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Green challenge

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jtt283   05-26-2009 at 04:36:51 PM

I believe any number of people will be interested in the following build idea.

1. Choose one or more benchmarks. Simple example, "Crysis at 1680x1050, on high settings, with no AA/AF."
2. Define a minimum acceptable level of performance for each benchmark. Simple example, "Average FPS >= 40, Min FPS >= 22."
3. Build a system that can meet the minimum acceptable performance, using the least power possible, measured from the wall; there should also be a fairly low budget.

I'd like to see two systems, one with gaming benchmark[s] and the other with productivity benchmark[s], to target the two distinct audiences for a frugal system.
There are no extra points for exceeding the minimum performance requirements. The machine is either good enough, or it is not. Astute readers will be able to see how and where they can increase performance.

The most meaningful way to measure is probably something like "Total cost (initial hardware plus power to run) for 1000 hours of 'xxx' is $nnn." This places power-saving in context.

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levinas69   05-27-2009 at 10:43:43 PM
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How many hours a day do you game? The extra power for gaming is neither here nor there, unless your computer is on 24/7 (or some significant portion thereof). Moreover, so long as your gaming system isn't sucking back the ergs idle, the main environmental cost is in the making of the components, rohs or not.

That said, I concur with the sentiment. Green computing is crucial. How about articles on making our home file servers greener? The difference between a 7.7W HD and a so-called green drive at 3.6W would seem to be fairly small given the CPU draw and efficiency loss at the PS. Of course, for most of us a home media server probably has some web capability, SSH tunnel capacity (to evade work firewalls) and so forth. How many watts can I get these rigs down to? Does the U2400 have the guts to do zfs in a home environment and run apache? What motherboards sustain this configuration? (As it happens, I do all this on an underclocked P3-500. How's that for reduce, reuse, recycle?)

Cheers,
j.


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amdfangirl   05-31-2009 at 03:42:10 AM
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^ I concur, you are absolutely right about about power consumption.

What I'm interested in is power consumption of HTPCs.

That's my main concern.

It's almost as interesting as seeing my BE-2400 lose to an E7200 in power consumption.

I reckon, we don't need file servers. How's that for being green?

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jtt283   05-31-2009 at 05:20:12 AM
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I'm currently testing my 4850e/HD4670 to see how well it handles Guild Wars along with a Teamspeak server. It is on 24/7.

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amdfangirl   05-31-2009 at 07:16:34 AM
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Guild Wars server?

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jtt283   05-31-2009 at 03:10:11 PM
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No. The Guild Wars game client (I still play it a lot after > 3 years), and the machine is also running a [little used] Teamspeak server for my guild.

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amdfangirl   06-01-2009 at 12:54:39 PM
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Wha?

Me not comprehending.

Must be the fact I despise MMORPGs.

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jtt283   06-01-2009 at 08:09:58 PM
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Guild Wars is the only MMORPG I play; there's no monthly fee to keep playing. GW2 will be the same. The monthly fee is a big reason I never played World of Warcrack.
Anyway, the machine is certainly adequate for common tasks. I'm not sure it has quite the oomph for even Guild Wars. FPS is very variable, sometimes dipping into the teens. Amount of eye candy doesn't seem to matter much, so I don't think it is the GPU.
We'll see. The game is playable at 1440x900.

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