The difference between Sleep and Power Options

[micky]

The difference between Sleep and Power Options

If I don't do anything at the end of a session witn XP SP3, and in a
while, the power option settings I have cause the monitor to black
out, and cause the harddrives to stop spinning, is that the same
effect that putting the computer to Sleep has?

The only other possibility I can think of is the CPU It's a Pentium
4, 2.4 GHz, I don't think that is dual core, and I don't know if
sleeping lowers the amount of current it uses, in a way that just
leaving it doesn't.

Thanks.

 

[Paul]

The difference between Sleep and Power Options

If I don't do anything at the end of a session witn XP SP3, and in a
while, the power option settings I have cause the monitor to black
out, and cause the harddrives to stop spinning, is that the same
effect that putting the computer to Sleep has?

The only other possibility I can think of is the CPU It's a Pentium
4, 2.4 GHz, I don't think that is dual core, and I don't know if
sleeping lowers the amount of current it uses, in a way that just
leaving it doesn't.

Thanks.

Why not get a Kill-a-Watt meter and measure it ?

That's the quickest way to figure it out, and we
can't then argue with the results. Plus, you end up with
a meter you can use to identify other power hogs,
such as all those wall adapters you use. This gadget
can be used to monitor all sorts of stuff.

This one is about $20. It uses the same technology
as a digital power meter on the side of a house. And
should do a better job than my $100 multimeter (which
cannot handle the non-sine waveform of an ATX PSU).
If it wasn't for the existence of household digital
power metering technology, designs like this would not
exist, or you'd pay a couple hundred for them.

http://www.amazon.com/P3-Internatio...F8&qid=1377418922&sr=8-1&keywords=kill+a+watt

*******

And, a system is really asleep, if you no longer
hear fans spinning. Any power state that truly
saves power, the fans are off. That's how you
know your adjustment efforts are paying off.

S3 Suspend to RAM and S4 Hibernate, are "fans off".
S1 Standby, the fans are still running. S1 isn't
very good. It is barely better than the
computer running and sitting idle in the desktop.

*******

There is a thread here on using the "dumppo.exe" utility.
This is good for cases where you're having trouble
getting into S3. Typically, a user mis-adjusts the
BIOS standby setting, and then the OS needs to be
"repaired" with an override later, after the BIOS
setting is corrected.

http://forums.pcper.com/showthread....ssue/page3&p=1825058&postcount=31#post1825058

Paul