News - Next-gen Intel Broadwell SoC reduces Haswell power-draw by 30pc

[kingpotnoodle]

Idle power draw, whilst better if lower, is really not worth worrying about.

See here;
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7003/t...4560k-tested/2

Total system idle power for Haswell i7 is 34w. What's 30% of that - around 10w. That means it takes 100 hours (4 days) of idle use before Broadwell would save you 1KWh. And 1KWh is about, what, 12p?

I'm not exchanging a 30% (or any significant) performance hit for that!

Idle power draw is very worth worrying about for systems that spend most of their time idle or under low load (home server, HTPC, office PC) . It might not be for your gaming desktop but for the rest of the world it's a concern and where performance is already good enough it's far better to save the Watts rather than gain more CPU speed you have no need for.

Consider a system that averages 45W rather than 50W (i.e. 10% less) and is on 24/7 for a whole year:

50/1000 * 24 * 365 = 438 kWh

45/1000 * 24 * 365 = 394.2kWh

5W saves you ~44 kWh a year, which at 12p is around £5.25. I know you're thinking that doesn't sound like much, so multiple that by 1000 for a large company, and then consider that's for maybe 5 years over the PC lifetime, suddenly thats £26,250, factor in rising energy prices, add on the corresponding savings to the office air-con or the money saved because you could increase staff and equipment density without overwhelming that air-con (top London office space can be several thousand quid per sq ft annually).

Power savings matter, even little ones that sound like nothing when that translates to wider savings where a few % can mean big money...

[cheesyboy]

@ kingpotnoodle

Of course, you're right on all that.

But, to clarify, my position (and the position I was taking when I "speak for all of us" (a bit too ambitious and presumptuous a remit, admittedly)) is as a desktop enthusiast. And for a desktop enthusiast, it's a sad day when all we have to look forward to is power savings.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

@ kingpotnoodle

Of course, you're right on all that.

But, to clarify, my position (and the position I was taking when I "speak for all of us" (a bit too ambitious and presumptuous a remit, admittedly)) is as a desktop enthusiast. And for a desktop enthusiast, it's a sad day when all we have to look forward to is power savings.

The problem is that while people obsess about the CPU,they ignore all the other parts of the computer(even the monitor of all things) and their own usage habits. Keeping your Office PC on 24/7 is an example. Plus,you are more likely to save more energy(and probably money in some cases) by not over-filling your kettle,washing your clothes at a lower temperature,having a shorter shower,wearing an extra jumper,cooking only short recipes,using locally sourced ingredients,not leaving electronics on standby,having local holidays,driving your car at the most efficient speed,etc. It does not change the fact our western lifestyle just eats through resources anyway.

[RAJA666]

Increase Power cost = blame it all on Al Gore and climate change fraudsters. They made our live miserable. Gas will deplete faster than predicted, safe nuclear power is the way to go.
And yes don't tell me one can't make nuclear power safe.

[evisceratrix666]

damn... im waiting for kaveri or broadwell.... i cant waitttt

[crossy]

Increase Power cost = blame it all on Al Gore and climate change fraudsters. They made our live miserable. Gas will deplete faster than predicted, safe nuclear power is the way to go.
And yes don't tell me one can't make nuclear power safe.

Hope you're not trotting out the "global warming is a socialist conspiracy" rubbish that we get from the more intellectually-challenged US politico's.

Then again, your point about nuclear power. It's all about risk - it makes me laugh (ironically?) when folks talk about "dangerous" nuclear power v's "conventional" sources - which, I assume, they regard as "safe". Try telling that to the relatives of folks killed in the pursuit of oil, gas, coal and even wood power!

So reducing power consumption has to be a good idea - heck, even if you don't buy into the "global warming conspiracy" then the mere fact that energy prices are increasing means that it makes personal financial sense to save what you can.

Of course, as pointed out above, there's the issue that these Broadwell chip's are SOC's - so they're destined for tablets and such like. Increased power efficiency means either lighter batteries or longer lived ones - and since the main power drain these days isn't the processor, you can say that the benefit in this case is you will be able to run compute intensive tasks for longer with the same power budget.

[Jiamenguk]

Am I the only one who seems happy about the fact that there's more power efficiency? Since it essentially means that there's more possibility to pack a powerhouse into a mini-ITX system; I can't be the only one thinking that full towers in this day and age are hideous for any kind of computer?

Besides, surely most of the times it's usually the graphics card that bottlenecks gaming performances anyway?

[DanceswithUnix]

Always happy for more power efficiency. But Intel come out with this sort of stuff with *every* new process.

Remember the wonderful new tri-gate 22nm process when Intel announced it? I just looked up the figures, they claimed 50% reduction in power and 37% increase in performance. They never claimed both would be at the same time, but some people were optimistic it would be. As ever, they turned out to be cherry picked values to the extreme, and desktop chips were quite yawn worthy.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4313/i...ing-in-2h-2011

These are laptop chips, designed for a laptop centric world.

[crossy]

Always happy for more power efficiency. But Intel come out with this sort of stuff with *every* new process. Remember the wonderful new tri-gate 22nm process when Intel announced it? I just looked up the figures, they claimed 50% reduction in power and 37% increase in performance. They never claimed both would be at the same time, but some people were optimistic it would be. As ever, they turned out to be cherry picked values to the extreme, and desktop chips were quite yawn worthy.

But look at if from their point of view - other than polishing what they've already got, what are their options. That said, you've also got a point that the IB and Haswell bumps have been disappointing when compared to our expectations. Maybe we need to stop thinking about single massive processors are start moving towards multi-cpu arrangements?

These are laptop chips, designed for a laptop centric world.

Yep, but Intel sell what folks like you and I tell 'em they want to buy. Walk into PC World, Staples, Argos or larger supermarkets and you'll see that they're really pushing laptops over desktops. And they wouldn't be doing this unless that was what the public wanted. Unfortunately the true successor to the family desktop machine these days seems to be the AIO touch driven Windows8-running monstrosity.

Am I the only one who seems happy about the fact that there's more power efficiency?

Nope, sign me up for some of that power sippin' goodness!

Since it essentially means that there's more possibility to pack a powerhouse into a mini-ITX system; I can't be the only one thinking that full towers in this day and age are hideous for any kind of computer?

Yes, you are out of step there. Problem with the mITX is that it's horrendously limited in terms of expansion capabilities and it's not exactly compatible with digital space heaters that masquerade as graphics cards these days. You're also limited in choice of mobo and cpu cooler, and those that are available seem to be "premium" priced versus their ATX or even mATX equivalents. I know this for a fact since I was recently trying to price up a rebuild to use a donkey's years old Shuttle case (currently running a P4!).
As a parting shot, if you're dissin' my HAF932 then you and I are going to have words!!

Besides, surely most of the times it's usually the graphics card that bottlenecks gaming performances anyway?

Probably true - especially when the folks doing the complaining are wanting to run 1080P+ multiscreen setups.

[loyal986]

Now take an AMD and try it for efficiency, AMD fan here but what chunks alot of power cannot be hidden. AMD Rocks and sucks(power).

[Zimano]

As a desktop user my problem is the question "is it worth upgrading to?". If I am going to spent £160 - £190 replacing my overclocked Sandybridge Intel then I need more performance. I'm not going to spend this money just for power savings alone. At the moment, from what I gather, at best I'd get 20% increase in speed which is hideous considering the amount of time that has passed since I bought the Sandy.

[DanceswithUnix]

As a desktop user my problem is the question "is it worth upgrading to?". If I am going to spent £160 - £190 replacing my overclocked Sandybridge Intel then I need more performance. I'm not going to spend this money just for power savings alone. At the moment, from what I gather, at best I'd get 20% increase in speed which is hideous considering the amount of time that has passed since I bought the Sandy.

I think that is why SSDs are selling so well atm. People are using 4 year old PCs which are still too good to upgrade from, but the hard drive is likely to die on them and an SSD *is* a worthwhile upgrade.

[crossy]

I think that is why SSDs are selling so well atm. People are using 4 year old PCs which are still too good to upgrade from, but the hard drive is likely to die on them and an SSD *is* a worthwhile upgrade.

I'm going to wholeheartedly endorse what DanceswithUnix is saying there. I upgraded two oldish laptops with Samsung 830's SSDs at the start of the year - one a C2D running Ubuntu and the other a Celeron running Windows 7 - and both are now VERY responsive as a result. And in my case, the fact that they were laptops meant that I also got a battery life boost too. Just tried a quick b'mark and my C2D/Ubuntu system launches LibreWriter in a little over two seconds and LibreCalc is faster than that (and that's also running my usual web, mail, etc progs at the same time).

If you haven't already moved your OS partition to an SSD, then I'd really recommend it highly - after you've done so then a non-SSD'd PC seems "steam powered" by comparison. Guy I know is in the same boat as you and was saying that he's going to wait until Haswell's replacement/upgrade to ditch his SB-based system - in the meantime he's going to spend that cpu+mobo budget on upgrading storage and graphics ready for his new build.