opinions on low low power cpus

yagga

I am looking into low power desktop cpus for a possible build here in the near future (well by late springish at the latest). I am sort of basing what I would like off of what I already have, which is only a 2.8c (2.8HT 800fsb) northwood stock @ I believe 69.7w. I put this together in Aug 03 and would like this new efficient system to ideally match/beat performance, but beat power consumption by as much as possible.

I am aware of Amds fastest 65w, the x2 5600+, and their fastest 45w, the be-2350, and I think it was an x2? 3800+ rated at 35w. I've heard about the 8/15/25w cpus that aren't released yet, but am not sure if those are standard drop in cpus or not. And besides that, I'm clueless on Intel's front in terms of what is best in efficiency, as well as other future products to look forward to, and finally any mobile cpus that might possibly work in a desktop. I'm also not to certain on other power considerations such as chipsets, motherboard choices, etc. Otherwise, all that other junk that you've gotta throw into a pc to make it turn on I've got covered.

Can anyone enlighten me?

Leonardo

The best performance per watt is the newest Core 2 Duos and Core 2 Quads. It's that simple.

yagga

Leonardo wrote:

The best performance per watt is the newest Core 2 Duos and Core 2 Quads. It's that simple.

Okay, I thought that might be the case, without sacrificing any crunching power anyway.

Leonardo

Without sacrificing? Vastly improving it without with probably lower power consumption. (unless you are an overlcocking nut like me!)

yagga

Leonardo wrote:

Without sacrificing? Vastly improving it without with probably lower power consumption. (unless you are an overlcocking nut like me!)

okay okay

without sacrificing, as in expecting the core 2 duos as the mainstream standard. ...ahem... and best or second best out there considering the Quezies. Happy?

Yeah, I do see them as pretty efficient. I just have a need to be even less power hungry, even if that sacrifices top performance.

Maybe what I should be asking is: Is there anything, anything out there that can be very good in power consumption, but not suck, as in suck it's thumbs laughing at you waiting for it to do things. :bigggrin:

Leonardo

Right now, top performance in the traditional sense of the word performance and in low power consumption is Core 2.

The Yorkfield quad core Intel chips, when released, by all indications, will even be better.

lemonlime

There are some very energy efficient processors on both the AMD and Intel front. Intel does take the cake in the 'Performance per watt' category right now. One thing to keep in mind--you can underclock just about any processor for further energy savings. If energy efficiency is more important than processing power, you can easily reduce the core voltage and CPU multiplier on both Intel and AMD processors.. The beauty of this type of solution is that the power is 'on tap' should you ever require it. I was able to run my old 4200+ Manchester at a greatly reduced vcore at its default frequency of 2.2GHz. If I were to drop the multiplier down to 9 or 10x, I would have had a very low-power solution. You'll need to do some research when selecting a mainboard, however. Not all boards will allow vcore reduction below default. A reduction in vcore makes the biggest impact to power/heat.

Thrax

I know for a fact that you can run even very old Core 2 Duos at 2.8GHz using a mere 1.1v of power. I did for a while when I was experimenting in August of '06.