance in the apps I care to run.

But, Turion 64 on a desktop, not quite so fast, if performance is important to you, why go to all the trouble to install a mobile CPU? Either turn the thing off at night or drive less.

Details?

[bradleyland]

Any chance of getting some part numbers or manufacturers for that system?

The need for cooler running desktops has surpassed the need for faster desktops in the case of most of my customers. They like to browse the internet, write email, and play bridge online, but rarely render anything in 3D, encode much media, or play any games. They'd rather stuff the computer in a cabinet and not have to stare at it.

In the latter part of last year, we replaced three Dells that cooked themselves inside a cabinet, and have at least three more where the customer complains of frequent crashes. We're almost certain that heat is the issue. All Dell will do is send us new case fans.

We've tried cutting vent holes in the desks too. Short of an active fan based ventilation system, it appears that a fast system is not suited for life inside an enclosed cabinet. Enter the need for something not quite as fast, but cooler and quieter.

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.

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.)

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.

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