From: user@example.net   
      
   Wim Cossement wrote:   
   > J.O. Aho wrote:   
   >> Wim Cossement wrote:   
   >>> J.O. Aho wrote:   
   >>   
   >>>> When it comes to the number of cores depends on how much larger you   
   >>>> want your   
   >>>>  power bill to be. As we have working SMP in Linux, 2+ is ok.   
   >>> I don't have to pay it but it would be nice to have something that is   
   >>> capable of using less power when it's not needed.   
   >>   
   >> There is the low power version of some of the AMD 64bit CPUs,   
   >> Tomshardware   
   >> made a test and got to the conclusion that even if they do use less   
   >> power in   
   >> idle mode than normal CPUs, they took longer time to perform the task,   
   >> whihc   
   >> resulted in that in the long run, you didn't save much power or even   
   >> used more   
   >> power by using those low power CPUs (of course it depends much on how   
   >> high %   
   >> of idle time you have).   
   >   
   > Thats weird, guess they fucked it up then...   
   > But I can be pretty idle at times you know! :-)   
      
   I don't think they did fuck it up, it's just how physics works   
      
   If you have a slower CPU, it needs a longer time to use 100% CPU Power to   
   perform the encoding of a movie, than a fast CPU.   
      
   slow CPU: 1u - 10u   
   fast CPU: 3u - 20u   
      
   Say the encoding takes 10 minutes for the fast CPU while the slow it takes an   
   hour, for this pseudo-scientific we use units per minute   
      
   slow has 2 hours of rest and 1 hour of full work = 720u   
      
   fas has 2.83 hours of rest and 0.167 hour of full work = 710u   
      
   of course if it's 3 hours of complete idle time, then things looks different,   
   but it's seldom that you have a CPU that is idle all the time. It should only   
   be idealistic if the CPU has low loads a few times now and then, but when it's   
   pressed to use full power it starts to consume more as it has to work a lot   
   longer.   
      
      
   --   
      
     //Aho   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)