Need power efficient intel..

[capita]

I need recommendation for power efficient CPU + mobo + ram

Processor shouldn't cost more than $300

am building a new system. My current rig is AMD64, 6600gt, 1 GB RAM , 1500 GB HDD

I am all round power user and I do alot of multi-tasking. The heavy stuff I do

Gaming
DVD burning (neo)
Video Editing and conversion (mp4,dvix, xvid, wmv )
Web Design & Development (Adobe CS4 suite)
Running virtual OS XP & Linux (vmware)

I have to do these things while my firefox is running with 20 tabs or more plus my torrents are downloading along with messengers, Steam, anti virus etc.

And I want a very power efficient system. I have already decided the graphics card i.e ati 5770.
Power requirements concern me as much as speed.

Also I only need intel recommendations for processors.

I am bit confused if I should go for quad core or dual core

 

[Markfw]

Well, it sure looks like you need as much power as you can get. I would say 920 or 750, but what is your budget total ?

 

[Dark Shroud]

Might as well get a 930 over the 920 at this point but yes budget total please?

 

[DrMrLordX]

Definitely go quad, and based on your usage patterns, you should be getting a processor with Hyperthreading. So that means a 920 or 860, minimum.

If you have budget constraints, an i7-860 + H55/H57 board would probably be your cheapest solution. Since you seem to want to keep power usage low, I'm guessing overclocking is off the table.

 

[Spikesoldier]

i would go for a 750, best bang for the buck and it sounds like you can benefit from a quad now, considering your old system and its longevity.

i went with the i3 knowing full well down the road after ive had my fun with it that i can drop a 750 or an i7 in it and be ok later.

 

[edplayer]

i5-750 or the i7-860

I would pick the 750

 

[DrMrLordX]

I dunno, look over his usage pattern. Firefox w/ 20 tabs + bittorrent + Steam + AV + vms + dvd burning (possible encoding/transcoding as well) + video editing and/or web development? All at once?

I'm counting more than four threads here.

 

[edplayer]

Firefox with 20 tabs means nothing. I doubt he is burning dvds, gaming, video editing and web developing all at once.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Meh, I'd err on the side of additional resources. He hasn't provided much concrete information on his usage profile, though I could see him pegging 4 cores very easily with enough VMs open while doing something else (especially gaming or video editing).

 

[capita]

Ok let me clarify few things.

I wouldn't be doing ALL those things at once, only some combination. Like:

Video editing + dvd burning
Gaming + dvd burning
Photoshop + video conversion + vmware running XP inside win 7
Gaming in both host and guest (vmware) OS. (old game)
etc

And I stress again that low power consumption is very important to me. I don't have any budget restrains per say. But I prefer bang of the buck stuff. Only reason I will go up will if it saves power.

To give you an example; 4870 costs me $187 locally while xfx 5770 costs $217 which is almost near to 4890 $237 cost.

But 5770 is very power efficient card so I am going for it. I am even thinking of 5830 or 5850 cuz of their power consumption is even better. But since gaming is not the only thing I do, I guess I better spend that money on other stuff I am considering.

From the replies I have narrowed it down to these cpu. Priced locally.

INTEL CORE i3530 2.93Ghz $138

INTEL CORE i3 540 3.06Ghz $163

INTEL CORE i5750 2.66Ghz $222

INTEL CORE i7860 2.8Ghz $312

INTEL CORE i7920 2.66Ghz $312

Couldn't get the price of 930.

I need a low power consuming cpu. Unless the work load difference considering my requirements is really huge between two cpus , I will pick the one that requires less power. Specially at idle.

Also tell me if they require different motherboards and Rams. I prefer motherboard that supports both SATA and ATA. The more the better. I won't be overclocking so keep that in mind. But it should be of good quality and reliable. Not more then $200 unless there is something really special.
Motherboard with ability to upgrade processor and video card within next 2 years is a plus. After that I will be buying new comp anyway.

The reason for my requirement of low power consumption is that I will be running the whole system with UPS with backup time of minimum 2 hours.

 

[Markfw]

Based on your upgrade in 2 years, I still say the 920. But with your power requirements, turn off HT, and undervolt. You can do that easy since you are not overclocking. Since you are not overclocking, and like value, use the ASRock x58 extreme. $170, and open box $118. Get 6 gig ram, 1600 speed. And most of all, make sure your PSU is high efficiency. >85% like the OCZ series upper end. I got the 700 watt once reconditioned for $40, but they are out of those now at svc.com, so you need to get the 600 watt one, also $40.

 

[biostud]

Based on your upgrade in 2 years, I still say the 920. But with your power requirements, turn off HT, and undervolt. You can do that easy since you are not overclocking. Since you are not overclocking, and like value, use the ASRock x58 extreme. $170, and open box $118. Get 6 gig ram, 1600 speed. And most of all, make sure your PSU is high efficiency. >85% like the OCZ series upper end. I got the 700 watt once reconditioned for $40, but they are out of those now at svc.com, so you need to get the 600 watt one, also $40.

if you're turning of HT why not just get a i5-750?

 

[alyarb]

i5 750. X58 is not power efficient and there is no need for 6GB tri-channel. better to get a cheap P55 board and 8GB dual channel.

 

[Markfw]

if you're turning of HT why not just get a i5-750?

upgrade.... Socket 1366 has more life than 1156. Hex core only works in 1366. The turn off HT and underclock is to save power.

 

[MrK6]

i5 750. X58 is not power efficient and there is no need for 6GB tri-channel. better to get a cheap P55 board and 8GB dual channel.

Ding. If you're looking for power efficiency, you want Socket 1156, not 1366. I'd recommend a cheap P55 board and a http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819117225 . It's the cheapest socket 1156 CPU with hyperthreading, IIRC. How much power are you trying to save OP? Do you have a wattage number or just "as low as it can go," namely because there are trade-offs and as you keep going lower it's ridiculous how much performance you sacrifice for only a little bit of power saved. For example, I would grab a 5850 and undervolt it vs. grabbing a 5770 - very similar idle power, but much higher FPS in games.

 

[dualsmp]

i5 750

 

[capita]

Thanx for all the replies.

First off, I just found out that the motherboard x58 for i7 920 costs twice as much as that of i5's p55. And I can't upgrade from i5 to i7 later.
If i go for i7, I wont be upgrading it. I will get new comp by time I would need an upgrade.

Does HT require considerable power? I thought HT will be cheaper way (power wise) to simulate more cores with less than what actual additional cores will consume by large margin.

The primary features of i7 that are attractive to me are HT and turbo boost which are missing in i5. I like turbo boost for the same reason I liked AMD64 cool n quit feature when I bought it. I prefer variable speed based on workload. So ability to underclock when not in use or overclock when needed is nice. I wonder if you can shut off cores?

Somebody mentioned I can go with dual channel for i5? Can someone explain a bit about which cpu require dual /tri RAMs and what are the dis/advantages? Man these ddr3 rams are pretty expensive. A GB ram costs more now than 4 years ago!

Right now I am leaning towards i5 750 with p55 mb. Will I be able to make use of 8 GB of ram as oppose to 4? Will it make consniderable difference? Is it related to how many cores I have?

How much ram can I add in i5 750 system? Does motherboard make a difference in this regard?


As for my power consumption thingy. Let me put it this way. I want most bang for the buck performance wise and least bang for the buck wattage wise.

The more power consumption is the bigger UPS I will need with bigger batteries which may cost me as much as the whole system itself.

 

[taltamir]

upgrade.... Socket 1366 has more life than 1156. Hex core only works in 1366. The turn off HT and underclock is to save power.

hex core also costs over 1000$...
and the next thing in the works is sandy bridge which will require all new sockets.
and don't forget they are releasing higher end stuff for the s1156... for example the i7-860 and 870

I give one more vote for the i5-750 or the i7-860. it is the most power efficient CPU right now.

 

[capita]

Ding. If you're looking for power efficiency, you want Socket 1156, not 1366. I'd recommend a cheap P55 board and a http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819117225 . It's the cheapest socket 1156 CPU with hyperthreading, IIRC. How much power are you trying to save OP? Do you have a wattage number or just "as low as it can go," namely because there are trade-offs and as you keep going lower it's ridiculous how much performance you sacrifice for only a little bit of power saved. For example, I would grab a 5850 and undervolt it vs. grabbing a 5770 - very similar idle power, but much higher FPS in games.

I have thought about getting 5850 instead of 5770. Indeed 5850 consumes almost same power as 5770 does at idle. Infact if I remember correctly, according to one benchmark I read it was idling at lessor then 5770. Or was it 5830?

But considering that I use power of my pc for lot more then just gaming it feels a bit odd for me to spend more on gpu then cpu.

5850 will cost me $353 locally

I don't know. Is it really worth it? If it is I may go for it.

 

[capita]

hex core also costs over 1000$...
and the next thing in the works is sandy bridge which will require all new sockets.
and don't forget they are releasing higher end stuff for the s1156... for example the i7-860 and 870

I give one more vote for the i5-750 or the i7-860. it is the most power efficient CPU right now.

Is 860 newer or older than i7 920? how does it compare?

 

[DrMrLordX]

If you are after absolute minimum power usage/maximum efficiency, the i3-530 (Clarksdale) is the lowest power CPU you can get from your list, and it will do more work per unit power consumed than the other processors on your list. Put that on an H55 or 57 board and you save mucho $$$. It won't be anywhere near as powerful as the 750 (Lynnfield) but there you have it.

Also keep in mind that you can host a Lynnfield on H55/57 motherboards to save money. Main benefit of P55 is that the boards are more feature-rich and they tend to overclock better; you might get more undervolting options on P55 as well.

Hyperthreading's impact on performance-to-power ratio is a bit difficult to estimate, but the thing you need to remember is that HT does nothing but put additional load on "real" cores by creating "fake" cores to handle additional threads. In other words, the power consumption that comes from enabling and fully utilizing HT is based on the physical core that is taking on the additional load.

HT is going to be more efficient on Clarksdale because Clarksdale is a 32nm chip that uses less power to do the same amount of work as a Bloomfield (i7-920/930) or Lynnfield.

The downside to Clarksdale is that you get less performance with one of those than you with with a Lynnfield or Bloomfield. At least you will have the satisfaction that your usage patterns will really make a Clarksdale work its butt off.

Also, you *can* undervolt a Clarksdale, and it should be stable at stock speeds as long as you don't go overboard. That will give you even lower power consumption.

Oh, and the 860 is newer than the 920. Generally speaking, anything LGA1366 other than Gulftown (980x) is older tech than anything on LGA1156 . . . that doesn't make LGA1156 procs fundamentally better, mind you, it just makes them newer.

The i7-930 was released after the 860 (also a Lynnfield, but with HT), but aside from clockspeed, it is technologically indifferentiable from the 920 so saying it's newer tech than the 860 would be inaccurate.

 

[capita]

hmm very interesting DrMrLordX.

If you are after absolute minimum power usage/maximum efficiency, the i3-530 (Clarksdale) is the lowest power CPU you can get from your list, and it will do more work per unit power consumed than the other processors on your list. Put that on an H55 or 57 board and you save mucho $$$. It won't be anywhere near as powerful as the 750 (Lynnfield) but there you have it.

How much watts I will be saving going down from i5 750 to i3 530?

The choice for me choosing between i5 750 and i3 530 basically boils down to dual core vs quad core. Now i have seen the benchmarks and all but it doesn't mean much to me since they are benching one application at a time. So 3dmax takes less time in quad core then a dual core. like so what? I can wait a bit longer.

What I really want to know is if I am running multiple cpu intensive applications like I mentioned. How does then quad core comes to play? Are applications alot more responsive?

The single most important thing that I want performance wise is my applications to be more responsive under stress. I can wait a little longer for a video to convert or sacrifice few image quality in games to get stable fps. What I hate most is an application utilizing 100% cpu and making other applications unresponsive.

I have no idea how quad cores deal with this. But if they do make significant difference over dual cores in this regard then I can digest few more watts for the sake of it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yes, for your usage patterns, I would go with Quad-core over dual-core.

 

[capita]

Also keep in mind that you can host a Lynnfield on H55/57 motherboards to save money. Main benefit of P55 is that the boards are more feature-rich and they tend to overclock better; you might get more undervolting options on P55 as well.

I just came from market. The h55tc intel mobo that comes with i3 530 costs about the same as the DP55WB intel they paired with i5 750. Around $100 each. Not saying I am gonna buy the mobo they paired, but seeing that I thought the prices of mobo for i3 and i5 are around same?

HT is going to be more efficient on Clarksdale because Clarksdale is a 32nm chip that uses less power to do the same amount of work as a Bloomfield (i7-920/930) or Lynnfield.

Isn't there any i5 based on 32nm? I thought the new i3 , i5 and i7 processors were all based on 32nm. T

Oh, and the 860 is newer than the 920. Generally speaking, anything LGA1366 other than Gulftown (980x) is older tech than anything on LGA1156 . . . that doesn't make LGA1156 procs fundamentally better, mind you, it just makes them newer

The 860 and 920 are costing me exactly same. Although 860 is not readily available. What about 860 mobos?

 

[nyker96]

since you upgrade infrequently, I say get 1366 i7 920. It will allow a jump to 6core for you later when you need more processor power. 1156 i5 and i3 are both not upgradable to 6core probably means you need new boards for that upgrade later perhaps even new memory.