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AMD power use between idle and load?

Dutch Guy

Dutch Guy

Dutch Guy

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18 Oct 2002
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Amsterdam,The Netherlands
We received a big electricity bill a few weeks ago where we had to pay €700 extra and with the high electricity price today (€0.19 a kWh) I am looking for ways to reduce power use.

The computer is on 24/7 and up until recently was running Seti@home all the time.

But does anyone know the difference in power use between idle and 100% load on a AMD X-2 3800+ @ 2500Mhz, 1.59V without using Cool&Quiet????
 
Found this

AMD X2 3800+ (stock w/CNQ)
97w / 149w - idle / load
AMD X2 3800+ @ 2.5ghz
113w / 185w - idle / load

Don't know if that is the cpu wattage, but the difference between idle and load should be what u looking for.
 
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wizardmaxx said:
Don't know if that is the cpu wattage, but the difference between idle and load should be what u looking for
Click to expand...
So the difference between idle and load is ~70W which is less than I was expecting and that is only €10 a month.

deadeyedic30 said:
Sounds more like someone has connected themselves to your supply for "free" electric and you are getting the bill for it.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately as we moved to a bigger house it turned out our estimate was way too low, the usage for a year was 7070kWh which is high but we do use ~18kWh each day.
 
Dutch

Power consumption really depends on the entire system. If u got two optical drives, eight sata hdd's, four 120 high performance fans, etc then pc could get to 600-800w load. That would imo be a power problem if it is running 24/7 at full load.
 
Aside from running SETI@home do you have any reason for running 24/7? Turn off the PC and other equipment when you're not using them. It's the single biggest saving on electricity you can make.

Cool and Quiet won't cut power usage if you're running CPU intensive tasks. When running the BBC's climate modelling software, my CPU speed stays at 100% with Cool and Quiet enabled.
 
Your processor, overclocked from 2Ghz 1.35v to 2.5Ghz 1.59v will use about 175% more power than it would with stock settings, if you take the AMD figure of 89w then your processor would use a max of about 155W. Compare that to your processor running at 1Ghz 1.1v which cool and quiet uses and it's less than 30w. That's a saving of 125w just from the processor when idle compared to overclocked running seti. If you take into account the use of the hard drive, ram ext. when running seti it'll be quite a bit.
 
I can't use C&Q as the CPU is overclocked as I play games and do video edting etc. in the evening.

During the day the computer is used for e-mailing, browsing, downloading, playing MP3's by my girlfriend so it would be an annoyance if the machine has to be turned off and on everytime she wants to do something.

I have been running my computer 24/7 for a couple of years now so it's not that the power use has to be cut significantly.

I have stopped Seti as I was already thinking about stopping anyway and the electricity bill helped me make the choice.

I just did not know what the difference between idle and load was.

Maybe the best thing to do is find a store that sells a Watt meter so I can measure the usage in detail :)
 
Have you tried using RM Clock utility to change your multipliers and voltage from windows? It's got a nice performance on demand feature for everyday use and you can choose maximum performance for when you're playing games.
 
marms said:
Have you tried using RM Clock utility to change your multipliers and voltage from windows? It's got a nice performance on demand feature for everyday use and you can choose maximum performance for when you're playing games.
Click to expand...
Very good tip, I will download and try it ASAP which will be tomorrow evening as I am going to Ajax tonight.
 
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It was too good to be true, to run at 2.5Ghz I need to adjust the VCore in the BIOS to 1.59V and by doing that RM Clock can't change the VCore in Windows :(
 
Good reason for a second machine really, a htpc/server/browser machine that isn't too nippy/high power consumption that has CAQ, onboard gfx. Then your main rig that's overclocked with fast graphics card.

That's what I've done. Can't be bothered to spend 20 minutes changing a slowed down PC upto overclocked one.
 
my pc use to use 200watts idel, but since I got rid of my sli 6800gt cards, for a x1900xt card, its now using 140watt idel.
 
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Once again thanks very much for the link to RM Clock.

It is now running at 4x250Mhz @ 1.24V or 10x250Mhz @ 1.58V, I managed to get the VCore changes working by selecting AUTO in the BIOS and my DFI mobo has a special VID setting that allows 113% Vcore.
 
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