[mythtv-users] Power usage and CPU/GPU combo chips (was Re: 0.25 VAAPI does it work)

[Michael T. Dean]

On 08/07/2012 12:32 PM, fred watt wrote:
> NVidia is an option this is easy to to setup with VDPAU - but it means
> another card in my frontends for me (a) want to keep as low power as
> possible

This is often mentioned, and I have to wonder about it.  It seems to me 
that any "sane" design (in this world where AMD/Intel know a thing or 2 
about gating--more, it seems, than a certain company that makes a 
quad-core ARM chip with 5 cores because they couldn't work out separate 
per-core gating, so it uses either the one-core or the quad core chip at 
any given time :) for a ceepie-geepie (CPGP, or CPU + GPU, or APU, or 
...) would completely shut down power to the on-chip GPU when you 
disable it.  In that case, you'd disable the onboard GPU (and save 
whatever number of watts it normally draws at idle) then add back in a 
PCIe (or whatever) GPU that draws some 6-10W at idle (I think the GT220 
was 7-9W and the GT430 was like 6-8W, IIRC).

Is that the way it works, or am I just dreaming of a perfect world?

(I'm also wondering how to compare power draw of the new combined 
CPU/GPU chips to my old systems that have CPUs and separate--whether 
integrated on the motherboard or discrete on PCIe cards--GPUs.  I'd 
assume that the TDP numbers for the CPGPs would be "inflated" to handle 
the additional heat load from the GPU--where GPUs can put off quite a 
bit of heat when loaded.  Anyone have any info on this?)

>   (b) my front ends are tiny iscsi devices in tiny mini-itx cases

But, obviously, won't help with physical space limits.

Mike