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AMD's Turion 64 on the Desktop

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the building-it-out dept.

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."

9 of 123 comments (clear)

  1. ...or use a Via chip by Paul+Bristow · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    --
    - Paul
  2. XP-M by imboboage0 · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    --
    Honesty may be the best policy, but by process of elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy.
  3. neato-keen by eekygeeky · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. Energy Savings - why not turn it off? by PoconoPCDoctor · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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).

    --
    "Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair" - George Washington
  5. Have had a good experience with Turion 64 by BigTimOBrien · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    ------ Tim O'Brien
  6. Not true by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.)

    --
    retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
  7. Replaced my servers for this reason.. by xtal · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --
    ..don't panic
    1. Re:Replaced my servers for this reason.. by drgould · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

  8. You can use cpufreq under linux instead. by ponos · · Score: 4, Informative
    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.