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33 Comments
- sapo916, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15Very scientific explanation there.
- chickenselects, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16you realize that just because a psu is 300 watts doesn't mean its sucking 300watts all the time.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12How did this get on the front page? it doesn't give any info you don't already know, in fact it would have been better to post to the cnet article mentioned at the start that it pretty much just cherry picked from....lame.
- Malakin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10@Arkz The average processor probably uses less than 40 watts under load. Here's an example of an Athlon 64 3000+ being measured:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/sempron-3000_9.html
Notebooks account for a lot of computers sold these days and their power consumption is even lower. The 14 inch notebook I have sitting here with a Pentium-M 735 hits about 38 watts peak total power measured at the wall plug with a watt meter, and only 18 watts while idle at the windows desktop and this is including everything in the whole notebook.
The P4's may be up around 100 watts but Intel won't be selling them for much longer and the environment will thank them for it. - Arkz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10you sure about that? most modern cpu's use at least 80w
- BlackCow, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10I never realy thought about how energy efficent my computer is. Its probaly not good that I leave it on ALL the time. Its a pritty beefy gameing can to. It must take a bit more energy then the average computer.
- pabster, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9And if you've got several dual core AMD rigs in a room, you'll STILL need to crank up that air conditioning.
Trust me. - shamanking, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11I have a electrical meter outside my house with a little spinny thing in it. the faster it spins the more energy I'm using in the house. its very slow when the fridge is on but when i turn the computer on its faster than the center-cooled air conditioner!
- Bioshocker, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10I'm glad we're linking to this blog that is summarising this CNet article, instead of just linking directly to the CNet article. It helps me get a flimsy, lower-quality overview and helps this guy earn his advertising dollars. Everyone's a winner!
- uziq, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I've measured it with a Kill-A-Watt..
Someone playing WOW 24/7 on an Athlon 2500 with a Dell widescreen monitor uses $10.81 per month. (at 7.7 cents per kwh).
and that's the worst case scenerio for that computer. In actual use, it probably uses around $6/month. - ByteGuerilla, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11Indeed. I've not tested my own computer, but a mate of mine has a 420W PSU that rarely sucks over 70W even when he's playing a game.
- Technopotamus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Computers use like NO power at all - ive calculated that my computer (averaging around 120W, 24 hours a day) uses like $7 worth of power a month. Thats not a lot when the power bill is 14 times that, however, the thing makes a LOT of heat (its a P4). I can either sit here and sweat to death, turn the computer off, or turn the Airconditioning up; and thats where the power consumption rises.
THe solution is probably to just upgrade to an AMD CPU or mayby a Core. - joeshlub, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7That story was completely worthless... No Digg. Perhaps if they did anything quantitative, then it would at least serve some purpose.
- MrSkrilla, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7I agree, the story was really pretty lame.
- brd6644, on 09/01/2009, -1/+6Performance per watt is only a concern for portables. If that means that desktops get more efficient too, that's fine, but no one should lose sleep over it. No digg for this story, though. If you can't afford $10/month on your electric bill it's probably a bad idea to build a $1500+ gaming rig in the first place.
- Bioshocker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Performance per watt is also very important for servers, because when you are talking about hundreds/thousands of CPUs, that $10/month/CPU turns into a lot of money pretty quickly.
It also indirectly benefits desktop users. A lower wattage computer will require fewer fans to keep it cool and so will be much quieter, which will result in a more pleasant work environment. It also makes small form factor computers (Shuttle XPC, Mac mini, etc) possible. - LemonJuice, on 10/12/2007, -7/+11It's called Performance per watt. Not miles per gallon.
- dustyshadow, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6link to blog that links to article. no digg
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Where I live has some of the highest electricity rates in the nation. (NY) It costs me about $160 a year max to keep my fileserver and desktop computers on all the time.
That's probably less than 2 months gas for most people. - Anonyblessed, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7Until kilowatt rates are even remotely in the same ballpark as gasoline, isn't this article a little too much FUD? I mean, we all like less power consumption, and cooler cpu's w/ greater efficiency but it's problem that almost alleviates itself as chip manufactures switch to smaller pathways. My 3400+ runs a full 15 degrees cooler(both under heavy load) than my 2600 and both have standard heatsinks/fans. I say change name from eco-geek to eco-freak.
- Hellmark, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Rating in clockcycles alone has been a useless figure for years now. Thats why AMD switched to its model system of like 2800+, 3000+, etc, because if the average person were to see its really 1.8ghz they wouldnt fairly compare it to the equivilent P4 of around 3ghz. And now that intel itself has moved to processor designs that are more efficient per clock cycle, you can't even fairly use that as a comparison between intel CPU's alone.
- Hellmark, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4My mac mini has a ~85 watt power supply, yet never goes above 30. My AMD64 has a 450 watt PSU, but typically uses half of that.
- Zero82z, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2He probably meant instructions per SECOND, which would make more sense. For instance, a CPU running at 2GHZ which performs 5 operations per cycle would be performing 10000 operations per second. Divide that by the power it consumes, say 50W, and it's performance per watt would be 200 ops per watt-second, or 720000 operations per watt-hour.
- toveling, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Heh, yeah, when I got my Mini and looked at the power supply, and it said 85W, I could just thing 'dammmn.' I've always wondered how much my P4 rig takes - there's no easy way to tell, but..
Each hard disk takes ~ 11W, and if the CPU is about 70W, then that plus all the little stuff, I'm probably looking at around 110 watts (2 disks). CRTs take a lot more power than that. That's less than $10 a month. - Bioshocker, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Instructions per cycle = Performance, you say?
By that measure, my processor offers the same performance whether I overclock it to 4 GHz or underclock it to 33 MHz.
That seems perhaps ... wrong. - Hellmark, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@toveling - its like 9.5 cents per kilowatt hour, and say if you're burning 250 watts 24/7, thats about $17 a month. However, thats figuring CPU is working hard, and the monitor never goes into standby. With hard drives today that go idle, monitors that standby, and sleep mode on computers, you're probably not using that much consistantly.
- Trenton, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yeah... Well I don't think that your electric bill is going to cost you $2.99 per watt.
- Trenton, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Exactly, It isn't really the electric bill that will hurt you, but things like cooling during the summertime. Although it makes a nice replacement for your furnace in the winter. =D
- infra172, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1I want a fast computer and not a green one. I was pissed off when you went after shower heads. When I buy a new one I have to drill it out. But now you've gone too far. Stay away from you computer you ***** hippies!
- khyberkitsune, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2I'd like to see performance measured not in cycles per second but how many instructions/calculations can be carried out per cycle. That seems to me to be the REAL method of benchmarking how good a processor can be. Power should come as the secondary measurement, because we've already started putting out low-power chips.
- drunkenoaf, on 10/12/2007, -8/+4Surely a Shuttle-form-factor box with the same CPU would guzzle the same power?
- Sajuke, on 10/12/2007, -9/+3I see computer as refrigerators playing a game on a computer is just like leaving the fridge door open although a gaming comp will take much more energy than the avg refrigerator.
- bryant, on 10/12/2007, -12/+3Well, I guess that's just what you get for buying one of the monstrous, juice guzzling towers...
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