Electrical Costs: the Full Capacity for 24-Hour System
We calculated the electrical costs for a computer running at full capacity for 24 hours. There aren’t a lot of users that use their computers in this manner, but it is still very interesting to look at. An example of this type of usage is distributed computing like Seti@home, or a never-ending conversion of videos for the Web.
The costs change during constant loading of a system: the Phenom does better than the Athlon 64 X2 6400+, and is about $5.39 (3.50 Euros) cheaper per year. To put this in perspective, the Phenom has four cores and the Athlon 64 X2 has two; the Phenom is, in addition to having a lower clock rate, more efficient. And it can be said that the Phenom also performs well on a heavily-burdened server; you get more computing power for less electrical power.