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Comparing Performance and Power Use For Vista vs. Windows 7 WIth Clarksfield Chi
crazipper writes "Back when Intel launched its Core i5/i7 'Lynnfield' CPUs, Tom's Hardware ran some tests in Windows 7 versus Vista to gauge the benefits of the core parking and ideal core optimizations, said to cut power consumption in the new OS. It turned out that Win7 shifted the Nehalem-based CPUs in and out of Turbo Boost mode faster, resulting in higher power draw under load, while idle power was a slight bit lower. The mobile version of the architecture was claimed (at the time) to show a greater improvement in moving to Win7. Today there's a follow-up with the flagship Clarksfield processor that shows the same aggressive P-state promotion policies giving Win7 a significant performance advantage with Core i7 Mobile. However, power consumption is higher as well."
I haven't seen a desktop in a long time that had ECC RAM, or even support for it.
Any moderately recent AMD CPU will support ECC, and it's not hard to find a mainboard that does as well (for example I believe any ASUS mainboard for AMD will support ECC, I know the one I checked a couple days ago does (cheapest ASUS AM3 mainboard on Newegg then, probably still is, only like $5 more than the cheapest other AM3 board)).
In the Core 2 era of chips desktop use normal unbuffered DDR2 or DDR3 DIMMs.
Buffered/unbuffered is separate from ECC/non-ECC. For example I know the AMD desktop chips support unbuffered ECC memory.
Desktop stuff is not ECC because it is cheaper.
Maybe 10% cheaper. And of course it's easy to make things cheaper if they don't have to work correctly.
Quick summary:
Lynnfield = the internal name for the new Core i5/Core i7 CPUs for LGA 1156.
Core parking/ideal core = two optimizations from Microsoft in Win7 that are supposed to save power by consolidating background tasks onto as few CPU cores as possible, and then putting the idle cores to sleep.
Clarksfield = Core i7 Mobile; basically, the Lynnfield stuff with a different interface, more aggressive Turbo Boost, etc.
Nehalem = Another Intel internal name referring to the whole family of 45nm CPUs based on this architecture. Members include Bloomfield, Lynnfield, Clarksfield.
ECC support is more expensive on Intel platforms because Intel segments the market intentionally!!! If you want ECC support running an Intel rig, you will need both a Xeon CPU and a Workstation class board (even thought the new FSB desktop chipset supports ECC, it's not enabled)
FYI, I'm actually building a new desktop machine this week. It's an AMD Phenom II paired up with Asus Crosshair III board. I purchased matched ECC DDR3 memory (non-buffered and non-registered) direct from Crucial.com. Simple really. I just pulled down the make/model board and placed the order in two shakes... I could be wrong, but this might be the cheapest desktop class system that supports ECC DDR3.
Life is not for the lazy.
The Apple GPU switching implementation appears to require the user to restart his or her session (that is, log off and log on again.) Intel's implementation seems to support switching GPUs without logging off or restarting. The Intel solution also has to handle two different display drivers.
Some older laptops supported switching between integrated and discrete graphics as well, but I think they required a reboot to switch.
I cant be the only one who might think xp sp3 might actually win
"Intel segments the market intentionally!"
Don't forget virtualization. With AMD, you don't have to pay a premium if you plan to run virtual machines.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br