AMD 90nm Evaluated 291
muyuubyou writes "The Tech Report has measured the new 90nm A64 3500+ against its 130nm counterpart and a Pentium 4 3.6Ghz 90nm.
AMD looks way ahead in the 90nm process especially when it comes to power consumption.
Note these are consumptions for the entire system including GeForce 6800 GTs and hefty PSUs. RTFineShortArticle for more detail on the configuration.
Leaving the PC on overnight is probably not a good idea with these new Pentium 4s."
wow (Score:5, Interesting)
I like, though, that the 130nm Athlon 64 is still better than the 90nm P4. It might just be time to buy another desktop.
Re:wow (Score:5, Informative)
Re:wow (Score:2, Funny)
soooooooooooon. [trustedreviews.com]
Re:wow (Score:2)
Re:wow (Score:2)
Can any somewhat-modern Socket 939 motherboard run these new chips?
I"m looking at getting the MSI Neo 2 Platinum, but I'd like to get a 90nm A64. I've been waiting for a while.
Re:wow (Score:2)
Re:wow (Score:3, Interesting)
Asus Motherboard + AMD + DDR400 + AGP version of video card
vs
Abit motherboard + P4 + DDR2-533 + PCI-E version of video card
The P4 is no doubt hotter, but the faster RAM and video bus on that rig must account for a good chunk of the extra wattage too. Note that the benchmarks used are particularly memory intensive (mpeg rendering, speech recognition, molecule modelling)..... Hmmmmmmmmmm..
I hate rigged tests to make "my favorite corporate tech asshole company" look be
Re:wow (Score:4, Interesting)
The DDR2 uses LESS power (the chipset might use more).
Power consumption (Score:4, Insightful)
It' snot going to make THAT much of a difference on your electric bill.
Now what I want to see is an analysis of the possible benefits to notebooks, specifically in extending battery life. Intel's Centrino seems to be doing fairly well in that department, but where is AMD's response?
Re:Power consumption (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Power consumption (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Power consumption (Score:3, Informative)
Electric power generation and distribution isn't very efficient. For every joule of electrical energy delivered to your outlet, two or three joules of heat energy are dumped from the power station's cooling towers and smokestacks or lost in the transmission lines.
A good gas furnace can be around 90% efficient. The relative costs of heating by both methods reflect this in most areas.
(Electric heat pum
Re:Power consumption (Score:4, Informative)
Let's say your average 'gamer' system uses 500W of power, including monitor.
At 10c per KWh, that is going to be 5c/hour, or $37/month.
Re:Power consumption (Score:5, Informative)
A large screen CRT monitor uses somewhere around 50-70W when active, and 1-2W in sleep mode. LCD displays use less power, but they're not what the average gamer uses.
Steady state usage for the computer itself is more like 200W than 500 -- The 500W capacity on your average gamer's power supply is equal parts peak capacity for boot-up and lies told by marketing, and you would have to be playing Doom 3 all day long, every day to keep that up for the entire month. Even if you disabled power management and just let it idle all night long it would still use less than 100W.
Using these numbers, and assuming that your average gamer is playing twelve hours a day and in class or sleeping the other twelve, we're looking at an average power consumption of 175W for a total of fourty-two cents per day or $13 a month at your rates.
The back of the envelope rests, your honour.
Re:Power consumption (Score:3, Informative)
Sorry but you are not correct. The 19" Flat Screens do about 100-140W. My Sony G400 19" does about 140W [sony.com] and <1 W in standby.
Samsung Syncmaster 957 MB 19" CRT: 110 W [samsung.com]
ViewSonic E90 19" CRT: 100 W [viewsonic.com]
Benq Professional P992 19" CRT: 110W [ncix.com]
Re:Power consumption (Score:5, Informative)
The power usage of a monitor will increase linearly with dot clock (with some minimum accounting for the brightness of the display).
Most high-end 19" monitors (with high-speed dot-clocks) have a maximum power usage of around 140w. Those numbers you have quoted are for THE HIGHEST supported resolution and refresh rate, with the maximum brightness...they vary because the maximum brightness and maximum dot clock speed vary among them.
On the other hand, most people use the recommended resolution and brightness set by the manufacturer. That is usually 1280x1024@85Hz on a 19" monitor, for a dot clock of around 111MHz.
For comparison, if you run your 19" monitor at 1600x1200@85Hz, you'll see a clock of 163MHz, and a proportionate increase in power usage.
For example, my monitor (Vision Master Pro 454) has a maximum rated output of 135w. If we ignore the brightness issue, then we assume that at maximum frequency (1920x1440@85), or 235MHz, the power usage is 135w.
So, scale down to a more reasonable resolution like 1600x1200, and we're only using ~ 93w. Or use the recommended resolution at 1280x1024, and we're sipping a cool ~ 63w.
Of course, these numbers are probably a bit higher due to components I have not taken into account. I do recall that the instruction booklet for my 454 lists power usage at multiple resolutions, and they did display this linear relationship, but I don't have access to it now.
Re:Power consumption (Score:2)
When I last measured, it was nearer 150w when active, and about 15w when idle (Sony 15" screen, about 10 years ago)
Re:Power consumption (Score:3, Informative)
Suffice it to say... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, well for a while I was running my computer all the time as a way to host my personal Web page and networked et ceteras, on a DSL line with DynDNS etc. This was a Mac G4 with the monitor switched off most of the time, not doing much of anything except fielding HTTP requests from viruses. And while it didn't increase my power bill by $37,
Re:Power consumption (Score:2, Informative)
I spend more per year using the kitchen toaster than all of the computer hardware combined.
Just because you have a 500W power supply in the PC does not mean it consumes
Re:Power consumption (Score:2)
If not, let's presume you use it 30 minutes per day (to be on the high side). That means it uses
Conclusion: Unless you have a constant para
Re:Power consumption (Score:2, Funny)
500 W of power is grossly overestimating even a top end gaming system with a big CRT. Real world numbers are closer to 1/3 to 1/2 that even when playing games. If you can manage to play games 24/7 on a 50" big screen TV, well then, more power to you.
Re:Power consumption (Score:5, Informative)
Ok, I have a P4 3Ghz, ATI Radeon 9800, 3 HDD's (which do not sleep) and a 21" CRT monitor. The only power saving feature I use is putting the CRT into sleep mode after 15 minutes. Otherwise the computer and drives run full time.
My electricy bill is at times lower that $30 a month. No, I do not use the spread your payments out option.
Re:Power consumption (Score:2)
Re:Power consumption (Score:5, Informative)
That is complete bullshit.
Let's say your PC spikes to 500 watts for an entire minute before settling down to 50 watts. This would represent a worst case senario.
In this case, your couputer would use as much power in 10 minutes as it did powering up. Show me a modern PC, laptops included, that idle at less than 50 watts. Low end centrinos idle in the low 60s.
Re:Power consumption (Score:5, Informative)
That's incorrect, from my experience.
My mother's Athlon XP-M laptop idles around 25 watts. This is the complete power draw, counting the disks, LCD (on dim), and everything
Also, let's do some math. Its battery has a capacity of 4.4 amp-hours, and can get about 3 hours on a charge while idling.
The battery puts out 14.1 volts, so its total capacity should be 62.04 watt-hours. Thus, to idle for three hours, the computer has to use about 21 watts.
Now, this is a monster laptop: large disk, 15 inch widescreen, and a non-Centrino processor. The battery, natch, is pretty big as well. I think the whole thing clocks in at a little under eight pounds.
My friends' small iBooks get ~5 hours to a charge, and I bet they have lower-capacity batteries than the big M5312. They have, of course, smaller LCD's and efficient G4 processors. I wouldn't be surprised if they draw 10-15 watts.
Re:Power consumption (Score:3, Informative)
I calculated this from the data in
Re:Power consumption (Score:2)
Re:Power consumption (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Power consumption (Score:4, Informative)
No, Centrinos (just the Pentium M chip) run full-out at 7 to 25 watts:
Intel Centrino, AMD Athlon XP-M Spark Lightweight Laptop Blitz [cpuplanet.com]
Re:Power consumption (Score:2)
Ok, how about less than 50 watts at full bore operation??
Here [mini-itx.com]
Coupled with a LCD monitor and you have much less than 50 watts WITH the hard drive power useage.
for 99% of what a computer is used for, those machines are more than enough. High end 3d games and other computational intensive tasks are that last 1%.
in any case startup amp draw is extremely little change from regular operation. the biggest draw is the HDD motor spinnin
Re:Power consumption (Score:2)
I won't comment about the other points. But what if you leave your computer running Seti@home or another distributed computing application. Don't those tend to use a lot of power during idle times?
Re:Power consumption (Score:2)
Western Digital quotes nearly power consumption for their drives, when reading or idle, although that figure drops to about 1/20 if the drive is in sleep mode:
http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/Product s
AMD quotes a power consumption about 50% below peak, when idle, although again that drops to 1/20 when halted:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white _pap [amd.com]
Re:Power consumption (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Power consumption (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, going into suspend or sleep mode, that saves a lot more power, but it can't do that thousands of times a second.
And in case people don't realize it, running things like Seti @Home or RC5 *do* cost them money. Their computer will probably use somewhat less energy if idle than it does when busy.
Also, it gets worse. Not only do you have to pay for the extra power used by your computer, but if you live somewhere hot, you'll have to pay for the extra air conditioning needed (after all, 200 watts of power used by your computer = 200 watts of heat generated.) Somebody told me that as a rule of thumb that 5x the amount of power used to generate the heat is needed to remove it via air conditioning -- so 200 watts of computer = 1000 watts of A/C needed to keep it cool. Can anybody confirm or deny this rule of thumb? -- it sounds like too much to me.)
Re:Power consumption (Score:2)
Deny.
500Watts of A/C gives about 5200BTU of cooling, which is what is recommended to cool 1000W of computers. And that's probably using less than 100% duty cycle.
(A/C's are heat pumps, so they do not need as much
Re:Power consumption (Score:3, Insightful)
Given that there are five high-end computers currently living in my basement, I'd say it adds up.
Math check. I liked your sig. (Score:2)
I was a little surprised at what you said, so I checked the math. At 7 cents per kilowatt-hour, the cost is $6.64/month:
That's approximately $1 per penny of cost per KW-Hour.
It is true that a desktop computer, with monitor off, draws a little over 1 Amp at 120 Volts, or approximately 130 Watts. I teste
Re:Power consumption (Score:5, Informative)
say there are 100,000 P4 users doing this - there goes 2.5 million USD worth of electricity up in heat!
Bullshit all around from AMD fanboys (Score:2, Interesting)
The 6800GT in their test-bed sucks more power than any CPU they're testing.
And who knows how the various motherboards being tested are affecting the measurements. They aren't even from the same maker (Asus vs Abit). Odd that they take a top tier manufacturer for the AMD tests (Asus), and a manufacturer known for shit (Abit) for the Intel.
Not only that, they have the intel running DDR2 533 vs DDR 400 on the AMD -
Re:Bullshit all around from AMD fanboys (Score:2)
I agree that they should have used motherboard from the same manufacturer, but I also can't see this making a measurable difference. Nothing on any motherboard I've ever used heats up aside from the chipset, so I can't imagine the power drain to be significant.
RAM, CPU, chipset, GPU, hard drives... they heat up. Not the motherboard itself.
Also, Abit produces excellent qualit
Re:Power consumption (Score:2, Informative)
And leaving your PC on overnight does make a difference. Lets say you leave it on all the time, but only use it 8 hours a day. Intel P4:
16 hours * 150W (idle, 230W if folding) * 7 * 52 = 870kW (1.3MW) of power consumed more than you need to use.
Now I don't know about your electricity prices, but 15c/unit is $130 a year to run the system without any use ($200 when folding). If you have an overnight cheap electricity rate though it won
Re:Power consumption (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Power consumption (Score:5, Informative)
The biggest thing you can do for your electric bill is get rid of your incandescent bulbs, compared to that, nothing else comes close. Replacing a 60 watter with a 20 watt CF will net you 40 watts each, and you get about 1.5x the brightness.
your average house has something like 10 replaceable bulbs, so that's something like 400 watts, more than even a couple large computers.
Re:Warning: Intel Bashing (Score:2)
How do we power these systems? (Score:5, Funny)
Anyone currently doing this? I'm thinking of installing a turbine, but unsure of where to start out.
Re:How do we power these systems? (Score:2)
Re:How do we power these systems? (Score:3, Informative)
Research all about windpower here http://www.windpower.org/en/core.htm [windpower.org] as it seems to me to be the bible of wind power.
Then, integrate the power that the turbine generates into your homes power grid. This is a good resource: http://www.homepower.com/ [homepower.com]
An article that caught my eye in Popular Science pointed t
Re:How do we power these systems? (Score:2)
From the sound of things, directly over the cooling fan for your CPU would be the ideal location. :-)
Re:How do we power these systems? (Score:2, Insightful)
Noticed a lot of power plant construction lately? Nope, neither have I. Infact all I hear about is plants being decommisioned because
150 watts just to do nothing? (Score:5, Interesting)
The old joke is that all CPUs sleep at the same speed, but after seeing the power consumption graph on this site, it's obvious that "power-hungry CPU" doesn't just mean high heat during gaming. This suckers are hungry even while doing nothing at all
--
Free gmail invites [slashdot.org]
Re:150 watts just to do nothing? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:150 watts just to do nothing? (Score:2)
Re:150 watts just to do nothing? (Score:3, Informative)
Intel is planning something similar for the Prescott before eventually getting the P-M to the desktop now that Tejas has been canned.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20040602 1 10858.html [xbitlabs.com]
"The new capabilities Intel plans to include are the so-called AAC technology that adjusts performance depending on load in order to maintain low heat dissipation and quiet operation of personal compu
Re:150 watts just to do nothing? (Score:2)
This
The power saving strategies will get into Desktops (Score:3)
The power saving methods are designed to cut the ACTIVE power use of the chip - the power that is dissipated by the transistors flipping from 0 to 1 (and 1 to 0). The challenge, as we shrink
How about performance? (Score:3, Interesting)
But what about performance? The new 90 nm Pentium M processors, the one with the funky names, aren't doing as well in terms of performance scalability because of electron leakage issues. Any such concerns here? How fast can the 90 nm Athlon 64 core go before it dies?
Re:How about performance? (Score:5, Informative)
>How fast can the 90 nm Athlon 64 core go before it dies?
At least 3.6GHz [xtremesystems.org]. That's a 130nm(? I assume) Athlon FX-53, so the 90nms will do better.
My problem? Cable modem. (Score:3, Interesting)
This makes our house faster than our friends' houses. So their computers migrate there also. And the bastards never remember to turn them off...
Having five or six power-hungry gaming systems around explains much about our recent power bills.
Duron (Score:2)
Durons really aren't all that efficient... not as powerful in output as compared to an Athlon, sure, but that doesn't mean that less output doesn't mean input is generally lower (just less efficient).
Re:My problem? Cable modem. (Score:2)
Re:My problem? Cable modem. (Score:2)
Hopefully this will kill "AMD is hot" 'jokes' (Score:5, Informative)
Looking at the data in the article, would I be mad in assuming that a 90nm 3500+ uses around 23W in idle mode?
Assuming power supply is 75% efficient:
112W * 0.75 = 84W getting to system
179W * 0.75 = 134W (130nm under load, near TDP of 89W, let's assume 84W)
134W - 84W = 58W Mobo, Gfx, IDE, etc power consumption
84W - 58W = 26W
26W * 0.9 (motherboard VRM efficiency) = 23W
I suppose that system power usage also drops in idle mode though as well.
Yes, these figures are extremely dodgy and vague and aren't worth much more than the speculation they are. It looks like the 3.4GHz P4 uses over 100W under load though - that is shockingly high.
Re:Hopefully this will kill "AMD is hot" 'jokes' (Score:2)
What's the issue (Score:3, Informative)
Well, in my book, power consumption is not a huge issue if there is proper cooling. Under normal and even high use conditions, the unit is designed to take the heat, and my server room needs a bit more heat anyway. Why shouldn't I leave it on? My units have good cooling, and since I run my boxes under normal server configuration, i'M not "overclocking".... Heat? No issue.
Re:What's the issue (Score:3, Insightful)
??? what's the issue??? (Score:2)
Wow... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Wow... (Score:2, Informative)
Time to check your weight and/or blood pressure.
Re:Wow... (Score:2)
I have my apartment air conditioning set at 79 degrees F. Granted, I've lived with 100 degree summers all my life, but still...
Running a HVAC system down to 69 degrees seems like a waste of (mains) power.
Re:Wow... (Score:2)
Re:Wow... (Score:2)
if intel were another company... (Score:4, Funny)
Overclocking (Score:5, Informative)
To those paying attention, 2.2GHz in an Athlon64 can generally outperform a 3.4GHz PentiumIV, so this is a big deal.
Does he work close to HELL??? (Score:3, Funny)
The *ambient* temp was 85F? Lord, I'd hate to think how much I'd be sweating in an 85 degree office with limited air movement...
This magazine writer works at a place that can't afford air conditioning? Or does he have so many computers in there that he's just cooking himself voluntarily?!?
What *does* roast-geek smell like?
Re:Does he work close to HELL??? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Does he work close to HELL??? (Score:2)
The temp in the building was probably around 72 (it's insane to keep it any lower than that--this was in Huntsville, AL, where summers are hot). However, when the ~15 kW of lab equipment all kicked on (heaters and coolers and microwave generators and computers and vacuum pumps and yada yada yada), it easily got to 85F.
40% (Score:3, Informative)
Electricity cost may be more/less than you think (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, if you are running an A/C unit then you will not only have to consider the 150W your computer is using, but also the power that your A/C is using to fight the heat that it produces.
100% of the power used in the PC becomes heat (I think). So that is 150 W of heat. Your A/C, however is not 100% efficient. I really have no idea what the numbers are there. But it can't be more than 100% efficient so that is another 150 Watts (at least)
So your 150W computer is costing you 300W at the least.
Now, if you on the other hand live up north, then it looks much better. The heat produced will actually help your heating system, so that it doesn't have to run as much. My physics knowledge is a bit rusty, but I think you can say that if your heating system is based on electricity then it will cost you nothing extra to run your PC.
Please let me know if/where I'm wrong.
Re:Electricity cost may be more/less than you thin (Score:2)
The key is the phrase "heat pump".
Modern heat pumps, I believe, are nothing but refrigerators run backwards. For a simple analysis, consider your kitchen free
Re:Electricity cost may be more/less than you thin (Score:2)
But maybe you are right. You don't seem to be violating physics.
Re:Electricity cost may be more/less than you thin (Score:2)
There's a limit to the ratio between the electricity you put in and the heat you pump out of the cold place and into the hot place. However, that limit isn't caused by conservation of energy, which is the principle that prevents perpetual motion; it's caused by some thermodynamics stuff that I really ought to go back over.
Re:Electricity cost may be more/less than you thin (Score:2)
I can't remember the name of the measure of effectiveness of an air conditioning (or heat pump) system, but it's not 'efficiency.' There is no thermodynamic law saying that it takes at least 150 watts of input power to your heat transfer machine to reject
Re:Electricity cost may be more/less than you thin (Score:5, Interesting)
The one place where your figures aren't quite right is in the air conditioning department. An air conditioner, being a heat pump, just needs to move the heat from one spot to another, and the "typical" phase-change A/C unit is fairly efficient at it.
To put some figures on it, an air conditioner with an EER of 12 means that it can move 12,000 BTUs with 1000 watt-hours of electricity.
Now, 12,000 BTUs is equivalent to 3516 watt-hours of heat. So for every 3,516 watts of heat generation, you'll be expending 1,000 watts to move that heat to the outside of your building. And that's with an EER of 12, some units exist with EERs as high as 17.
So, for every 150 watts of power your computer is using, figure 40 to 60 watts for your A/C.
On the other hand, were you using a peltier device for cooling, you'd be in bad shape. If the EER figure were applied to them, it would be less than 1. For example, to move 30 watts of heat across a peltier, you'd need to apply approximately 45 watts of heat to it - meaning you'd be removing 30 watts from the cold side, but you'd need to remove 75(!) watts from the hot side.
steve
Re:Electricity cost may be more/less than you thin (Score:2)
steve
It's Sweltering In Here! (Score:2)
The ambient temperature in my office was about 85F/29C
If the ambient temperature in my office were that high I'd be looking furiously for a lower-power chip, too.
Low-power.... (Score:2)
My file server, a P3/650 with 4x120 gig drives and a 3ware card (running SETI) drew 85 watts. And my primary machine, under full gaming load, drew 270+ watts from the wall *w
Re:Low-power.... (Score:2)
I plugged each computer into a watt-meter, which was plugged into the wall outlet.
Steve
Poor comparison? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Poor comparison? (Score:2)
Re:Poor comparison? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, they have the same maskset etc. Heck, different speed grades come off of the same wafer. However...these "miniscule speed and thermal characteristics" quickly add up when you have the number of transistors on a CPU, and QA knows what areas of the wafer are better than others, and bin the die accordingly. Believe me, AMD
Power consumption for processor only (Score:2)
"The 3800+ chip consumes 91 watts of power at idle, rising to 172 watts under a full load. That compares with 155 watts at idle and 258 watts under a full load for the Pentium 4 560."
The lower power consumption of the AMD parts arises from their lower clock frequency, as well as from AMD's use of silicon-on-insulator technology [com.com].
It's not clear if Cool n Quiet was used, but it shows the much better power utilization in e
Re:WTF? (Score:3, Informative)
If you are nice and do Folding or SETI or RC72 or whatever it is now, then you're looking at $150 at least.
If you are in an office, you can see how the costs could rapidly ramp up!
Re:WTF? (Score:2)
Re:Intel's past arrogance is killing them! (Score:2)
steve
Re:Intel's past arrogance is killing them! (Score:2)
Everything else, they've had to convince the market that they needs it.
30 whole PCs? (Score:2)
Re:Intel's past arrogance is killing them! (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if their chips eventually become cheaper and better, again? That sounds like a stupid strategy. In general, all strategies of the form "I will never/always do X" are stupid.
Re:It might help me save money (Score:2)
Paul