Performance/Watt comparison

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Denithor
And if you seriously look at those charts you will see that these chips do both: they get more work done while simultaneously consuming less power (in 11/13 benchmarks this held true).

This was a point that was lost on many folks (including myself) in those early days right there after Nehalem debuted when those early reviews noted the gaming performance did not improve with Nehalem over Penryn.

The IPC for gaming with nehalem was about the same as it was with penryn, so the conclusion was that nehalem was not a good choice for gamers. What was lacking from the analysis though was the fact the power consumption while generating that same level of IPC had dropped considerably, almost by 1/3 in some cases.

So really the value-proposition with nehalem was same fps but at lower power-consumption in comparison to yorkfield. When PhII came along it didn't compete on the fps/W metrics but rather on the fps/$ metric, and still does.

 

[Idontcare]

I just saw this lost-circuits review of the PhII X4 965, they really drilled down and focused on power-consumption in a level of detail I haven't seen before. Check it out and see if it illuminates anything for you.

 

[21stHermit]

Originally posted by: KingstonU
I don't think anyone will disagree with this. However wouldn't idle power consumption be more important that load?

Indeed, for 90% of all users doing their most common tasks.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: aigomorla
Not fair because i7 has 8 virtual threads, which means more work gets done at the cost of same TDP.

So yeah, the i7 is of course gonna have the highest value..

turn off HT and see what u get.

That does not make any sense, why would you unfairly cripple the i7? So HT helps it get a better performance / watt... that is the whole POINT of having HT in the first place! you pay for it, why disable it?

 

[taltamir]

op, very nice observation... I spent 5$ selling my used Q6600 on ebay and buying a used Q9400 on ebay.

Q9400 (17.9/179.8) 0.100
Q6600 (15.2/193.3) 0.079

Which seems like a pretty awesome deal in this context. (I did it for the power consumption...)

Back in the day I would tell people there is absolutely no reason to buy intel because of their low performance / watt and performance / $ compared to AMD.
Now AMD competes only in the low end X2 (the athlon 2 X2 is very nice...)

 

[Acanthus]

We are talking a couple of dollars a month here... tops.

Unless you're running a datacenter or large cybercafe or something... this data is irrelevant.

I would imagine Atom beats an I7 in performance per watt...

 

[21stHermit]

Originally posted by: Acanthus
We are talking a couple of dollars a month here... tops.

Unless you're running a datacenter or large cybercafe or something... this data is irrelevant.

Only true if you live on the grid, I live Solar Electric and KWHrs matters, I have a "budget" of ~3 KWHrs/day to be shared with the fridge, well pump, TV, PC, etc. Therefore I'm keenly interested.

I would imagine Atom beats an I7 in performance per watt....

Not true, mainly because all the related system components (HDD, PSU, video) consume as much or more power than Atom. Here's a E7200 vs Atom 330 comparison, note the identical idle power. Atom only "wins" because its daily power use is less, assuming it's able to get the job done.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: 21stHermit
Only true if you live on the grid, I live Solar Electric and KWHrs matters, I have a "budget" of ~3 KWHrs/day to be shared with the fridge, well pump, TV, PC, etc. Therefore I'm keenly interested.

What are your computer specs? Undervolted i7? 3kWhr/day...I couldn't do it, no way.

 

[21stHermit]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: 21stHermit
Only true if you live on the grid, I live Solar Electric and KWHrs matters, I have a "budget" of ~3 KWHrs/day to be shared with the fridge, well pump, TV, PC, etc. Therefore I'm keenly interested.

What are your computer specs? Undervolted i7?

I'm running an Atom 330 in a Foxconn mini-ITX chassis with a 150W PSU. The total draw of the PC + router + NAS + 22" LCD + wireless radio ISP = 86W. Drop the NAS = 74W

Today I'll have maybe 5 KWHr input if I needed it, no clouds. On a cloudy day maybe 1 KWHr, couple of those in a row and it's generator time. In eleven years I've run the generator ~170 hours.

Because of that E7200 vs Atom 330 article, I figure for 95% of my use a Clarkdale G6950 will give me the same or less power use with a big performance boost when I need it. Mostly because of the GPU in Clarkdale.

3kWhr/day...I couldn't do it, no way.

Most can't, takes a life style change. Do have a $million$ view and no neighbors.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: Acanthus
We are talking a couple of dollars a month here... tops.

Unless you're running a datacenter or large cybercafe or something... this data is irrelevant.

I would imagine Atom beats an I7 in performance per watt...

An atom SYSTEM has atrocious performance / watt... it has low total wattage, but doing the same amount of work on an i7 is better.

And a couple of bucks a month, say 2$, is still 24$ a year... 36$ a year if it is 3... 60$ a year if it is 5$ a month... those things add up. And when you are FRUGAL it matters.