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Intel Hardware

Intel's New Chips, High Power And Low 203

Posted by timothy from the depends dept.
sebFlyte writes "Centrino has been one of Intel's major successes of late, and they've just released the replacement, Sonoma. ZDNet has stripped the new chipset, and published a review of the new kit with all the technical details of what this new chipset will do for your laptop." ZeroOne42 adds a link to Hardware Zone's exhaustive look at Sonoma, "complete with benchmark results between a Sonoma notebook (Fujitsu E8020) and a Centrino one (Gigabyte N512). Looks like Sonoma is closing up the technological gap between desktops and notebooks." And on the desktop side, foxalopex writes "It seems that Intel's new dual-core CPU chips will have some of the highest wattage ratings ever seen on the X86 CPU market, which, according to Tom, wasn't what they initially said would happen. I guess this isn't too surprising seeing how AMD's been beating them on power usage in the last several revisions of chips."
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Intel's New Chips, High Power And Low More

Intel's New Chips, High Power And Low

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  • Text of the article: (Score:2, Informative)

    by solafide ( 845228 )
    Intel's latest portable computing platform is here. We lift the lid on the improved CPU, chipset and wireless components, and outline the benefits that mobile professionals are likely to experience.

    After many months of delay, Intel's new 'Sonoma' portable processor and chipset combo is ready for inspection. The Centrino platform has been one of the company's notable successes over an otherwise bumpy period, as it has included most functions a notebook computer needs while balancing high performance ag
    • What I'd really like to see, especially in some of the larger form-factor notebooks, are two- or more way SMP machines. A dual 1.2ghz 753 taking a mere 10 watts would be a pretty impressive machine for a lot of tasks... Of course, I don't even know if the 7xx line is multi-capable.
      • I don't think so. Dual Xeons DEFINITELY aren't the answer. Maybe Opteron HEs?

        The VIA C3 (well, the C5P core, anyway) appears to be DP capable, and so does the CN400 chipset. However, you'll have to do QUAD processor (maybe a single-mobo Beowulf?) to get the C3 going fast enough.
      • Next-generation Pentium M processors are supposed to be dual-core.

  • Closing the gap (Score:4, Insightful)

    by wed128 ( 722152 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @09:13AM (#11407426)
    We constantly hear about computer manufacturers "closing the gap" between laptops and desktops. this will never happen. At least for me, the two serve completely different purposes. My desktop is the workhorse, does all the compiling for both computers (both run linux), and is my general use machine. My laptop is low powered, and only used for work on the road. Last time i shopped for a laptop, most models were trying to do everything and more, while i just want a cheap laptop, no glitz except maybe wireless, with a long battery life. That's it. No 4 ghz 512 mgs ram monsters. I don't need 64 Bit processing. Keep it simple stupid.

    • Re:Closing the gap (Score:3, Insightful)

      by moshez ( 67187 )
      Why should I buy two machines? Why shouldn't I compile when I'm on the road? It makes perfect sense to close the gap between laptops and desktops, and keep just laptops and "servers".

      When I bought my laptop, I shopped specifically for when which can serve me well as a desktop. I had to compromise on disk space, though frankly 40GB is not that big a compromise, but most other features are exactly what I would choose for a desktop -- and it wasn't even that expensive (if you figure in the cost of the monitor
      • There is one problem with only having laptops and servers. It's called ergonomics.

        While you may be happy to work on a laptop all day long, I can only use one for a couple of hours before I really want to go back to my desktop with its nice keyboard and 21 inch screen.

        And no, docking stations are not the solution. They just cause more problems that they are worth. What I think we really need is a Mac Mini type of machine that can be docked onto a laptop frame.

        • And no, docking stations are not the solution. They just cause more problems that they are worth. What I think we really need is a Mac Mini type of machine that can be docked onto a laptop frame.

          My principle computer at work has been a laptop for the past 4 years, and let me tell you, docking stations are a good thing. And while my new iBook doesn't have a docking station, it does have a really nice keyboard and an external monitor jack.

          If you haven't experienced screen spanning, you haven't lived. Blu

        • And no, docking stations are not the solution. They just cause more problems that they are worth. What I think we really need is a Mac Mini type of machine that can be docked onto a laptop frame.

          Docking stations aren't the solution, what we need is a Mac with a dock? I thought they weren't the solution?

          I've used a docking station in the past. Worked fine. What do you have against them?
        • Your statements have no logic. You just complained that you want a 21" screen and proper keyboard. How will a Mac Mini docked onto a laptop help?

          Thus the answer is at home and work, plug your laptop into a big 21" screen, and use a USB keyboard and mouse to control your laptop.
    • Then there are those of us who only want to deal with one computer, but still want to be able to move it around. For me, a "workstation replacement" (it isn't really, but that's the term) is the way to go, so that I can have a machine with a decent amount of power, but still take it with me if I need to.
    • We constantly hear about computer manufacturers "closing the gap" between laptops and desktops. this will never happen. At least for me, the two serve completely different purposes. My desktop is the workhorse, does all the compiling for both computers (both run linux), and is my general use machine. My laptop is low powered, and only used for work on the road. Last time i shopped for a laptop, most models were trying to do everything and more, while i just want a cheap laptop, no glitz except maybe wireles
      • Reducing power consumption in desktops is important too, even if you don't care about the environment, electricity still costs you money..
        As for servers, its even more important there... If you have a datacenter with 5000 servers and you can replace those servers with ones that use 1 watt less of power then that's 5000 watts of power you save on the servers, plus 5000 watts worth of heat that your cooling system no longer needs to get rid of.
        • Depends on the price of the servers. At $0.03/kW hour those servers better be pretty damn cheap.

          And if your data center has 5000 machines, you have to ask yourself "why don't we own a mainframe." It you are running a rendering farm, that's one thing. If you have new database servers sprouting out like Kudzu vines a z series mainframe is going to save you on licenses, KVM equipment, backup equipment, and electricity.

          Sure, a mainframe uses a lot of juice. But it uses a hell of a lot less than the equivile

    • I don't need 64 Bit processing.

      What if the solution to "closing the gap" involves a nonvolatile, RAM storage mechanism? Imagine a high-density block of RAM that doesn't lose power when you remove power. If it is cheap enough (only a matter of time), then you don't need a hard drive. Since the hard drive uses a good deal of power, it is a welcome change in the world of laptops (not to mention performance).

      I hate to use the term, "think outside the box" but this is the kind of stuff that is going to hap
      • They've been saying for a good decade that such storage devices will be commonplace RSN. I don't think so.

        CF is almost there, I think. Closer than the memory tech you speak of, at least. It's lagging about 10 years behind PCs as far as storage capacity is concerned, but it's certainly a solid-state solution, if you're looking for one.
    • I LOVE my Pentium M laptop. It's a Panasonic Toughbook civilian model. It's got more than enough power when plugged into the wall (1.8Ghz) and sips power when on batteries (600Mhz). It can go for almost 2 weeks in standby and last about 6 hours on a full charge with moderate usage (a couple office type apps open, a web browser with a dozen or so windows and a couple RDP sessions). It has 640MB of ram so it almost never touches the HDD (which is a BIG user of power, almost as much as the backlight). So I wou
    • I spent wasted hours in airports this year editing the video of my kids so I could give DVDs as gifts to the grandparents. I'm amazed I could do that for more than two hours on one charge, since it's running the disk and processor flat out. Sub-6 pounds even with a gig of RAM, DVD burner, 7200RPM HD, wireless and the rest. (And that's a two year old model!) I love Powerbooks. Apple desktops are meh, but their laptops rule.
    • I'd say that though the "gap" between laptop and desktop power will not close in the short to intermediate term, it is narrowing, and the difference for most users is also shrinking. Computers in general are so powerful today that most users don't need all the power available. For users who are interested in office apps, light gaming, web browsing, cd burning, e-mail and a handful of other tasks, virtually any computer on the market will work. Those who play cutting-edge games, frequently compile large chun

    • We constantly hear about computer manufacturers "closing the gap" between laptops and desktops. this will never happen. At least for me, the two serve completely different purposes. My desktop is the workhorse, does all the compiling for both computers (both run linux), and is my general use machine. My laptop is low powered, and only used for work on the road. Last time i shopped for a laptop, most models were trying to do everything and more, while i just want a cheap laptop, no glitz except maybe wirel
      • I want a notebook that's fast, CPU-wise, video-wise, and I/O-wise, has a top-notch display (my current is 15", 1600x1200), and silent. And I'm sure I'm not the only one in this boat.

        and gets a whopping 45 minutes of battery life!!!

        anyway, on my current laptop, i've got a 14 inch screen, no (internal) optical drive, and i run at 1ghz and I STILL can't watch a full length movie on the thing without plugging it in. That's what i'm talking about.

  • 130 watts... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Lisandro ( 799651 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @09:14AM (#11407436)
    ...sheeze.

    At least Intel appears to miss this goal. Documents released to system builders specify the Thermal design power (TDP) of Smithfield processors at 130 watts. This represents an increase of more than 13 percent over today's Pentium 4 5xx (Prescott) and the upcoming 6xx (2 MByte L2 Cache), which post 115 watts. Maximum supply current climbs from 119 ampere to 125 ampere. The new chips also consume more power than Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.46 GHz processor (116.7 watts) and Intel's most demanding chip: The Itanium 2 1.6 GHz consumes 122 watts.

    I'm baffled by these numbers - specially considering AMD offerings perform comparably while consuming less power. I know these are dual-core designs, but it's still awfully high.

    I always found hard to find how much of that consumed power translates onto wasted power (heat dissipation), but in any case, i wouldn't want to be in a room with a couple of Sonoma servers.
    • I thought the new dual core Intel chips were going to be two Prescott chips bolted together, hence the heat? We probably won't be seeing Pentium M based dual cores until mid-2006.

      I wonder if Intel will have to implement water cooling like Apple did for their top end boxes?
      • The thing is a dual-cpu system would (Intel or AMD based) would perform comparably without stressing a single die by forcing it to dissipate twice the power. There's no point for a dual core cpu if it's two older cores just stappled together.

    • Re:130 watts... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ooze ( 307871 )
      The funny thing is, ARM sees multicore as a chance to save power. Just see their marketing talk on their MP architechture. And if done right, it is actually a chance to save power.

      And on Laptops...I still havent found any that are anything close to my needs. Could not anyone make a 10'' screen/overall (maybe even those new organic displays) with an ARM processor, 2GB flash(or even this in the line magnetic ram), a ethernet port and a few USB ports? And 15h+ battery life? Not even a hd is needed to get a ni
      • "Could not anyone make a 10'' screen/overall (maybe even those new organic displays) with an ARM processor, 2GB flash(or even this in the line magnetic ram), a ethernet port and a few USB ports? And 15h+ battery life? Not even a hd is needed to get a nice Linux running there. And I could do all my development/office work on this."

        No. Simple answer you can not run real windows on it. You can not use your existing software. What you want is a super PDA. Yea I would like it but I can also see that the market
        • But Ibooks have 7h battery life. Anything under 10h is just not right for me. When I'm at home or at work I have my workstation. The work I do there I cannot do on Laptops properly (graphics programming, lots of compiling). When I'm on business trips or trips by myself I want to be able to be productive, no matter where I am at the moment. Typing documents and doing organizational stuff there would be great. But having less than 8h(most less than 4h) to work or having no proper keyboard...that are the only
          • Oh I do under stand. I would also like a super light weight, inexpensive, unix based notebook. The problem is that there is that the market is just not big enough for it so it will not be available. It is funny my wife is tiny. She wants a notebook but she wants an Athlon 64 with a huge screen that weights a ton. I want a super light IBM or Dell. The problem is the light weight models cost as much as the "desktop" replacements.
            I mean I see all these cool hot spots like at the Atlanta bread next to my office
          • If you can work on a laptop for more than 8 hours straight, without needing to take a break, eat, shit, nap, or smoke, bully for you.

            The rest of us use the sleep function on the machine. Yes, you only have 6 hours of computer usage. But I can usually run my laptop for an entire weekend on a single charge because I only use the thing for an hour or two at a time.

    • " I always found hard to find how much of that consumed power translates onto wasted power (heat dissipation), but in any case, i wouldn't want to be in a room with a couple of Sonoma servers."

      Hello, Sonoma is the new Intel platform for mobile devices. A room with Sonoma servers would be THE most power efficient setup that you can lay your hands on. IMHO, Dothan (the CPU that Sonoma is built on) is a killer x86 CPU in terms of power/performance, and easily whups ANY other CPU by Intel or by AMD.

      Unless tha
      • It was, sorry. Actually, Intel DOES know how to make excellent peforming CPUs without outrageous power consumption (Pentium-M). If only they were cheaper...
        • Yes. Unfortunately, the new Dothans are quite expensive nowadays. Furthermore, the (few) desktop motherboards for Dothans are exorbitant as well. I'm guessing that the prices will come down in another 6 months when customers start clamouring for bigger and better P-Ms. I'm planning to build a passively cooled Dothan desktop when that happens :-)
      • Nodoubt they have the best power/performance ratio of any x86 cpu, but they are still quite a way behind other architectures.

    • Re:130 watts... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Garabito ( 720521 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @09:40AM (#11407665)
      I always found hard to find how much of that consumed power translates onto wasted power (heat dissipation)

      Answer: 100%

      From an energy perspective, the CPU only converts electricity into heat; it's not like a light bulb that converts x% of the power into light and y% into heat. Energy can't turn into processed instructions.

      Now, if you want to know how power efficient is a processor, you'd have to obtain the MIPS-Watts or FLOPS-Watts ratio, and compare these numbers between CPUs.

      • Re:130 watts... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by TeknoHog ( 164938 )
        Answer: 100%

        From an energy perspective, the CPU only converts electricity into heat

        Well, yes and no. There is, in fact, a thermodynamical minimum limit for how much heat is produced by information processing. Everything above this is waste due to inefficiencies.

        This applies when information is destroyed, which is almost always the case. For instance, when you sum two 32-bit numbers (64 bits of info) into a new 32-bit one, you are effectively destroying 32 bits. Information destroyed is entropy creat

      • Lightbulbs actually have practically the same issue unless you have a lot of windows which allow the photons to escape out the window (and thats pretty negligable). In practice most of that light will get absorbed into various things in the room and will eventually be dissipated as waste heat in addition to the direct waste heat of the lightbulb. (The energy has to go somewhere).
        The only real exceptions to this is the window trick and your
        eyeballs and plants which will convert a tiny amount of that light
        to

    • Re:130 watts... (Score:3, Informative)

      by cyngus ( 753668 )
      If I remember correctly part of this is because Intel's processor is not a real dual core solution. Rather it is two processor produced on the same die with communication interconnects. Its a kludge to keep up with AMD's (true) dual core designs until Intel can get its pants up from around its ankles.

  • Just as Postgre comes out for Windows, (Score:3, Funny)

    by adlaiff6 ( 810221 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @09:14AM (#11407437)
    ...maybe Microsoft will develop a "low-system-resources" OS for servers!

    Oh, wait. Dozed off there for a moment.

  • Power (Score:3, Informative)

    by wintaki ( 848851 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @09:23AM (#11407514)
    This is even worse then it seems. The actual power usage (from intel.com) is at 5mWA/ms, compared with the target of 3mWA. Thats a full 2 milliwatt amps over their target, and much higher then AMD!

  • Performance (Score:5, Insightful)

    by shic ( 309152 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @09:31AM (#11407579)
    Only recently did I become aware that there was a marked architectural difference between 500 and 700 series CPUs - and I read about distinctions between Pentium mobile and Pentium M chips. While I applaud the move away from correlating the computing capability of a chip with its clock speed, I now find myself (as I suspect the typical man in the street also find themselves) completely unable to compare the relative performances between the various CPU series.
    I realise that benchmarking is no panacea - but it would be really helpful to see a comprehensive set of benchmarks in order that I can establish a rough idea of the advantages of upgrading before splashing out on a machine with a newer processor. When Mhz mattered a good rule of thumb was that it was only worth considering an upgrade when the new CPU had a clock at least twice as fast as the old one... How should a user make this sort of decision with the new names? Is there any 'good' (unbiased) online material?

    • Like Henessy and Patterson say inthis book [amazon.com], there is only one way to measure the performance of your computer, and that is by measuring the time needed to perform your job.

      Now, I understand that this is somewhat impossible for a long running desktop, but I think there are benchmarks for measuring the reaction times of desktop operations, and of course you can create your own benchmarks for the work that you really like to do.

    • To REALLY compare performance you have to define what the computer is going to do. A high performance laptop should be lightweight, not require a ton of cooling, and get pretty far on a battery charge. A high-performance server should be able to bolt onto any number of enterprise technologies, support hotplugging of components, and not run so hot that a spent fan will lead to the processor melting down. Desktop users have measures of performance from quietness, to polygon count, to cost ...

      And despite all

    • Re:Performance (Score:3, Interesting)

      by nikster ( 462799 )
      rule of thumb for clock speeds: Pentium M x 1.5 = Pentium 4

      e.g. a P-M with 2 GHz runs about as fast as a P4 3 GHz. AMD's QuantiSpeed ratings are usually on target for the P4.

      according to german computer mag c't [heise.de], the 2.13GHz Pentium-M achieves a SPEC CINT2000 of 1600 [heise.de], which is similar to a P4-3.8 GHz or an AMD Athlon64 4000+.

      and it does that all with a thermal design power of 27 Watts (compared to the 100+ the P4/AMD need...). very neat.
    • The main differences between the Pentium M and the Pentium # Mobile processors are two fold:

      1) The Pentium M has been completely redesigned with primary considerations for power management. It is significantly more efficient with batteries and seems to run a bit cooler.
      2) The number of executions per clock cycle is drastically increased. This means a 1.4GHz P-M performs on par with a Pentium 4 2.6GHz or so.

      If you want information on the P-M specifically, take a look for reviews of the Pentium M itself (n
      • I was already "mostly aware" of all that... So here is a more concrete question:

        I've a 18-24 month old Dell Inspiron 8200 with a 1.9Ghz "Pentium Mobile" processor (x86 Family 15 Model 2 Stepping 4 GenuineIntel ~1894 Mhz) with 640Mb RAM and a 60Gb 5400rpm H/D. I develop on this laptop and would welcome any substantial reduction in compile times; improved compression rates when dealing with large 7-zip archives etc. I realise that the best laptop H/Ds are now 80-100Gb (no great improvement there) and that I
        • Your Inspiron 8200 is he same as a Latitude C840. The Pentium 4 Mobile CPU in your laptop is different from a Pentium 4 only in power requirements and heat output. It performs identical to a Pentium 4 desktop processor. This means your laptop is a Pentium 4 1.9GHz. Given the fairly accurate measure of a Pentium M's clockspeed x 1.5 being equal to the equivalent powered Pentium 4 (Mobile) chip, your CPU is equivalent to the lowest powered Centrino chip, the 1.3GHz.

          Now, both machines are going to be usin
          • That all sounds quite plausible... I'd suspected my P4-Mobile wasn't a P4-M, but finding info on that wasn't straightforward.
            Given the 1.5x "rule-of-thumb" from (500 series) P4 "Mobile" to (700 series) P4-M this doesn't justify a replacement. If the 900 series turn out to have a better "rule of thumb" multiplier then one of those might prove worthwhile - but I suppose I just have to wait and see.
            I see your argument in favour of a 7200RPM drive - though, as I've determined I'm seldom bound by disk IO, I've
            • If your compiles aren't disk IO bound, then your likely best option for speeding up compiles is to distribute the CPU load with something like distcc to a workstation or server, if you've got one on the network. That is, if you run linux.

              I also suspsect that you are indeed having your build times slowed by the disk, whether you notice it or not, between building and linking of binaries. If you've got ample RAM, why not make a ramdisk to speed up the process and store /tmp there? Once again, I don't know ho
            • Just FYI, P4-M is a shorthand way of writing Pentium 4 Mobile. The low-power but fairly high performance notebook chips we're discussing are the Pentium M, or P-M, and don't have a 4 in their name at all.

  • Slashvertisements inside (Score:4, Funny)

    by l0b0 ( 803611 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @09:36AM (#11407624) Homepage

    Imagine the upcoming slashvertisements for Intel:

    "Your primary source for sauna equipment"

    "Your next water heater runs Linux!"

    "Fusion inside"

  • AMD vs Intel Redux (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Renraku ( 518261 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @10:15AM (#11408123) Homepage
    AMD chips seem to be a lot cheaper than similarly-fast Intel chips.

    AMD chips seem to run cooler than comparable Intel chips.

    AMD chips seem to have more support and 'options' than Intel chips.

    Whats keeping Intel afloat? While mobo combo shopping recently, I barely paid any attention to the Intel line. All I saw was 1.3x price for 95% performance.

  • Laptops need redsignging (Score:3, Informative)

    by TK2K ( 834353 ) <the.soul.hack@gmail.com> on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @10:19AM (#11408165)
    Ok, so since Laptops were first created, their whole idea was to be a way someone could do work remotely or in areas where having a desktop was hard or near imposibe for one reason or another. in 2003 "November 2003 survey of Penn State University undergraduates found that freshmen were more likely to own laptops than upperclassmen. Of 1,838 respondents, 73.7 percent own a desktop, 32.2 percent own a laptop, 9.2 percent own both, and 3.4 percent own neither." http://pittsburgh.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/stori es/2004/08/23/focus1.html [bizjournals.com]
    "t). Currently, one-quarter of Americans own a laptop or notebook computer (23 percent)" http://www.thegoodsteward.com/article.php3?article ID=1513 [thegoodsteward.com]
    What does this tell us? it says that laptops are becoming more and more popular, and as they become more and more popular, there is a bigger drive towards creating the "ultimite laptop"
    As far as i see it, Apple and IBM are the only good laptop companies. i know thats a dramatic statement, but look at it, any laptop over 6LBS is WAY TOO HEAVY to carry around. Most HP/Compaq laptops are 7 to 9 lbs. Most dells are in that same range.
    what the laptop industry needs is a re-working of laptops. Sony has just released the X505 VAIO laptop, this laptop is built in the way all laptops should be built. It weighs a mear 1.73lbs WITH battery in it, and has enough power to run almost anything exept games and video editing.( But trying to play games on a laptop is just stupid anyway, small screen and no mouse or full keypad) http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&cate gory=31558&item=6736232824&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW [ebay.com] (sorry if i am not suposed to link to auctions, it was the only english page i could find since its a japanese laptop)
    The new centrino chips are amazing, to put it simply. If you put a 2ghz Pentium M into a desktop and slap on a liquid cooling system, you can overclock it to be way more powerful then a 3.46EE or even a 3.8ghz P4. The pentium M is just years ahead of its time, and people having figured it out yet! Its kinda like black lotus for all you magic players!
    • Other dynamics might explain some of the growth but price was the big one. It wasn't too long ago laptops were twice the price of desktops and now you can snag some new ones for around $600.00

      Dell, Fujitsu, and others make lightweight laptops as well. Many offerings exist in the sub-6lb category, just remove this bias that only Apple or IBM know anything about laptops. Today the Dell and Apple are manufactured by the same company and probably in the same plant. It all comes down to what each one determ

  • Sonoma Mini? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by parvenu74 ( 310712 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @10:21AM (#11408197)
    Now that the Mac mini is out, if Apple sells millions upon millions of units it should only be a matter of time until one of the PC makers will come out with a mimic of it (like, say, Asus who is making the Mac mini in the first place).

    It seems to me that Sonoma would be an ideal chipset to cram all of the functionality into a pint-sized box as small as, or slightly larger than the Mac mini. If the box has about as clean of a look to it, did away with the PS2, serial, and parallel ports, was user serviceable, and had room for a standard 3.5 inch SATA drive, I think it would do really well -- even if it weren't clad in anodized aluminum. Ahh... perchance to dream!
  • The power is all waste, and it translates to energy cost and lots of other nasties:

    More power means either higher temperatures (shorter lifetime for all electronics) and/or more airflow (noise) or exotic cooling technologies (water, heat pipes).

    I'm mystified that system vendors don't push livable green computers -- low noise, limited dust-bunny attraction, nice to look at. This is really important your living space, but not in your average server room.

    Apple does pretty well, and that helps to justif

  • Damn, I was hoping this article would announce the return of the "Turbo" button!
    • On my old P-133 from my university days, the turbo button toggled the "1" on and off on the front LED that showed the CPU clock speed. Other guys in the dorm were convinced games would run better with the turbo button on.

      "Why would you run at 33 MHz instead of 133?"
  • The next Itanium chip will stuff two multithreaded cores on one die and use _less_ power than the current generation Itanium/P4. It also reportedly sports a whopping 24MB on-die L3 cache. It also has dynamic power management technology where the chip will give you max frequency for a given power envelope. It continuously monitors voltage and thermals and sets the frequency accordingly. Very cool/tricky stuff to do in a process/supply voltage that's set up for digital design.

  • damn right (Score:3, Interesting)

    by darkwhite ( 139802 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:59AM (#11409322)
    See the little bars at the bottom, titled "Winchester 90nm" in the "power usage" link? I bought two of those recently. They run STONE COLD when idle and you can barely feel the warmth under load.

    It's nice to know your CPU uses TEN TIMES LESS POWER when idle and at least three times less under load than an equivalently performing Intel, and is within 50% of the highest performance CPU on the market. AMD is going to beat Intel's desktop offerings silly with their new 90nm parts.
  • Disclaimer: I have used nothing but AMD chips for many years.

    High peak power consumption isn't that big of a deal (except for cooler bulk) for desktop use as long as the new dual-core chips can throttle down when under light load and use less power when they do.

    Use your program of choice to monitor CPU load vs. time, and look at the usage profile. Computers spend 95% of their time just idling.

    (My machine is running at 14% load, 36% throttle right now. I even have a switch to lock it at 800MHz out of 2200

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