Gaming Computers Offer Huge, Untapped Energy Savings Potential 207
Required Snark writes: According to Phys.org, a study by Evan Mills at Berkeley Lab shows that "gamers can achieve energy savings of more than 75 percent by changing some settings and swapping out some components, while also improving reliability and performance" because "your average gaming computer is like three refrigerators." Gaming computers represent only 2.5 percent of the global installed personal computer (PC) base but account for 20 percent of the energy use. Mills estimated that gaming computers consumed 75 TWh of electricity globally in 2012, or $10 billion, and projects that will double by 2020 given current sales rates and without efficiency improvements. Potential estimated savings of $18 billion per year globally by 2020, or 120 terawatt hours (TWh) are possible. Mills started the site GreeningtheBeast.org.
You can read the full paper as a PDF.
And? (Score:5, Funny)
So I should swap out my video card to save a little power, drop a few frames and die a virtual death? I think they have their priorities backwards.
Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, what you're saying is that dropping from 1000 frames per second, to 950 FPS is all it takes to die?
My dad had a saying, I think it applies here: "A poor workman blames his tools"
Re:And? (Score:5, Funny)
So, what you're saying is that dropping from 1000 frames per second, to 950 FPS is all it takes to die?
My dad had a saying, I think it applies here: "A poor workman blames his tools"
To channel a story from yesterday... IF the tool is Python, the blame is well placed... ;)
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That can mean a poor workman finds excuses. But it also means a good workman has quality tools and takes good care of them.
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So, what you're saying is that dropping from 1000 frames per second, to 950 FPS is all it takes to die?
My dad had a saying, I think it applies here: "A poor workman blames his tools"
And a good workman doesn't use a screw driver to hammer nails.
Re:And? (Score:4, Insightful)
My dad had a saying, I think it applies here: "A poor workman blames his tools"
Ehh...yes and no. A workman generally isn't competing against others, which is why he has no excuse. Not so with gamers.
If two craftsman are up against each other in a woodworking competition, their tools absolutely matter. Give one a dull blade to work with instead of the sharp one the other guy has, and he'd have every reason to complain about his tools and how they're affecting his ability to produce results. After all, the fact that he is fully capable of producing absolutely amazing results using just that dull blade doesn't matter one bit in a competition setting, since what matters in a competition is his ability to produce better results than the person he is competing against.
So it is with much of gaming.
A "craftsman" of the gaming world may be more than capable of producing amazing results on an everyday basis by wiping the floor with their opponents, regardless of their tools, but put them up against someone of similarly-masterful skill and their tools can absolutely make a load of difference.
That said, I actually agree with your sentiment, since computers, latency, and other factors get overused as excuses when the bigger issue is merely the player's competency. I recall back when I played vanilla World of Warcraft, I was getting 0.5 frames per second (i.e. 1 frame every two seconds; that is not a typo) at minimum settings in some of the raids, simply because I was at the time running the game on a laptop that was well under the minimum specs (the bug tunnel in AQ40 [wikia.com] was particularly bad for me). Yet, despite that, I'd consistently come in with the least "overheal" and the second highest healing among the members of the 40-man raid (i.e. I healed the second most and did so with better efficiency than anyone else). When the raid leaders got wind of how poor my computer was, they started calling the other healers to task over their performances, since if I was able to produce those sorts of results with such a crappy setup, the others had no excuse.
All of which is to say, bad gamers do indeed blame their tools inappropriately in the vast majority of cases, but gamers also have better and more valid reasons for blaming their tools than a typical craftsman.
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No, actually it's more about keeping a high enough minimum framerate so that the game doesn't hitch, while having as much eye candy as possible. Benchmarks are done with vsync turned off to see comparative results of how much headroom is available, which is why you see comparisons done at high framerates. It is also done to reduce lagtime between screen and input updates, depending how the game in question renders. There are also those of us who aren't blind and can see a noticeable difference between 16 an
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Give a Craftsman a crappy tool, and he can make it work. Give an apprentice the same tool, and he will likely fail. The difference is not the tool.
The difference is that a Craftsman doesn't rely on the tool, but rather on experience. A poor workman blames his tool, a Craftsman gets it done right in spite of the tool.
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My $100 Ryobi tile saw wobbles just enough to slightly chip the edges of every cut. The $1200 Bosch tile saw I rented does not wobble at all, and makes absolutely perfect cuts. Craftsman or no craftsman, the better tool produces better results.
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> Good craftsmen don't keep crappy tools.
An expert craftsmen will demonstrate mastery using crappy tools just to prove that the quality of the tool is just an excuse / cop-out.
* Mona Lisa with MSPaint [youtube.com]
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So I should swap out my video card to save a little power, drop a few frames and die a virtual death? I think they have their priorities backwards.
Agreed. Talking to gamers about their systems being inefficient when it comes to power is akin to talking to the guy driving a supercharged Challenger about gas mileage. There are factors that consumers do not give a shit about. Power consumption with gaming rigs would be one of them.
You want people to run more efficient devices? Make the cost of electricity higher. Otherwise, good luck getting people to change. Performance will likely win no matter what, as it does when shopping for gas-guzzling musc
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>The think the more important note here is that the guy with a 707 HP Challenger Hellcat is probably not driving it to work every day.
That may be true mostly, but I have a few coworkers that have some wicked cars, one with a Hellcat, one with an Audi R8, and 'most' of them are daily drivers. I'm on the other end with a 2010 Jeep Rubicon, lifted with 35" tires. I get a whopping 11mpg and it's a daily driver because of my love for my jeep, and I'll keep her a very long time. I save money, electricity, wat
Re:And? (Score:5, Interesting)
From the article (I know, I know, but I was curious):
"The huge bottom line here is that gamers don't have to sacrifice performance to save energy," Mills said. "You can have your cake and eat it too. In fact, the efficient systems run cooler and quieter, both of which are desirable attributes among gamers."
...and...
They were able to achieve a 50 percent reduction in energy use while performance remained essentially unchanged. Additional energy savings were achieved through operational settings to certain components, yielding total savings of more than 75 percent.
Which is to say, quite right, it sounds like they are talking about diminishing performance a bit, but if they've figured out some decent ways to cut the amount of energy the system is using, it would sound to me like they may have created some additional headroom for overclockers dealing with overheating. After all, a cooler system may indicate you're leaving untapped potential on the table.
Having looked through their site, it appears that all they've really done is calculate the cost per watt for the performance offered by various components, and have made some swaps to get similarly- or better-performing components that operate at lower wattages, but their research is far from comprehensive. For instance, they posted a market survey [google.com] that covers the efficiency of 9 PSUs, but PSUs are already rated based on their efficiency (e.g. Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze), and there are significantly more comprehensive lists [newegg.com] out there that address the topic of how well the PSUs live up to their claimed standard (and that are also updated regularly as new PSUs hit the market). Likewise, you can find similar work done for other components.
If their site had done a better job of pulling those various resources together so as to provide a better bang-for-your-buck on your utility bill list and was comprehensive enough that I didn't feel like they were leaving out the vast majority of the products aimed at gamers, I'd have been much more favorably-inclined towards them, but this kinda seems like a weekend project done by a father and son team who have environmental aspirations. Merit worthy, certainly, but not worth much consideration from gamers (yet?).
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If mom wasn't paying the electricity bills, the energy savings after a year or so would also buy an updated GPU.
What "operational settings to certain components"? (Score:2)
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I didn't see it either. If you find it, I'd love to know.
Re:And? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually that is the one area where TFA might actually have a point. Due to new technologies from AMD and Nvidia that sync the monitor refresh timing to the GPU instead of the other way around, a slightly less powerful GPU can provide essentially the same performance as a more powerful one did under the old system.
Basically if your monitor has a fixed 60Hz refresh rate then the GPU must be able to supply every frame in under 16.6ms. Any drops will be immediately noticeable. With flexible frame rate the GPU can go down to say 55Hz for a few frames, or even down to 50Hz and the player won't notice. Motion will still look fluid.
Okay, some gamers want 120Hz now, but the principal still applies.
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A lot of things come at no cost though. I find it amazing how many people for example will spend a fortune on their graphics card, motherboard, processor, ram, hard drives, etc... but then run it with a cheapo power supply.
Let's say that you're one of those (probably the majority) that leaves their computer on 24/7. Let's say your gaming computer's average power consumption, between idling and heavy usage, is maybe 200W. Let's say the power supply lasts an average 3 years. Let's say that the difference betw
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that's a savings of $126.
I am pretty certain the person who spent thousands on a top end gaming rig does not particularly care about saving $126 over the course of three years.
Better power supplies (Score:2)
I am pretty certain the person who spent thousands on a top end gaming rig does not particularly care about saving $126 over the course of three years.
But point out that besides saving him electricity, that the better power supply is less likely to fail and will scream less, and he's interested again.
A gold rated E80+ power supply is less likely to quit.
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Nailed it.
Also if you look at their graphs, there's nothing in there that is high power and efficient.
https://sites.google.com/site/... [google.com]
Their efficiency metric- watts divided by fps- is a pretty odd spec (the unitless efficiency is output power over input power, so you'd at least expect a high efficiency number to mean something is more efficient, not less).
The bigger part is this: it shows that computers that use more power deliver more performance, and that there aren't really any exceptions to this. The
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I disagree with your maths. If the saving was 50/mo you'd break even in 6 months. The GTX 970 consumes 145 watt, the GTX 980 consumes 165 watt according to NVidia. In a total of 15 days of non stop full use, 360 hours, this translates to 52.2 kwh for the GTX 970 (USD 13.42, I pay usd 0.26/kwh) versus 59.4 kwh for the GTX 980 (USD 15.27). So the saving would be USD 1.85 per month, however if I'm not mistaken the GTX 980 is the better of the two so there is no 'saving' as such.
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I wonder if the energy savings from using the treadmill to power the computer make up for the energy spent heating the water for the shower you need after.
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Um, I am guessing you haven't ever actually worked in electronics.
A 1200W power supply used to power a 500W system won't be a space heater, it will be more efficient and will last longer. The computer won't magically start pulling more power because the overhead is there, the power supply can deliver 1200W, not always delivers 1200W.
Buy a high efficiency power supply that is over the wattage requirements of your computer (all numbers that can be looked up). you get more from increased efficiency, not from
Fuck Off (Score:4, Funny)
Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
H. L. Mencken
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Re:Fuck Off (Score:4, Insightful)
What a strange attitude. If you could save money on electricity by simply buying more efficient components for the same price as inefficient ones, and by enabling some power saving options on your PC for free and all with no loss of performance, wouldn't it make sense to do so?
It's like pointing out that there is no point accelerating and braking hard in heavy traffic. You won't get there any quicker, you just waste money that you could spend on other stuff.
This instant angry reaction to anything involving energy saving is bizarre and makes no rational sense.
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What you say is so obvious to any rational person, that to be lectured on the subject is annoying.
And what is the sense in buying $500 of components to save $100 in electricity? My numbers may be wrong, but simplistic imperatives are stupid.
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Because $100 of electricity is worth more than $100. If you render everything as a dollar value then nothing will have real value anymore. How much are the kids worth, how much to charge for an evening watching the sunset, how much to charge to improve the environment?
Except he's full of shit (Score:3)
His numbers are way off. First a gaming computer is not "three refrigerators." A fridge/freezer combo uses like 400-800 watts when spun up depending on size and if it is frostless or not. Your typical reasonably high end gaming computer (high end quad core processor, single high end GPU) uses in the 300-400 watt range when fully spun up. There are, of course, higher end systems but they are not common as they cost a lot, for not a ton of gain.
Well the idea that there are tons of components or settings that'
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http://michaelbluejay.com/elec... [michaelbluejay.com]
"In most homes the refrigerator is the second-largest user of electricity (13.7%), right after the air conditioner (14.1%)" mostly because they are old and inefficient.
Modern energy efficient refrigerators use ~425 to 600kWh / year.
You say a gaming rig draws ~350W "when fully spun up", I say my 2nd gen PS3 draws over 200W when sitting at the menu bar "doing nothing." The article is talking about gamers that never let their systems go to sleep, so let's settle on 300W draw w
Guess what? (Score:2)
1) A PS3 is not a gaming PC, which is what we are talking about.
2) PCs go in to idle states BY DEFAULT, you have to work to turn them off. My PC, an exceptionally high powered one, idles at about 90 watts. A more normal PC idles at 50 or so. Not turning off, not suspending, not doing anything special. The processors normal C-states and throttling which are enabled by default.
3) You can turn your PC off. I do.
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Oh yeah, I don't disagree. The guy is severely lacking a clue. I was only commenting on the reaction.
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Think about V twin motorcycle engines and all that they represent in our culture...
Not everybody wants to fit in, be efficient, save money, or listen to what anybody else thinks.
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I had one person on here tell me I should go out and buy a more efficient car to go along with my pickup as it is so inefficient. I think they failed logic class.
My pickup gets 15.4 miles to the gallon, I go through a tank (~25 gal) a week, spending between $60 and $80 (at the peak of the oil prices). So, my truck costs me max of $400 a month to run, and I am supposed to go out and buy an efficient car to save money/gas/the environment? Even if the car uses $0 of fuel/electricity, a car isn't going to c
Multitask (Score:2)
How many beers can I fit inside the case?
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One, maybe two, if you leave it in the container.
You can likely fit over a hundred beers in there if you take it out of the containers first, though that may require judicial use of caulking first.
=Smidge=
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It depends, are you using the beer for the cooling fluid in your liquid cooling system?
Here's an obvious power saving solution... (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is exactly what I do. I only have the computer on when I am using it.
The paper is vague on this point, but it seems to imply that the computer is running all the time.
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Wouldn't it be easier to TURN OFF the gaming computer when you're not using it?
Turning my PC off at night would save me *maybe* $40-$50 per year over running it 24/7. The cost of higher component failure rates due to thermal cycling (vs. heating up and staying that way) would probably end up costing me more than that (I try to keep a PC for 4-5 years).
One tip for efficiency that I think a lot of people miss is properly sizing the power supply. They run most efficiently when you're around 50% or so of max load, and terrible efficiency under 20% load. People with the "bigger is better"
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But not if their PC ramps up to wanting 600W during gaming, right?
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I would say the peak is at about 60% - or amusingly, close to one divided by the golden number.
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My computer is being used even when I'm not using it myself. I have an FTP server, a small webserver, a database, a TeamSpeak server and a PLEX Media Server on it. While idling (aka "not gaming on it") it consumes around 200W of power. I balanced that consumption by replacing all my light bulbs with low-consumption ones, and I actually pay less than when I had incandescent light bulbs and no gaming PC.
While gaming, my PC consumes 400-450W and that happens 2-3 hours a day, some days it consumes less while ga
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I'm measuring my PC and everything else on my desk, e.g. external HDDs, battery charger, docked phone, charging tablet, headphones, desk lamp, two monitors, the GPON and so on.
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FYI, I have a TS3 server as well, but I run mine in EWS. It costs me about $6 a month to run. You might want to consider it.
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Wow...that was terrible.
Amazon EC2.
I mixed up AWS and EC2...
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Tell that to my kids - I turn off the (abandoned, lost interest hours ago) PS3 about 4 times a week.
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even with all solid capacitors running a machine 24/7 will cause the caps to pop in just 8-10 years (average) instead of 40 years (if run 8 hrs a day) the theoretical problem of soldier point failures is like saying 'oh i never shut off my car because it has to be the right climate and i never know when i will want to use it, plus the strain on the electronics and climate control from a cold start'
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So, the stresses from thermal expansion are nothing?
Going from room temperature to running temperature is what causes the fatigue, and in fact was an issue with nVidia cards at one point. Power cycling does cause component fatigue, just not often enough to care about unless you have a component that didn't take it into account in the design, or used the wrong material in construction.
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I'm still using an old CRT TV. I used to have the TV turned on all the time as background noise. After I put the TV and everything connected to it on the power strip, I discovered that I only watch TV for three or four hours per week. Hence, my monthly electric bill got cut in half.
So the core of cutting your electric bill in half wasn't from using a power strip to eliminate power use from electronics while they are in standby, but instead was from turning things off when they weren't in use. I laud your cut in consumption but I think you are attributing it to the wrong change.
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Modern society disagrees with you.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/20/tammy-cooper-texas-mom-arrested-kids-unsupervised-video_n_1900113.html [huffingtonpost.com]
http://www.wtsp.com/story/news/local/2015/01/15/parents-charged-with-neglect-for-kids-playing-outside/21821723/ [wtsp.com]
http://dailycaller.com/2014/07/29/mom-charged-with-felony-for-letting-son-walk-to-park-alone-video/ [dailycaller.com]
http://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/free-range-parents-found-responsible-child-neglect-allowing/story?id=29363859 [go.com]
If you read the article (Score:5, Informative)
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So I should scrap my old card every couple of years and replace it, even though the card costs more than any power saving I could possibly gain.
Totally makes sense in Greenie World, I guess. Just not in this one.
Re:If you read the article (Score:5, Insightful)
If you read or even browse the paper, all he really says is if you use newer components, they are more energy efficient. Which is like well, pretty much everything else on the damn planet.
I wonder... Do they take into account the resources necessary to BUILD these new components and scrap the old ones?
I read once that it's more environmentally friendly to keep using an old building, car, etc over having to scrap the old one and build a new one...
Look at the prices (Score:4, Insightful)
Although it's not perfect, money is a decent proxy for environmental harm.* So, if a $100 upgrade will save you $200 in electricity over its lifetime, then the upgrade will probably do more environmental good than harm. However, if a $500 upgrade will save you $100 in electricity, then you're probably doing more harm than good.
* At least for normal consumer goods, the price _roughly_ reflects the amount of energy and resources to manufacture the good, which roughly reflects the environmental harm. It's by no means a perfect metric, but it's a start. Some goods clearly do not fit this model. For example, a painting costs almost no resources to produce but can sell for a high price. Some computer parts are similar. For example, sometimes identical graphics cards are deliberately crippled (lower clock speed, parts of the processor disabled, etc.) just to create different price points. Both cards have the same environmental cost to produce but can have very different sale prices. However, that means the environmental cost is best represented by the cost of the _cheapest_ version. So maybe the aforementioned $500 upgrade really costs $50 to produce and thus has a positive environmental impact.
(Totally off topic: I wonder about the environmental impact of moving to cities. Say you move to a city, sell your car, etc. but your income remains constant; you instead spend money on a new TV, more beef for dinner, etc. Then it's not obvious to me that you're having a significant, positive environmental impact.)
Power saving settings are annoying (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Power saving settings are annoying (Score:5, Insightful)
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Mod parent up. There's a time and a place for energy saving and sometimes it's NEVER.
Well, energy savings as implemented currently anyway.
I would argue that there is always a place for energy savings. It just may not be something an end user can implement but it could be designed into the system.
Power save settings can be annoying on some computers, but that doesn't mean it is impossible to design an energy efficient computer that functions well.
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Do you suppose (Score:2)
that a Fender Twin Reverb might be rather inefficient, too?
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But the Twin has always been an amp that real men used to keep warm in winter. It's dual use means that it's really the world's best sounding space heater. I think the reverb coils are used as auxiliary heating elements.
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that a Fender Twin Reverb might be rather inefficient, too?
I upgraded to the more efficient Mesa Mark V 25.
With all the energy I'm saving, I should be rich.
Payback time (Score:2)
I used the newer video cards power improvements as one of the reasons to replace an older card*. The other reason for the upgrade was so I could play more of the new games coming out on Linux. I didn't factor in that I would spend more time gaming though...
*Replaced a Radeon HD 3870 for an Geforce 750 Ti.
bitcoin miners (Score:4, Insightful)
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That's less interesting to him, I'm sure- Bitcoin miners already care deeply about efficiency, because it hits their bottom line.
Ok, I've just skimmed the article and... (Score:5, Interesting)
How is it possible to take 20 pages to say so little that is actually meaningful? It basically boils down to "newer and/or lower performance components draw less power". No shit, Sherlock.
It's also rather misinformed when it comes to the availability of power-consumption information for gaming PC components. My current PC is a self-built gaming PC and I can assure you that when I was putting it together, power consumption information was absolutely something I looked at, because it affected my choice of PSU. And if you go to the manufacturers' websites, power consumption information is usually available upfront. If it's not, or if you want to know how it varies depending on loads, then there are any number of testing, benchmarking and review sites just a google search away.
There is probably an interesting article that could be written about minimising power consumption in a gaming PC, but it's not this one. In reality, power consumption is one aspect of a sensitive series of trade-offs. On graphics cards, for instance, you get get the same brute-force performance from AMD cards as you can from Nvidia cards at (usually) a much lower price - but the trade-off comes in heat and power consumption. So you can base your decision on a balance between how much you care about the up-front purchase costs of the card, vs ongoing power costs, potentially the cost of a new PSU and the noise/discomfort factor of having something that burns with the heat of a billion fiery suns in your PC. Most people building gaming PCs are not blind to this stuff.
The article reads like a lightweight piece of political advocacy for more regulation, trying to solve a problem which increasingly doesn't exist (the general trend over time is towards more power-efficient components and electricity prices act as a further restraint). So the author can, to be blunt, fuck right off.
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It also overlooks the fact that high end CPUs and GPUs all have power scaling. Your i7 and three overclocked GTX980s are not pulling anything like max power when you are posting on slashdot or watching netflix.
It's pure fluff from an uninformed writer (Score:2)
Guy doesn't know anything about what he's talking about.
For one there is the newer thing as you note. Yes, newer stuff is more efficient. At a given performance target (FPS for a given scene complexity, number of MFlops, whatever) newer hardware is better than older stuff. Ok, fine but cost of always upgrading aside (something gamers do more than most people) there is the issue of energy of production. A large amount of human energy use goes in to making the stuff we use. If you want to save energy, a big p
I have a better idea (Score:2)
How about we charge people according to the electricity they use?
That way, people can weigh what's important to them. If I want to work an extra little bit each day so I can make more money to spend on things like electricity for my gaming computer, I can.
I have this friend, Adam Smith, who I believe has explained it all pretty thoroughly. It's not a perfect system, by any means, but it's better than most, and pretty practical.
like three refrigerators (Score:2)
your average gaming computer is like three refrigerators.
I did not know that, that is awesome! I got some serious grocery shopping to do...
You heard the man (Score:2)
In other news... (Score:2)
Racing drivers can achieve energy savings of more than 75% by swapping out some components and driving more slowly around the track. This will improve reliability and efficiency!
Assumes Heat is a Waste Product (Score:2)
Subsidy? (Score:2)
Poor console sleep drives energy waste (Score:2)
Don't really care (Score:2)
Same Perf @ Less Power = More Money (Score:3)
It's the classical "iron triangle" (aka constraint triangle): you have three sides to a triangle; performance, power consumption, and cost. Pick any two that you want to be favorable, and the more favorable you make them, the more unfavorable the third will be.
Nvidia and AMD discrete cards for desktops are designed to tug on the performance and cost sides as much as possible, leaving only a passing thought for power savings. Granted, it's reasonably efficient when in standby and not that bad at idle, but it's horrendous under load.
If you want a GPU that's less horrendous under load, without compromising on performance, expect to pay a LOT more for it. And in most cases, because of market forces, you're also going to take at least a slight performance hit.
For instance, the GTX 980M is way more power efficient than the GTX 980 desktop card, because of the design constraints of laptops. It's effectively power efficient by design because of the form factor. But the performance is notably worse, and buying a laptop that has one is way more expensive than buying a desktop with "good enough" components (some kind of recent i7 and 8GB or more memory) and a GTX 980 or even 980 Ti.
We're not going to see chips that maintain the desired performance level (the one constraint that most people are unwilling to compromise on if they're owning a "real" gaming PC) while saving on energy, unless the cost goes so high that only the most elite can afford it.
We see similar problems in the car market, too. The Prius and Prius C are relatively inexpensive (the C is very inexpensive), great fuel efficiency - though not as good as an EV or PHEV - but the performance is terrible. The Tesla Model S achieves amazing performance, range, and efficiency in a pure EV package, but no "commoner" can afford it, only the upper crust. Then there are loads and loads of cars that are not particularly efficient, very cheap, and have serviceable performance.
Who's paying for the more expensive chips that give us the same performance we're already getting but with less energy consumption? The gamer? Why would they do that?
P.S. - Before you accuse me of not thinking of "the greater good", I *drive* a Prius C. I bet the same scientists who wrote this paper drive conventional SUVs.
I Win! (Score:2)
My 10-year old Dell desktop, running Windows XP and no anti-virus (AV) boots ~25% faster and draws ~30% less power overall (idle & taxed with performance software) than the new guy's new Dell laptop that runs Windows 7 & Norton AV. We can both run all the same software effectively (albeit all my versions are several years older), except that I have a different brand of PCB design software than he; I'
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I blame Firefox et al for dropping the protocol from the address bar.
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Makes no sense. You can make sports cars that are more efficient. And besides, those people with the expensive polluting sports cars are considered assholes by most of the world, I don't see why anyone would want to compared with them.
Gaming PCs are very wasteful and usually for the reason that no one has even once bothered to care about efficiency. They started selling kilowatt power supplies and the gamers said "hey, I want one of those!" They could get the same performance with a more efficient comput
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The i7 is in the recommended hardware specs, not in the minimum hardware specs, for "Wolfenstein: The New Order." The range between minimum and recommended is pretty broad. More hardware is always better but not always required to enjoy the game.
http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/requirements/wolfenstein-the-new-order/12119/ [systemrequ...ntslab.com]
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No games require an i7. Not even wolfenstein, which runs fine on both my 4690K and 4790K pcs.
Ummmm....the 4790K IS a Core I7. So obviously you wouldn't have any problems running it.....
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Newegg [newegg.com].
"Requires 42A on the 12V Rail" = 504 Watts.
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Amazon and New Egg and probably like a million other places.
http://www.amazon.com/XFX-Clos... [amazon.com]
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1)- Right, but you WOULD be interested in the same power at higher initial cost, as long as it made that cost up later in efficiency, right? I don't think there's much of that being pointed out by the site, but you'd consider spending an extra 300 bucks initially if it was saving you 15 bucks a month, right?
2)- Sleep states can go to hell. No reason to risk anything by using them in general.
3)- Disagree. Gaming machines are often quite beastly. It's partially a compliment.
I'm interested in the follow
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Undervolting would be worth it and even downgrading GPU or CPU. If you could trade your Phenom for an Athlon II X2 and the 9800GT for a 5450 or other that would be better.