On Tue, 2009-06-16 at 21:26 +0200, Per Jessen wrote:
Average power consumption on the desktop is up, even though efficiency is up too. RAM often now requires heatsink cooling, another sign of increased power consumption, on top of generally increased RAM requirements of newer software. I don't the efficiency of a desktop PC is really much of a topic. When we're talking about computational power per unit-of-energy, it's not very useful to talk about a system that is idling and in power-save mode most of the time. In fact, I have to wonder if average power consumption on the desktop really is up - I would have thought power-saving measures have become so much better in just the last 2-3 years, that average consumption would have gone down.
We have ~300 workstations/desktops and we measured power consumption as part of a cost analysis. Newer desktops used less power, period, no-contest. To get useful results you need a meter that can record power consumption over time (several days), just using a watt-meter gives meaningless results. Note that we are talking about 'normal' business-class desktops and not some gaming hot-rod which. And speaking of power: older CRTs vs. LCD is also a no-contest issue.
Power consumption should figure into the equation whether to take equipment out of service, not just whether kernels still support old hardware (thread topic). Well, the openSUSE kernel CPU support issue has long been cleared up - Pentium I's are still supported, period. Wrt power consumtion, I completely agree - except my experience is that modern systems use less energy.
Our dual-quad servers consume less power than some of the [very] old dual PIIIs we buried out behind the sheds. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org