On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 9:32 PM, Dale <[email protected]> wrote: > Michael Mol wrote: >> On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 8:21 PM, Dale <[email protected]> wrote: >>> The point made about producing less heat with the smaller nm sounds >>> reasonable tho. >> Less heat with the smaller nm, but only if all other things remain equal! >> >> In reality, manufacturers use additional margin within their TDP to >> improve the product otherwise. Perhaps they increase the clock speed >> somewhat. Perhaps they increase the amount of on-die cache. Perhaps >> they reduce the instruction pipeline. >> >> AMD, for example, has tended to maintain keep something in the market >> for a 125W, 95W and 65W TDPs for several years. Each year, the >> functionality that used to be in a 125W TDP processor shows up in a >> 95W TDP processor, and the latest 125W TDP processor beats the pants >> off of last years'. >> > > > I found this to be plain weird when I built my new rig. My old rig was > a AMD 2500+ single core system with 2Gbs of ram. It pulled about 400 > watts or so for normal desktop use. A little more when compiling and > such. My new rig, AMD Phenom II 955 with four cores and 16Gbs of ram. > Heck, just a single core is much faster than my old rig. Thing is, the > new rig pulls less than half of what the old one pulls, WHILE > COMPILING. I can't recall the nm part but I think the CPU I got for my > old rig was supposed to be for laptop use. > > AMD sure is getting more efficient as you point out. I still wonder > where we will be in 10 years. Just how fast can they make them? > > Dale > > :-) :-) > > -- > I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how > you interpreted my words! > >
Definitely OT but that's surely not because of the CPU, or at least not only the CPU. Many people highly underestimate the value of a good and efficient power supply, which can make a huge difference. This is one of those things that companies such as Dell like to cut costs on because the average user neither sees the PSU specifications nor knows enough to ask about it. Of course, efficiency within the entire computer helps, but a bad power supply can really hurt your electric bill. On topic, AMD is definitely getting more efficient but mostly because that's where the technology is headed in general -- Intel seems to do a better job at efficiency per core but they also use hyper threading, whereas AMD is putting their bets into more physical cores. Yes, I'm going to say it again, but AMD is what you want for multitasking. They are switching their goals from high-performance cores to highly-concurrent CPUs, GPUs, and APUs. Concurrency is the future, it's just hard for a lot of people to think in such a way (and our technology doesn't leverage it to its full capacity). Just look at the human brain: "a maximum of 1,000 nerve impulses per second is possible. However, firing rates of 1 per second to 300-400 per second are more typical."[1] Basically the average neuron seems to be about only 300Hz, but there are trillions upon trillions of synapses within the brain. I don't know about you, but I am, allegedly, a fully-functioning, self-aware, intelligent being. [1] http://www.noteaccess.com/APPROACHES/ArtEd/ChildDev/1cNeurons.htm
