AMD64 models power consumption (Was: Athlon64 board with ECC support?)

[Martin Cracauer]

"David O'Brien" wrote on Mon, Jun 13, 2005 at 12:20:09PM -0700: 
> On Mon, Jun 13, 2005 at 06:16:13PM +0200, Oliver Fromme wrote:
> > I'm currently evaluating possibilities to upgrade to a
> > 64bit system (preferably AMD).  I would like to get a
> > single-processor Athlon64 system, no Opteron, because of
> > heat, noise and power consumption (and price).
> 
> There is no difference between Athlon64 and Opteron with respect to heat,
> noise and power consumption.  There is yes a price difference.

That is not strictly true for the idle case.  The Opterons only got
cool'n'quiet with the E steppings (also switched to 90 nm process),
which are brand new and rare.

Practially every Opteron in common use and currently sold is the C0
stepping or lower (130 nm) which takes up substancially more power
than any of the Athlon 64s in the idle case.

My socket 754 newcastle 3400+ is one of my least power consuming
machines when idle, my work Opterons 248 and 250 use a lot more in the
same situation with the same OS.  If you have two Opterons in one box
this becomes uncomfortable quickly.  If you get a venice or San Diego
core (Athlon 64) you are even better off (in that case idle and busy).

If you pay (much) more, the Opterons come in two grades of low power
models (where the low power is for the busy case).

Regarding fans and prices, I think the fans shipped with Opteron
retail sets are of higher quality (that kit is reltively more
expensive).  The Athlon 64 retail kit fans are very quiet and nice for
about a year (much better than Athlon XP fans were), but then they
start mimicking aircraft carrier flight decks.

Martin
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Martin Cracauer <cracauer at cons.org>   http://www.cons.org/cracauer/
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