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AMD Llano APU Review - Slow CPU, Fast GPU
Vigile writes "Though we did see the fruits of AMD's Fusion labor in the form of the Brazos platform late in 2010, Llano is the first mainstream part to be released that combines traditional x86 CPU cores with Radeon-based SIMD arrays for a heterogeneous computing environment. The A-series of APUs reviewed over at PC Perspective starts with the A8-3850 that is a combination of a true quad-core processor and 400 shader processors similar to those found in AMD's Radeon HD 5000 series of GPUs. The good news for the first desktop APU is that the integrated graphics blows past the best Intel has to offer on the Sandy Bridge platform by a factor of 2-4x in terms of gaming. The bad news is the CPU performance: running at only 2.9 GHz the Phenom-based x86 portion often finds itself behind even the dual-core Intel Core i3-2100. On the bright side you can pick one up next month for only $135."
I did a little digging for those wondering: it does run Linux, but only with the proprietary Catalyst driver at the moment. Might be interesting once the open source driver catches up (assuming AMD shares the required info).
Two 5870 running at full will be 350~400 Watts Each.
Add in the motherboard and other basics you're talking 1000 Watts constantly.
Nice job pulling those numbers out of your ass.
Here's the real power consumption of a 5870 right off of AMD's spec sheets: http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/ati-radeon-hd-5000/hd-5870/Pages/ati-radeon-hd-5870-overview.aspx#2
I'll pull the relevent part out for you: Maximum board power: 188 Watts
Assuming people who bitcoin mine use at least a decent power supply that is 80% efficient PSU at given load (realistically most decent ones are 82%+ in optimal load range), you're going to be pulling 235 watts from the wall per card, max.
235 watts is way less than 350-400 watts, by a long shot.
The rest of the system isn't going to be pulling huge amounts of power, since nobody who is mining bitcoin for real cash does it on a CPU, they do it on GPUs, and the amount of power a motherboard, RAM, disk drive, CPU use while they aren't really working is pretty low, usually in the 30-60 watt range, depending on your CPU, but nowhere near 200 watts of draw