[gentoo-user] Re: new machine : CPU : AMD FX-4100 ?

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 30/07/12 07:28, Michael Mol wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 29, 2012 at 11:55 PM, Nikos Chantziaras <realnc@×××××.com> wrote:
>> On 30/07/12 06:08, Michael Mol wrote:
>>>
>>> On Sun, Jul 29, 2012 at 10:50 PM, Nikos Chantziaras <realnc@×××××.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On 30/07/12 05:23, Philip Webb wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> i5-2550K & FX-4100 both use  95 W
>>>>> (some of the more costly AMDs use  125 W ).
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Note that power savings are not important if you're not using a laptop.
>>>> CPU
>>>> power savings on a desktop don't translate to any relevant amount of
>>>> money
>>>> on your electricity bills.  This is because neither of those CPUs really
>>>> use
>>>> 95W.  That's just the thermal upper limit.
>>>
>>>
>>> To be fair, power savings are relevant if you're concerned about your
>>> electric bill, or if you're concerned about heat management in your
>>> system.
>>>
>>> Consider my dual E5345...leaving that on 24x7 appears to cost me about
>>> 90USD/mo.
>>
>>
>> CPU power savings will transform that into a 89.9USD/mo ;-)  That's what I
>> mean.  It's not worth much.  It helps quite a bit with laptop battery life.
>> But for desktops, it doesn't do anything too useful.
>
> If you really want the hard numbers, check out some place like Tom's
> Hardware or Phoronix. I forget which does the power consumption
> measurements. At some of the hardware review blogs, you can get
> numbers on idle vs full-load power consumption, as measured at the
> wall. The difference truly is striking.

When you have full load, the CPU won't clock down.  So nothing saved 
there.  If you don't have full load, the clock-down doesn't save much 
compared to max clocks while idle.

I hope you're getting the logic here :-)