Does anyone know of any accurate power consumption, between AMD 5050e and Athlon II 2

[Anteries]

I fancy putting together a new PC, my trusty AMD 64 single core is showing its age. My computer is on a lot of the time, and naturally being a caring for the environment sort of person wondered about power consumption. I wonder if anyone had seen these compared?

[peterb]

Have you looked at the AMD web site? You might find the specs there.

[Anteries]

Have you looked at the AMD web site? You might find the specs there.

I might be over complicating things, but it seems to me determining power usage is a real dark art. I've seen tests where the low-power AMD dual core's give a complete system power usage of 66 watts on idle. Just wondered if anyone had seen any comparisons with the same system but with the new more powerful CPUs. 30 watts extra per year only works out at an extra £30 per year electricity but there's also heat noise and the environment.


I've been told those plug-in power usage meters are pretty rubbish for giving accurate readings of computer power. And are more suited to measuring standard lighting or machinery.

[arthurleung]

I might be over complicating things, but it seems to me determining power usage is a real dark art. I've seen tests where the low-power AMD dual core's give a complete system power usage of 66 watts on idle. Just wondered if anyone had seen any comparisons with the same system but with the new more powerful CPUs. 30 watts extra per year only works out at an extra £30 per year electricity but there's also heat noise and the environment.


I've been told those plug-in power usage meters are pretty rubbish for giving accurate readings of computer power. And are more suited to measuring standard lighting or machinery.

Power usage meter is a meter, as long as you compare different stuff with the same meter you should get comparable readings.

Many things contribute to idle power usage, like what video card you have, if you have CnQ active or not, what voltage the motherboard actually supply to the CPU (some boards undervolt while some overvolts), and even the definition of idling. Having 3 copies of MSN messenger running the background increases my laptop's power usage by 50% even though it shows 0% CPU in the task manager.

30W is not really a lot, your LCD monitor will probably put up significantly more than that. (Mine use about 100W) If you're really that concerned with power, go straight for a laptop.

You'll at the very least get the PSU and HDD noise. I used to have an Athlon 64 3000+ that is run without a fan, it is still auditable.
Or on the other hand, even fanless can have electronic noise. My Dell Mini9 netbook gives off tons of electronic noise even though its only using about 12W. My C2Q on P5E gives me electronic noise that can be heard over half a dozen of fans and 8 hdds.

[peterb]

I've just put together an itx based machine for a server, which takes about 40W. Of that about 18 is taken by the PSU alone (it is a laptop type external device) so I am looking to get a lower power version so that I can run it more efficiently) However that is a 1.2Ghz CPU, fine for general use and for what I need it for (local file server and also does a little web serving) bt wouldn't asatisfy a hard core gamer! I also use 2 drives in RAID 1 so the controller and extra drive adds a little to the overall consumption.

[Anteries]

I've just put together an itx based machine for a server, which takes about 40W. Of that about 18 is taken by the PSU alone (it is a laptop type external device) so I am looking to get a lower power version so that I can run it more efficiently) However that is a 1.2Ghz CPU, fine for general use and for what I need it for (local file server and also does a little web serving) bt wouldn't asatisfy a hard core gamer! I also use 2 drives in RAID 1 so the controller and extra drive adds a little to the overall consumption.

That's a great power consumption, it amazes me to think that for four years I used a 1.4 GHz Athlon XP with Windows 98. With the new architecture these low-power devices that you have built are very impressive, for standard computer tasks.

What you said got me thinking, maybe about building two PCs a micropower music computer and a beast for my main one. instead of a mid power computer with reasonable power consumption.

Those new fast AMD CPUs have got me very excited.

[scaryjim]

30 watts extra per year only works out at an extra £30 per year electricity but there's also heat noise and the environment.

A Watt isn't a measurement of electricity usage! So you don't "use" 30W per year, you pull 30W for a year - it's a small but critical difference

You are, however, roughly correct, in that a 1 watt difference in power rating will increase your electricity bill by £1 per year if you run the appliance 24/7/52. Most people don't need to run their computer 24/7, so you can save a lot of energy just by turning your PC off when you go to bed

According to AMD's own figures, the *maximum* difference between the two processors is 20W, which would be at full load. Your computer is unlikely to be at full load most of the time, so the actual difference will be somewhat smaller. Also, just to confuse matters, the fact that the Athlon II X2 250 is a much better performing processor means that it will run under less load, and spend less time running at full load (if you manage to max it out!) than the 5050e, so it is less likely to pull its full power rating. This means it will be *relatively* more efficient than the 5050e - but obviously that's relative to a higher base power draw

Basically, I think it's likely to make very little difference at the bottom end now AMD have 65W dual-cores available. They are much better performance-wise than the K8 Athlons, so it's a bit of a no brainer for me - get the Athlon II X2 250. The additional power-draw will be minimal, and the performance gain will be more than worth it.

What you said got me thinking, maybe about building two PCs a micropower music computer and a beast for my main one.

If you have the money, by all means go for this! If it's just for music why not get a netbook? You can use an external hard-drive to store your music collection and external speakers to improve the sound quality. Make sure you set the power options to turn off the monitor ASAP when it's idle, and you should have a music PC that draws virtually no power at all. Or, you know, you could just get an MP3 player....

[peterb]

If you are looking to build a music server (for streaming music) then you could use a hacked nslu2

http://www.nslu2-linux.org/

Again low power (in Watts) and therefore energy consumption (in KW/hrs )

[pharm]

If you are looking to build a music server (for streaming music) then you could use a hacked nslu2

http://www.nslu2-linux.org/

Again low power (in Watts) and therefore energy consumption (in KW/hrs )

I have one of these with Debian Linux on. They don't call them slugs for nothing

On the other hand, it just sits there and works.

Last time I looked there were quite a few on ebay for a lot less than the high street was asking for 'em.

[Anteries]

A Watt isn't a measurement of electricity usage! So you don't "use" 30W per year, you pull 30W for a year - it's a small but critical difference

You are, however, roughly correct, in that a 1 watt difference in power rating will increase your electricity bill by £1 per year if you run the appliance 24/7/52. Most people don't need to run their computer 24/7, so you can save a lot of energy just by turning your PC off when you go to bed

According to AMD's own figures, the *maximum* difference between the two processors is 20W, which would be at full load. Your computer is unlikely to be at full load most of the time, so the actual difference will be somewhat smaller. Also, just to confuse matters, the fact that the Athlon II X2 250 is a much better performing processor means that it will run under less load, and spend less time running at full load (if you manage to max it out!) than the 5050e, so it is less likely to pull its full power rating. This means it will be *relatively* more efficient than the 5050e - but obviously that's relative to a higher base power draw

Basically, I think it's likely to make very little difference at the bottom end now AMD have 65W dual-cores available. They are much better performance-wise than the K8 Athlons, so it's a bit of a no brainer for me - get the Athlon II X2 250. The additional power-draw will be minimal, and the performance gain will be more than worth it.

If you have the money, by all means go for this! If it's just for music why not get a netbook? You can use an external hard-drive to store your music collection and external speakers to improve the sound quality. Make sure you set the power options to turn off the monitor ASAP when it's idle, and you should have a music PC that draws virtually no power at all. Or, you know, you could just get an MP3 player....

Thank you for the info. I hadn't thought of going the laptop/net book route. Actually in regard to MP3 players I have a variety that I use through my hi-fi amp. But it's a bit fiddly for browsing and organising music. I'm using the fantastic foobar 2000 media player. And it will be great to have something dedicated next to my hi-fi for all my music, pod casts and talking books. I'm not planning any net broadcasting or anything like that.

[scaryjim]

I don't know if you check the Hexus news pages as well as the forums: if not then go and look at The new Archos 9. Not due until Autumn, but it looks like a fantastic machine and I might well start saving for one now...

[Anteries]

That's a lovely bit of kit but I prefer to do things on the cheap I find it more fun that way.

[pumpman]

I was going to get an atom based setup, but apart from the low power usage they are slower and less featured than a p3m, Im running a via setup on two server just now, but I may just plump for a e variant on an amd dual core chip , I would go for one of the new via based combos but they are a bit pricey