R
RusH
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20040217090304.html
30W, say isn't that the Centrino range ?
Pozdrawiam.
30W, say isn't that the Centrino range ?
Pozdrawiam.
T
The little lost angel
But the Centrino is lower than that no? And it doesn't say whether 30W
was the peak draw or some kind of optimized draw ala power saving mode
at 1/3 speed
pPp--
L.Angel: I'm looking for web design work.
If you need basic to med complexity webpages at affordable rates, email me
Standard HTML, SHTML, MySQL + PHP or ASP, Javascript.
If you really want, FrontPage & DreamWeaver too.
But keep in mind you pay extra bandwidth for their bloated code
R
Robert Myers
But the Centrino is lower than that no? And it doesn't say whether 30W
was the peak draw or some kind of optimized draw ala power saving mode
at 1/3 speed
You apparently don't have to shave much off the speed so you can drop
the core voltage to get the power to plunge.
http://users.erols.com/chare/elec.htm
If you drop the Pentium-M to 1.1GHz, it draws only 12W. If you drop
it to 900MHz, it drops to 7W, and it will blow away a Via C3 drawing
comparable power.
RM
T
Tony Hill
A little bit, 24.5W TDP for the 1.5 - 1.7GHz Pentium-M.
And it doesn't say whether 30W
was the peak draw or some kind of optimized draw ala power saving mode
at 1/3 speed
I'm pretty certain that it's TDP, though AMD is a tiny big vague on
the exact details. When they contrast them to the full-power Opterons
they use the TDP (89W) for those parts. Of course, it won't have the
dynamic power saving features of the Pentium-M (I'm not even sure if
they support "Cool 'n Quiet" on these chips), so the difference in
average power consumption between the two will probably be higher than
the 5.5W TDP difference would indicate.
Also the chip only runs at 1.4GHz, so it's not a top-end performance
part, but it's still pretty impressive. Should make a great chip for
dual-processor blades.
R
RusH
Tony Hill said:
So there goes Robert Myers Pentium-M fetish
, It's Opty EE time now.Pozdrawiam.
F
Felger Carbon
Robert Myers said:
"Blow away"? Could you quantify that, Robert? 5% faster? 50%
faster?
And what is the price of the two chips in question, so we can judge
bang/buck? Seriously, I'd like to know.
R
Robert Myers
More like 2x faster.
I did a quick mini-study. Suppose, I asked myself, you could get C3
ITX board real cheap and you didn't much care about how they were
assembled. What could you accomplish for an inexpensive, low power
system?
As I discovered, the answer is not much. You don't even have to go to
Intel's latest and greatest. Tualatin Celerons at comparable power
were at least 2x better than VIA cores running at the same power in
the benchmarks I looked at. The discrepancy was so bad that I decided
that there was nothing there worth wasting anybody's time on.
The only practical consequence of my little study for the world at
large (who, in general, woouldn't be interested in stacking up a dozen
or more ITX boards), is that the C3 looks like a bad choice for just
about any application except where you are rubbing the Buffalo off
every nickel, like the Walmart boxes.
That is to say, if you wanted to build (say), a very quiet, fanless
system, a low speed, low voltage low power chip reasonably current
chip from Intel or AMD would stomp a C3 (2x or so) in performance.
The only savings you would see would be that the CPU would be about
half as expensive (but the supporting hardware wouldn't come down
comparably in price, so it's not a good trade to make).
RM
T
Tony Hill
I think you might be missing the point of the C3 partly, it's not just
about power consumption and performance, but also price.
Recently I saw a 1.2GHz VIA C3 processor + a motherboard being sold
together for $5 after rebates. Even before rebates they were selling
for only $55 or so.
This doesn't seem like a big deal for most of the market in Western
Europe and North America, but there are a lot of markets where those
sorts of low-prices start looking real good. VIA has seen a niche and
they are making money by selling to it. I would also guess that this
niche is growing as well.
The price thing shouldn't be overlooked. Plus, don't forget, a lot of
applications just don't need very much processing power. One of the
two systems sitting beside me is a PentiumMMX underclocked down to
133MHz, and it provides more PLENTY of processing power for the tasks
it does. The only time I ever feel the pinch for processing power is
when compiling stuff on that machine, but even then I just start it up
while doing something else and come back an hour or two later. While
a 900MHz Pentium-M might provide MUCH more processing power than any
VIA C3 chips, a 600MHz VIA C3 would provide much more processing power
than I need.
R
RusH
Tony Hill said:
a typo ? 5$ ? or you meant S&H ?
Pozdrawiam.
R
Rob Stow
RusH said:a typo ? 5$ ? or you meant S&H ?
Not necessarily a typo. In some areas it is cheaper for
a vendor to give away product he has been unable to sell
than it is for him to pay special fees for disposing of
electronic/computer waste.
About 4 months ago I picked up a couple of brand-new
Slot 1 PIII motherboards with 600 MHz processors for
basically nothing but the shipping cost. I built
two half decent systems around them using other
obsolete parts I had lying around. Gave them to
a local charity that was still using Pentium systems
running Windows 3.x. Total cost to me was only
about $25 (Canadian) - FedEx for the motherboards
from New York to Moose Jaw, Canada.
?
)-()-(
T
Tony Hill
a typo ? 5$ ? or you meant S&H ?
No typo, just a fairly cheap combo with a mail-in rebate. I think the
cost was $55 or so, but came with a $50 rebate. FWIW I just checked
the site and they are now selling a 1.2GHz C3 with a slightly
different motherboard for $10 after rebates:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicat...ails.asp?EdpNo=146908&Sku=S452-1002&CatId=190
The motherboard looks like an el-cheapo PC Chips model using a VIA
chipset (previous deal had a board with a SiS chipset). Still, it has
integrated video, NIC, sound, etc. Basically this board + processor,
a cheap micro-ATX case, a hard drive and some memory and you're off
the races (albeit in the slow lane). A quick search through
TigerDirect's site shows that you can get all of this for a total cost
of $110 + s/h. If you bought used equipment you might be able to get
close to the same performance level for the same price, but not
easily.
R
RusH
Tony Hill said:
PLE is a total crap, but aside that HOW the hell they are able to sell
so low ? Mail-in rebate ? Meybe tigerdirect is building 'el cheapo "I
buy crap hardware" database ?
Pozdrawiam.
R
Robert Myers
Good deal for somebody learning Linux from the command line interface,
or maybe grandma doing her (text) e-mail.
If the linux neophyte decides he's learned enough at the command
prompt and starts gdm, he may be in for an unpleasant surprise. If
the neophyte knows what he's doing (but then, he's a neophyte, isn't
he) he'll dump Nuatilus and the default window manager for xnc and
some lightweight window manager. Otherwise, he will decide that Linux
is a POS.
Similarly, when grandma starts shooting pictures of the cat and
grandkids back and forth, she'll be less than thrilled.
Either could save themselves alot of misery by boosting for a $50
processor from AMD or Intel, but the C3 is probably soldered-down on
the board you found.
RM
T
Tony Hill
Most of the time, if Linux is slow it's because of insufficient
memory. Certainly KDE won't fly, but it will run, and probably run
better than a top-end PC from only 5 yeas ago.
Perhaps, but if grandma's previous system was a Pentium 166MMX that
she used at work a couple years back (that was standard fare for many
office employees until the late 90's), it'll be pretty speedy.
Processor is indeed soldered on the board, and the same site does list
some AMD Duron motherboard + processor combo's for only about $70.
Mind you, that extra $60 over this system represents more than a 50%
increase in price. Almost certainly worth it for most of us in North
America or western Europe, and I do believe that VIA's niche is quite
limited here. However there are a lot of countries in the world where
$60 US is as much (or more) than the average adult earns in a month.
Admittedly, most people in the poorest of countries are probably going
to opt to feed themselves and their families well before they look to
buy a computer, however there are plenty of places in the world where
saving $50 or $60 on a computer is very worthwhile, even if the result
is lower performance.
Anyway, my point is simply that VIA knows it's niche in the computer
world. It's a very small niche in North America and Europe, but it
does exist. It's a larger niche in other countries and VIA is making
money selling processors into these markets.
T
Tony Hill
Sure it's crap, but at least it's cheap crap that should suffice for
many applications these days. I'm not sure that I would particularly
recommend it since the motherboard will probably end up having more
than it's share of driver problems (the previous deal with the SiS 630
chipset based board was much better IMO, better video and I have more
faith in SiS' drivers), but for someone who's real tight on cash I'm
sure there are worse options out there.
Yup, $63 price minus $53 mail-in rebate. Of course very few people
ever send mail-in rebates back (not surprising given the fact that
companies seem to go out of their way to make it a pain in everyone's
ass to do so, not to mention the 6-8 week (or more) wait to get your
money back). Even before the rebates though it's pretty darn cheap.
Probably, this is obviously bargain basement kind of equipment, but as
mentioned above, at least it's selling for bargain basement prices.
Now, mind you, TigerDirect does sell quite a bit of halfway-decent
quality equipment as well (your standard brand names at least). I've
never bought from them myself (ncix.com has cheaper prices and better
selection for Canadians such as myself), I just found the deal rather
interesting.
There is a place in this world for the bargain basement, even in
computer hardware.
C
chrisv
Tony Hill said:
Well, when the rebate is 80% of the total price, most people will send
it in.