Features - QOTW: Do you favour efficiency or performance in your CPU?

[CampGareth]

In laptops mostly efficiency with enough power to do heavy work when needed (so I'm fine with the drop from 65W to 45W CPUs but lower than that is pushing it), as for desktops I need raw power, electricity is no concern but having renders and video conversions finish in a reasonable time is. Case in point a recent movie encode took two and a half days on my i5 quad, far too long for me, give me a billion cores at a bazillion gigahertz and if I need a peltier stack and watercooling that's just a sign that it's capable

[Jonj1611]

Isn't this similar to what speedstep does etc?

Either way I like full on power when 3D Rendering or Gaming and then it can drop right down for web, email etc etc

[robb213]

Choosing only one: Performance.

With Intel as of late sort of dropping the ball on the latest and greatest in terms of performance, I wonder how the next few releases will play out for AMD (Steamroller/Excavator).

[roostapro]

Performance for me personally

[LSG501]

I suppose a balance is ideal for me....

I want my pc's to render my 3D work as fast as possible but I don't want it costing the earth to power the pc while it's being done. So I suppose in the simplest way I would pick the fastest components (gpu/cpu) which would allow me to work the fastest for the least power draw.

Mind you the issue is mute during the day time when there's sun as the solar panels will cover pretty much any pc I would build lol

[aidanjt]

I'm happy enough with the current balance between performance and efficiency that Intel has struck.

[jackjack]

if i own an AMD A8-7600, i definitely would love to run it at 45W. I will use this mini small system for my daily activity read/sent emails, visiting my favorite site (first thing is HEXUS hehe)facebok, twitter, googling, small video conference with friends/family, listening to my favorite music/videos, play a little pc games, etc .... safe a lot some pence for electricity bills... So for me Efficiency it is.

[bluevaping]

Efficiency. Years ago I had a raw power machine for CPU and GPU performance. I travel much and could never take it with me. I love the performance but rarely used tapped into it. The only performance that was lacking years later was more Ram and faster storage in my desktop. Smaller form factor that could be move easily or taken on extend trip is what I would be looking at for a desktop, if I was shopping for one. It doesn't have to blow away that old computer in raw performance.

[Brewster0101]

Why can't I have both under the same hood.

A APU/CPU/GPU which has very low wattage demand when in idle, but when the power is required, throw low wattage out the window and provide me the power (and heat) one requires.

[Dan the bloke]

Definitely power. But then again, definitely cost effective
I wish that AMD would just make a steamroller core FX chip

[MarkStone]

I would like both. Quiet and Thrifty when I'm surfing and typing...ALL OUT GODLIKE POWER and quiet when I want to take on the world...all this for a reasonable £67.28.

The quote says it all. When I'm surfing or not doing much then efficiency but when I'm editing photo's or gaming I need the power but the price is relevant as well because, apparently, the wife & kids need to eat.

[016ive]

performance

[Hardware_Elite]

Moar powerrrrrrrr!

[dawkz123]

Performance, If I was worried about power consumption, I wouldn't have just ordered a 780.

[SkarKrow]

It really dependson the the purpose of the box.

My main deck? Well, ALL THE POWER (and some consideration of the aesthetics within the machine as I like windows)

A stream box or HTPC? Efficiency is really king.

[Rad77]

Isn't this similar to what speedstep does etc?

Either way I like full on power when 3D Rendering or Gaming and then it can drop right down for web, email etc etc

Yeah I've used the K10stat utility for years on my AMD CPUs. It's really just a refinement of Cool'n'Quiet but it allows me to both overclock/overvolt under load while underclocking/unclocking when I'm just pottering around on the desktop or browser. So on my main PC it's 900MHz at idle and 3700MHz under load. There is a fairly significant difference in power consumption between those two states, but it's only a small improvement on the default CnQ settings.

I think that the most effective way to reduce energy consumption of a PC is to ensure that you have the best sleep mode (S3?) enabled in your bios (why do manufacturers still not make that the default after all these years?) and that Windows is set to drop into sleep whenever you are away from the keyboard for more than a few minutes. That and having the monitor drop to sleep quickly (and definitely no screensavers, particularly fancy 3D ones - I see a lot of that where I work and I think those PC's are probably use more energy out of hours than they ever do when they the user is actually interacting with them!)