"Jeff Liebermann" wrote in message
news
On Mon, 30 Aug 2010 05:35:00 -0400, JW wrote:

On Fri, 27 Aug 2010 20:19:44 -0700 Jeff Liebermann
wrote in Message id: :

I don't believe it. The winner of the power hogging consumer CPU
contest was the DEC/Intel Alpha 21364 (EV79):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_21364
which burned 155 watts. Itanium II came close with 130 watts (per
core).

Check again.
http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id...ec-codes=SLBMX
185W! Gotta love that price as well.

I stand corrected.
http://techreport.com/discussions.x/18445
Some of the reader comments are rather interesting. Still, with any
of these "powerful" processors, a conventional air cooled machine is
going to have a very hot breath and a rather large power supply. I
just don't see this kind of power dissipation in a "dedicated game
machine". Measuring the AC mains power consumption should settle the
matter.

--
Jeff Liebermann


Have you any idea just how much processing power it takes to run a
user-interactive story in real time, and then to 3D render the graphics in
real time ? Do you think that they rate the 12v PSU for 23.5 amps in one
version, and 32 amps in the other, for fun ? Those are not real questions,
because I know full well when you stop and think about it, you know the
answers, Jeff.

I've just looked at the rating plate on the bottom of one of the cases, and
it is 240v (nominal UK line voltage) at 1.8 amps. I make that a maximum
input power of around 430 watts. It's a switching PSU, so I reckon that we
can rate that as being at the very worst 80% efficient, so that's still 345
watts potentially going somewhere. I'm prepared to go with 45 watts into
ancillary circuitry on the board, which still leaves around 300 watts going
somewhere. Perhaps I'm being naive, but my best guess is that it's
disappearing into the two bloody great BGAs which the manufacturers are
trying their utmost to heatsink. If you try to run one of these machines
with the heatsinking not in place, it goes into thermal protect in about 5
seconds - and all it's doing then is booting. The heatplates on the BGAs are
at this point hot enough to take your fingerprints off ...

Nope, I'm pretty sure that these two puppies are good for 150 watts apiece,
when the machine is doing some real work.

Arfa