Multiple cores really help with Intel CPUs.
Having to set down your current process and service something is costly as far as time on the typical Intel processor..
Likely one way you get low idle power consumption is by having more than one efficiency core on hand so there is less task swapping.
The OS is really going to decide where something runs in the end so the software really does not need to be aware of where it runs.
Luckily the OS can throw that single process on the performance core if needed and not allow the core to be shared with anything else.
I mostly deal with Linux servers that may have around 1000 active processes actively working as far as IO. They are built for a peak use that happens maybe for two to four minutes out of the day then will sit below 10% for the rest of the day.
I started with a .89MHZ 6809 processor. 32K of RAM. No floppy until later.
Having to set down your current process and service something is costly as far as time on the typical Intel processor..
Likely one way you get low idle power consumption is by having more than one efficiency core on hand so there is less task swapping.
The OS is really going to decide where something runs in the end so the software really does not need to be aware of where it runs.
Luckily the OS can throw that single process on the performance core if needed and not allow the core to be shared with anything else.
I mostly deal with Linux servers that may have around 1000 active processes actively working as far as IO. They are built for a peak use that happens maybe for two to four minutes out of the day then will sit below 10% for the rest of the day.
I started with a .89MHZ 6809 processor. 32K of RAM. No floppy until later.
How about this for low powered?
https://www.amazon.ca/Fanless-Windows-Computer-Portable-Ethernet/dp/B09LQY9KM7
https://www.amazon.ca/Fanless-Windows-Computer-Portable-Ethernet/dp/B09LQY9KM7
I have that proc in my Daphile laptop; seems to do the job for a USB connected music player. Ah, compute castaway abundance in America. I paid <$40 for it, shipped.
Maybe for a USB music player controller, but as a daily machine? It won't even stream 720p from Bell.
I use it on my bench for the USB scope and as an audio player. The fact it's a POS means I don't care if it blows up 🙂
And it had a touch screen! (should be standard on all computers IMHO)
I use it on my bench for the USB scope and as an audio player. The fact it's a POS means I don't care if it blows up 🙂
And it had a touch screen! (should be standard on all computers IMHO)
My daily driver - the laptop I'm typing on now - it's at the same level CPU wise as WOT's machine, some IA 6k proc. I managed to draw the new "Use Your Illusion II" panel on it, using Fusion 360.
The worst computer I've ever owned has got to be the Acer Aspire One, with the Atom proc. It's so bad, I cant even imagine why they created it to sell. It wont serve as a Daphile music player. It wont play any res video, under any OS. You could probably enter text into Word, or numbers into Excel, or read text only emails - but that's it. I actually got it upgraded and to boot W10, was stupid enough to buy a bigger mem stick for it, but couldnt honestly sell it to anyone. Had it on ebay for a spell - actually told someone who asked not to buy it...
The worst computer I've ever owned has got to be the Acer Aspire One, with the Atom proc. It's so bad, I cant even imagine why they created it to sell. It wont serve as a Daphile music player. It wont play any res video, under any OS. You could probably enter text into Word, or numbers into Excel, or read text only emails - but that's it. I actually got it upgraded and to boot W10, was stupid enough to buy a bigger mem stick for it, but couldnt honestly sell it to anyone. Had it on ebay for a spell - actually told someone who asked not to buy it...
Hi,
the high wattage was also what drove me off intel.
About a year ago I chose the AMD Ryzen7-5800x with integrated grafics ... the Ryzen5-5600x would probabely been almost as fast and cheaper.
Mated with plenty of well matched memory and a Samsung evo SSD the system performs very pleasing and with comparably low power consumption and runs cool wo alot of heat sinking stuff.
Still using Win10, though Win11 would be possible and it nervingly and agressively trying to get installed.
Btw. is there a single proven advantage when changing to Win11 with AMD chips?
jauu
Calvin
the high wattage was also what drove me off intel.
About a year ago I chose the AMD Ryzen7-5800x with integrated grafics ... the Ryzen5-5600x would probabely been almost as fast and cheaper.
Mated with plenty of well matched memory and a Samsung evo SSD the system performs very pleasing and with comparably low power consumption and runs cool wo alot of heat sinking stuff.
Still using Win10, though Win11 would be possible and it nervingly and agressively trying to get installed.
Btw. is there a single proven advantage when changing to Win11 with AMD chips?
jauu
Calvin
In many aspects yes. Youngsters today don't believe that women used to go topless on the beaches 🙂 I was there, lived the time. Awfully happy that there were no smart phones and Internet then.
CPU and I/O are OK but the deal breaker is the eMMC main storage instead of M2 (or sata). The operating system is basically running on a USB stick. Linux and ChromeOS may be happy (with caveats), Windows 11 not at all, expecially when the soldered-on RAM is only 4 Gb of very slow LPDDR4 smartphone memory. This 4Gb LPDDR/64Gb eMMC combination seems to be popular on China-sourced entry-level MiniPCs and small-screen portable PCs, but it does not work on Windows. To compound the issue, BIOS is often locked/non-standard and reflashing the storage with Linux or ChromeOS may not be possible.
I guess that this hardware is powering a popular platform on domestic market, and they just replaced the original optimized OS with Windows 10/11 to increase the appeal for western markets, creating basically a e-waste product.
The fact is that the top of the line cpus has the best silicon so it takes to undervolting usually the best. This has an enormous effect on the power draw. Also, in the Bios there are lots of settings to reduce or increase the power level. Usually called Tau and max boost timer etc. Theres also settings for reducing max multiplier. For example its stock 52, then just choose 50=5Ghz and it uses perhaps 30percent less energy.
For me I go the other way around in games. Many people today say the computer is really fast but I say the opposite. Intel has been sandbagging a decade and my 10700k is just slightly faster than a old 9900k overclocked. So I overclock and remove all the power limits. Then it finally runs modern fps games without stuttering. This years cpus are a dud too. Its finally until the end of 2023 we'll finally see some good IPC improvements, More's law is dead(YT) say to expect 43percent over Alder lake! Finally some progress from Intel and AMD has once again a job to keep up. If AMD doesnt pull a miracle the next months with AM5 its a new Intel system for me last quarter of 2023.
The best pcs in the world cant even run a medium cost VR goggle today and 0.1percent lows in FPS shooters can drop into 30fps which feels like lagg. The pc performance need to go up 50-100percent to catch up with 240Hz screens and 4k TVs in anything fun.
Also the M.2 Pcie 3 is not that impressive either on random read and write only about 50mb/s, and not the 3500/2000mb/s which is for large files. So I cant wait for Pcie 4 or 5 to finally get some extremely good performance increases to get a snappy Windows experience. But M.2 is still the fastest alternative vs common alternatives.
If you want a small mini pc buy one with zen 2 or 3 and undervolt/underclock that cpu. An 6-8 core Amd cpu in that config has really good efficiency for everything exept gaming. It'll be a beast as a media pc and officework pc.
For me I go the other way around in games. Many people today say the computer is really fast but I say the opposite. Intel has been sandbagging a decade and my 10700k is just slightly faster than a old 9900k overclocked. So I overclock and remove all the power limits. Then it finally runs modern fps games without stuttering. This years cpus are a dud too. Its finally until the end of 2023 we'll finally see some good IPC improvements, More's law is dead(YT) say to expect 43percent over Alder lake! Finally some progress from Intel and AMD has once again a job to keep up. If AMD doesnt pull a miracle the next months with AM5 its a new Intel system for me last quarter of 2023.
The best pcs in the world cant even run a medium cost VR goggle today and 0.1percent lows in FPS shooters can drop into 30fps which feels like lagg. The pc performance need to go up 50-100percent to catch up with 240Hz screens and 4k TVs in anything fun.
Also the M.2 Pcie 3 is not that impressive either on random read and write only about 50mb/s, and not the 3500/2000mb/s which is for large files. So I cant wait for Pcie 4 or 5 to finally get some extremely good performance increases to get a snappy Windows experience. But M.2 is still the fastest alternative vs common alternatives.
If you want a small mini pc buy one with zen 2 or 3 and undervolt/underclock that cpu. An 6-8 core Amd cpu in that config has really good efficiency for everything exept gaming. It'll be a beast as a media pc and officework pc.
SWTPC machine? I started with the SWTPC 6800 system which also ran at 921.6 KHz (half the baud rate generator's clock speed) with 4 K of SRAM. When it grew to take up my entire workbench and dimmed the lights on power up, I upgraded to a DIY SBC based on the MC68HC11 chip set.
How about a real PC for about twice the size that also sips electricity?
I got this Lenovo used on Ebay and upgraded the SSD's. I also installed Windows 11. It feeds and powers a 1920 X 1080 display over USB 3. It is seen here running a virtual modular music synthesizer which "requires" a PC with a dedicated video card to avoid memory and CPU bottlenecks. It is also suggested that a dedicated audio card is used. The Lenovo has neither. It is about twice the size of that joke called a PC, at 7 X 3.5 X .75 inches. It measures in the 29th percentile on Passmark's your computer VS the world's.
The virtual synth program does lots of relatively simple floating point math, then turns the numbers into audio. I loaded a medium complexity patch and had it running for these pictures. The patch hits 55% of max CPU power on peaks while maintaining 30 FPS at 1080P. The audio is perfect with no stuttering however it will go bonkers on a considerably more complex patch. This system does run Ableton Live 11 or FL studio properly as long as I don't try to load up too many software synthesizers or effects. Reverb's and chorus apps tend to eat lots of CPU power. The Lenovo idles at 10.8 watts and sucks 25.3 watts while running the synth. This also includes the power used by the USB 3 15 inch monitor! It will suck about 70 watts when running prime 95 for about two minutes before becoming quite warm and throttling back.
I tried the same synth program with the same patch on my Ryzen 7-3800X machine that uses a GTX1660 video card and outboard Focusrite 8 channel audio. It can eat anything I throw at it, but this patch consumes about 45% of it's CPU power on peaks while maintaining 60 FPS @ 4K. Since the system is loaded down with two monitors and lots of hardware synths, a power measurement is not easily done since the PC itself is in the bottom of the rack with the power strip behind it. This machine measured in the 98th percentile VS the world when I built it, 74th percentile today.
I ran the same thing on my 3 year old "gaming laptop." It runs a core i7-9750H CPU with 16GB of memory and "GTX1660 video." That machine idles at 17 watts and runs the same synth program and patch at 43 watts with 60 FPS @ 1080 video. This machine measured in the 95th percentile when I built it but it's in the 50th percentile today. Passmark updates their VS the world scores often, but all machines were tested with the same V10.1 download that's already a bit out of date, so they would score lower today with a new download.
I ran the same synth on a 4th gen core i7-4790K machine with a GT430 video card with Focusrite USB sound. It was a screamer in its day when overclocked with a better video card. Now running at its specified clock speed it still scores in the 32nd percentile VS the world and runs the synth just fine doing 60 FPS @ 1080 using just 44% of the CPU at max. It does have one significant disadvantage, idle consumption is around 100 watts and it takes 154 watts to run the synth. The core i7-4790K chip only has 4 cores, but is rated 4 GHz, turbo at 4.4 GHz and overclocks well at speeds approaching 5 GHz.
Older CPU chips ran the core in the 1.2 to 2 volt range. It's around 1 volt today with a max spec around 1.5 volts. Smaller geometry chips can tolerate less voltage before frying but draw less current and are a bit slower in the process so the power consumption per core has gone down over the years. Additional cores with better overall performance provide the computer power provided that the operating system assigns the individual threads to the core or cores that can best handle it.
Attachments
My first was the TRS-80 color computer with the 6809 and 32K RAM. Fairly good thing for a young kid to have.
Looking from the picture it's a Thinkcenter from the "M nano" series. It is basically a notebook mainboard in a nice desktop case. There are several variations, including a fanless version with a 6W AMD processor. It is a popular office desktop PC, although less common than the slightly bigger "Tiny" version; the early revisions are now available on the refurbished market. Both Dell and HPe have similar models, slightly cheaper usually. When gaming is not required, it is a good home computer option.
I recently had my desktop pc die.
So dug out my old laptop,
Wired it up to monitor and keyboard and mouse to make it easier to use.
A good 5 minutes to boot up.
Then just really slow with fan revving up constantly under load.
Then I was finding after half an hour it would reset, I assume to due to being too hot.
Boy was i glad to get my desktop sorted.
So dug out my old laptop,
Wired it up to monitor and keyboard and mouse to make it easier to use.
A good 5 minutes to boot up.
Then just really slow with fan revving up constantly under load.
Then I was finding after half an hour it would reset, I assume to due to being too hot.
Boy was i glad to get my desktop sorted.
It is indeed a ThinkCentre M90n-1 nano. There was an Ebay seller in Miami who had 50 or so of them listed. They were "off lease" machines that were about 2 years old at the time. There were a few different versions of them, all with "fresh W10 installs" but the core i7 versions were priced far beyond what I wanted to spend, so I got the core i5 version. It has 8 GB of memory soldered on the MB which is not expandable. This one had a 256 GB Sata SSD in one of the two sockets. One socket is Sata only and it now contains a 2 TB WD blue. The other socket is PCIe or Sata and it now contains a 1 TB PCIe SSD, but I don't remember what brand. I remember having to mess with it to get W10 to install on the PCIe disk for maximum performance.
Ars Technica has just published their System Guide, “GPUs are kind of affordable again” edition.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...de-gpus-are-kind-of-affordable-again-edition/
The budget $428 machine uses the graphics in a Ryzen, despite AM4 being EoL soon. (AM4?? I was just getting used to AM2.) On a $70 mobo, cheap for Gigabyte.
The budget gamer goes to $762, $107 CPU, $275 video card.
Their cost-effective workstation runs $1,296.
Another article details the power/performance trades possible, with peak CPU powers to 241 W.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...sted-top-speeds-or-power-efficiency-pick-one/
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...de-gpus-are-kind-of-affordable-again-edition/
The budget $428 machine uses the graphics in a Ryzen, despite AM4 being EoL soon. (AM4?? I was just getting used to AM2.) On a $70 mobo, cheap for Gigabyte.
The budget gamer goes to $762, $107 CPU, $275 video card.
Their cost-effective workstation runs $1,296.
Another article details the power/performance trades possible, with peak CPU powers to 241 W.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...sted-top-speeds-or-power-efficiency-pick-one/
That's a common fault on old laptops. It is often due to degraded thermal paste on the CPU cooler, and/or grime on the cooler fins and fan. It is a easy fix, usually. The mechanical hard drive becomes slower due to bad sectors reallocation. Just replace with a SSD.
The $545 machine is the exact machine I got from the same seller. I looked at my Ebay history and found that I paid $325 for mine from amccsales in June of 2021. I guess his supplies are getting low. Amcc had a similar Lenovo with a core i7 chip last year but they were about $700 used, so I got the core i5. It usually resides in a portable music making system that runs on batteries so small size and low power was the major decision maker.
There are several discrepancies in the listing for the $189 machine which is larger. The listed CPU is a 7th gen, but the text says 4th gen. The words "brand new" are used, but the machine is used. Brand new applies to the SSD I think. The machine itself is somewhat older and larger than the nano.
If building a PC is an option you could get one of these case / motherboards and stuff an 8th or 9th gen "T suffix" core isomething into it. I have one of these with a core i7-8700T chip in it. It's far faster than the Lenovo, but a bit hungrier. The T series are similar to the standard chips but run at a lower speed for a TDP of 35 watts. If I get a chance I'll fire mine up and make some measurements, but I have "grandkids in the pool" duty today.
https://www.newegg.com/asrock-deskmini-310w/p/N82E16856158062?item=N82E16856158062