[geeks] New Intel Atom-based barebones system

[Jonathan Groll]

On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 06:38:01PM -0400, Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> On Aug 15, 2008, at 10:59 , Mark wrote:
> 
> >>I am just a little bit disappointed that the whole 
> >>motherboard and  chip
> >>consume about 41W of power when the procesor only takes 
> >>4W of that  - I
> >>suspect it may be better with future Atom's though.
> >
> >That's ruthlessly efficient compared to my Mac Pro, I 
> >think that  pulls off about 500-600W (4 65nm cores, 4 
> >HDDs, 1 GF8800GT and 4  fans) ;)
> 
> I have the same machine, and I am pulling 221 watts right 
> now with a  couple dozen programs loaded, so I'd say you 
> are exaggerating a bit on  power usage.
> 
> You can get several programs that will read wattage sensors 
> in the Pro  and report how much juice each CPU, memory 
> stick, power supply, etc  are sucking up.
> 
> If I fire up BOINC and push the CPUs a bit more, I run up 
> to 250 watts.
> 
> Unfortunately, I don't have a program which will print Mac 
> power usage  to a console so I can see how much it eats 
> when running apps where I  cannot see the little power 
> usage widget.
> 
> 221 watts is less power than my Opteron PC, which is just 
> dual-core,  and not as fast, so I don't really see the Mac 
> Pro as that much of a  hog when you consider the power it 
> has.
> 
> Also, it goes to sleep instantly and perfectly, while my PC 
> has never  quite mastered that, so the PC eats a lot more 
> power overall than my  Mac does.
> 
> Just as a point of reference, my "Wintendo" can eat 400 
> watts playing  Oblivion or Neverwinter Nights 2.
> 
It would be most interesting to know if these power consumption
figures tally up with those reported by an ammeter or kill-a-watt at
the wall. Do they?

Obviously we can expect some power loss from the PSU, but otherwise it
would be a good test of the accuracy of the onboard sensors.

Cheers,
Jonathan