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RE: Saving Energy only to Increase Energy use.

Drezha — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 23:50:40 GMT

[quote][b]shuggie (15/08/2008)[/b][hr]Can't believe this thread......reads like Government propaganda.......:D
[/quote]

No, just people concerned about how much power they use so they can keep costs down.;)

RE: Saving Energy only to Increase Energy use.

SpriteStomper — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 22:11:26 GMT

:) Ah shugs don't be a crosspatch, there's been some interesting points raised- The Government doesn't have an energy policy de facto, otherwise it wouldn't have let the Utilities slip into foreign hands and would have kept a controlling interest in them even when privatised. It is one of the most fundamental requirements of any responsible Govt, that and security of borders, our Govt has been sadly lacking in both departments for the last twenty yrs. - Wait till you get your Winter power bill.

Thanks slipstream, I read it and have quietly learned a lot from your posts, your like me, design and build them with a specific purpose in mind. I love researching the next build, go through the pro's and cons and hopefully come up with something that is efficient and a joy to use.

That's the main reason I'm not using quads, the thought of two cores idling fruitlessly for no gain and using more power. For my purposes the E6750's and now the E8400's are the most design efficient. Although saying that after the Nehalem has been out for a while and I have a chance to study it I'd love to design a system around it just for the pleasure of owning one.

Vive le vie

Crystos

RE: Saving Energy only to Increase Energy use.

shuggie — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 15:04:07 GMT

Can't believe this thread......reads like Government propaganda.......:D

RE: Saving Energy only to Increase Energy use.

Slipstreem — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 14:21:17 GMT

[quote][b]SpriteStomper (15/08/2008)[/b][hr]...was that power consumption figure including Monitor, ie the whole system, or just the base unit?[/quote]
That was the power consumption figure for the base unit with all external ancillaries [i]except[/i] for the monitor. The 19" LG TFT monitor I use for Web browsing measures around 17Watts according to the mains power meter I've been using.

If I was using the rig purely for surfing then I'd happily underclock the CPU to less than 1GHz which would reduce power consumption further. Interestingly, I did an experiment a while back where I underclocked the CPU to 810MHz (as low as my mobo allows) and the system was still surprisingly nippy. I didn't have the meter at the time so couldn't measure the power consumption unfortunately. Many of my pre-2005 games still returned playable framerates too, much to my surprise.

There's obviously no way I can compete with the likes of the Via CPUs in terms of power consumption, but I genuinely need the horsepower available from the C2D even when watching my archived movie collection. I use [i]a lot[/i] of video postprocessing to make digital video recorded at sensible bitrates bearable on a large screen and this keeps my C2D around 30% occupied. Comparing the relative horsepower available, any Via CPU would choke on the same amount of work. :)

Cheers, Slipstreem. :cool:

RE: Saving Energy only to Increase Energy use.

SpriteStomper — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 14:00:38 GMT

:) Nice one freakshow.

Some interesting posts, Slipstream was that power consumption figure including Monitor, ie the whole system, or just the base unit?

Game boxes would mean going over to an entirely new system, the PS3 sounds as if its got useful additional features, but no box gives the graphic representation of a good gaming rig or the pin point accuracy. The other point is I enjoy designing maps and missions in the Map Editors also I'm not running dual card setups and any way the PC's keep my feet warm. I'd only have to put the fan heater on and goodbye any saving. i've recently got into MMO that's why i don't begrudge the extra cost.

One way forward, is by chance I found a free MMO that required a 3.5Gb download and for the quality of the artwork and graphic reproduction its stunning, with a good story line and oodles to do, its called Voyage Century Online and for what it has on offer doesn't require a whole heap of muscle to play it, also there's no lag from the American/Canadian servers.

I've been thinking that something along those lines is the future, because buying an ever more power hungry video card every six months is becoming insane, especially when 80% of new releases don't do them justice or are simply a repetition of what's gone before. Another thing, browser based games (not the Gamehouse variety) are becoming more sophisticated and complex and require next to nothing to run them and are simply good fun though time consuming. In other words lets get rid of all our power hungry PC's and hook up to centrally placed Supercomputer/Server networks instead. No OS, No data storage, no hardware of note - everybody has their own private account PC.Agh! it doesn't bear thinking about what will I tinker with.

RE: Saving Energy only to Increase Energy use.

Drezha — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 21:30:56 GMT

Ah you didn't say that ;)

RE: Saving Energy only to Increase Energy use.

alex3410 — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 09:32:08 GMT

the eee screen? when u connect it to the monitor you can turn it off so its only the monitor thats on :P

RE: Saving Energy only to Increase Energy use.

Drezha — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 08:29:51 GMT

well I was just thinking if the screen's on, then that's power being wasted and making it inefficient;)

RE: Saving Energy only to Increase Energy use.

alex3410 — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 22:32:19 GMT

yes it does but a bigger screen is better lol

RE: Saving Energy only to Increase Energy use.

FreakShow! — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 22:31:01 GMT

[quote][b]SpriteStomper (13/08/2008)[/b][hr]If McCain gets elected in the USA, he'll make George Bush look like a Care Bear in comparison and if they succeed in bombing Iran then forget about Energy saving and Green issues, they will be the least of our problems.[/quote]

But at least we will all contain only 5% fat :P

RE: Saving Energy only to Increase Energy use.

Attercop — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 21:46:32 GMT

RE: Saving Energy only to Increase Energy use.

Drezha — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 20:56:44 GMT

Does it not power up the screen when the Eee is on anyhow?

That's a fairly good idea... I know an Eee draws 26W with it's battery plugged in... I was going to wait until my first electric bill comes in for the new house then see if I was going to purchase a small laptop/mini-itx power saving PC for a browsing PC and turn my gaming rig off.

RE: Saving Energy only to Increase Energy use.

alex3410 — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 18:32:11 GMT

just buy an Eee and plug it into your screen mouse and keyboard (i do it at uni)

RE: Saving Energy only to Increase Energy use.

Computer Dave — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 18:26:24 GMT

I'm also energy conservative and I'm quite interested in the new EEE Desktop PC. Its small and uses very little power making it ideal for web browsing only...I could then just buy a high end PC for gaming only and balance things out instead of having a high end machine on all the time. Speedstep and Cool 'n' Quiet are nice features too. I also set my TV on high energy saving, don't leave it on standby plus get things to shut down after a minute.

RE: Saving Energy only to Increase Energy use.

Basil — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:56:37 GMT

[quote][b]Pheonix (13/08/2008)[/b][hr]And definately not Vista. Though it wouldn't surprise me if there was an energy efficientdistro of linux.....[/quote]
I think there is a limit to how much of an influence the OS is going to have, obviously if it's a lightweight OS it will use less computational power and allow the hardware to run as slow as it can but I don't think a new distro would help much (the 2W cherry pal cloud PC uses Debian)

RE: Saving Energy only to Increase Energy use.

Drezha — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:48:05 GMT

360's are large power drains but I've not seen the figures Slipstreem comments about, unless thats Xbox 360 AND TV. Because that would be about that figure.

Mind my PC plus monitor is about 170W... that's aQ6600, 8800GT and a 19" Widescreen TFT.

RE: Saving Energy only to Increase Energy use.

Slipstreem — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:27:21 GMT

[quote][b]Pheonix (13/08/2008)[/b][hr]...Consoles would likely be a better option if you want to save the planet.[/quote]
The rig in my sig when gaming = 180Watts,
Xbox360 when gaming = 250Watts.

From what I've seen personally, it beats an Xbox360 as a games machine in terms of graphics quality and framerates. :)

Cheers, Slipstreem. :cool:

RE: Saving Energy only to Increase Energy use.

-Wiz!- — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:19:38 GMT

Windows has been energy efficient for years...That's why it takes so long to boot up...The bsods stopping you using to much power...etc etc. :hehe:

RE: Saving Energy only to Increase Energy use.

Pheonix — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:08:44 GMT

Todays processors/memory chips/motherboards are far more efficient, clock for clock/etc than their predecessors, such is the nature of the reduction in size of the architecture(s).

Before, you may have considered underclocking. Although nowadays with the likes of Intel speedstep and the AMD equivalent, there is little reason to. The problem here really lies in the software camp, IMHO. Modern apps and programs demanding too many resources which equate to watts in the real world. Of course gaming is just the devil in disguise- demanding huge amounts of processing power from everything you've got. But the developers simply say- the user has the capacity to do so, so we will. That way we have an edge over our competitors... and so it goes on.

As ricedg says - Consoles would likely be a better option if you want to save the planet. And definately not Vista. Though it wouldn't surprise me if there was an energy efficient distro of linux.....

RE: Saving Energy only to Increase Energy use.

Slipstreem — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:47:15 GMT

Or build a rig that vaguely resembles mine. It has plenty of horsepower for only 180Watts of total power consumption for all but the most demanding of games on full settings at broadcast HD resolution. It still only consumes around 90Watts when surfing.

The software is out there in the public domain as freeware for underclocking graphics cards when the horsepower isn't required, and the use of Intel SpeedStep makes the C2D CPU reasonably frugal under low load conditions. It's not compulsory for PCs to be gas-guzzling monsters just because they're switched on. :)

Cheers, Slipstreem. :cool:

RE: Saving Energy only to Increase Energy use.

-Wiz!- — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 10:05:43 GMT

Get a laptop for your web trawling. :)

RE: Saving Energy only to Increase Energy use.

ricedg — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 10:02:06 GMT

Buy an X-Box or Playstation for games, then you need a trivial cheap and low power PC for everything else...

Saving Energy only to Increase Energy use.

SpriteStomper — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 03:18:05 GMT

:w00t

I recently, reluctantly - realised I was asking too much of my Internet PC and bit the bullet and retired it. I prided myself on keeping it tuned and working as it was designed and the whole system, including monitor was only drawing 270 Watts, being on almost 24/7 was as economical as i could make it.

With my increasing time on the net, both work and play, what finally put paid to it was Spybot's new and excellent real time protection. Although still frisky most of the time and able to run AVG real time security, Winamp and browser, some pages were taking too long to open.

So I comandeered the lowest spec gaming rig I have - a C2Duo 6750 on a P35 mobo with Radeon 1950Pro video card, there's no way I'm going on the Web with the 3870 rig or the 8800GT one either. To my surprise this setup is only using 100ish Watts more as its barely ticking over so far so good.

Now the reason for this diatribe, I'm taking delivery of C2Duo 8500 which I'll mate to a P45 mobo with 4GB Ram and a 4870 because I was hoping to leapfrog Vista and get Vienna or Windows 7 when hopefully it comes out next year, but I need DX10 now and can't wait.

Intel and AMD are doing there level best to make more energy efficient CPU"s and Asus et al are taking similar steps with die shrinks etc. At the same time the OS system and software is getting more bloated by the day, Increase of RAM to run it - each 128Mb using 7watts so doubling consumption to 224watts, the video card drawing 350Watts under load, with a 750Watt PSU to keep things sweet, you can't help thinking that Intel although on the right track are farting against thunder.

This coming at a time of rising energy prices and possible shortages, if this latest war between Georgia and Russia becomes protracted, if there are any cutbacks on the European pipeline we will be the first to experience it because we are at the end and going by past events both Germany and France won't help us out.

If McCain gets elected in the USA, he'll make George Bush look like a Care Bear in comparison and if they succeed in bombing Iran then forget about Energy saving and Green issues, they will be the least of our problems.