[mythtv-users] Brand new hardware

[David Rees]

Hamish Moffatt wrote, On 6/11/2004 9:01 PM:
> On Thu, Jun 10, 2004 at 01:13:56PM +1000, Clyde Stubbs wrote:
> 
>>CPU - Athlon XP2000+ or faster, but remember faster is hotter is noisier.
> 
> Not necessarily. As technology improves, faster processors come out that
> draw less power. Looking at the Athlon XP model 6, 8, 10 and "10 with
> 256kb cache" data sheets on amd.com:
> 
> XP 2600+ (model 10) has typical power of 53.7W.
> XP 2400+ (model 10 with less cache) has typical power of 53.7W.
> XP 3000+ (model 10) has typical power of 58.4W.
> XP 2200+ (model 8) has typical power of 61.7W.
> XP 2100+ (model 6) has typical power of 64.3W.
> 
> So you can see that the slowest of these processors (2100+) runs the
> hottest. The 2400+ and 2600+ run the same.
> 
> So power increases with clock speed typically, but clock speed and
> processor speed are not always linked.

A bit more data about AMD processors:

Duron 1800 (model 8) typical power 53W
Duron 1600 (model 8) typical power 48W
Duron 1400 (model 8) typical power 45.5W

So it appears that the XP 2600+ has the best power/watt ratio.  The 
older Athlon Thunderbirds are even worse...

The orginal Durons (model 3) are not too bad, ranging from 24.5w with 
the 600MHz version to 37.5w with the 900Mhz version.

A big surprise are the Athlon 64 processors with the Cool'n'Quiet 
technology.  While they can really suck down the juice when going 
full-bore (89W!), with the proper motherboard and ACPI support they will 
drop CPU voltage and frequency to get down to 22-35W depending on the 
processor.  With a Mobile Athlon 64 CPU, they range from 12-19W in the 
lower power settings, look for the 1.2v core models).  Another option is 
the Athlon XP-M, look for the 1.35v core model.

-Dave