[mythtv-users] silent and low-power: AMD or Intel?

[John Drescher]

On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 8:35 PM, John Drescher <drescherjm at gmail.com> wrote:
>> There may be a difference between a CPU at idle and one working fairly hard.
>> Since most scaling schemes only clock down when the CPU is idle this may be
>> moot.
>>
>> Intuitively it would seem that lowering the voltage and the clock should
>> reduce the power consumption, but if the CPU has to work longer in the
>> reduced consumption mode, the total energy required to perform a specific
>> task would probably stay pretty much the same.
>>

I was in a hurry last night and completely missed a point...

Anyways, one thing I forgot to mention is that I totally agree with
you on your point about running the cpu at a lower frequency to
achieve lower power will probably not save you much because less work
gets done.

I guess I started this talking about how a 4850e chip was the same as
a 5600+ chip that was hardware limited to cut off the top few p-states
so to get the 45W rating instead of the 65W rating without this cap. I
personally would not get the 4850e chip or limit the frequency of my
5600+ chips to achieve the same 45W.

John