Replies to post #41838 on Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[mmoy]

The only thing that amazes me is that people could argue so vigorously for AMD as if they were part time marketeers, but without the sense to realize the most business wise and realistic strategies. AMD is doing the right thing by going after server market share and improving their margins. Hoping for a desktop takeover based on people saving dollars and cents on their electric bill is wishful thinking in the extreme. The alternative would be to once again capitalize on desktop market share while their feature set is still relatively exclusive, but the whole "volume is our vaccine" fiasco that they tried a couple years ago was one of the worst corporate strategies ever devised, and it plumetted AMD's ASPs into the sub-60 dollar range.

Some time ago, many box makers were slapping on the EnergyStar
label onto their PCs as a selling point. In general, I don't
see that label on computers anymore. It would be nice to bring
it back.

For those that think that we have unlimited energy resources: http://www.netcastdaily.com/1experts/2004/exp080704.mp3

I spoke to our IT manager about power issues and they looked
into replacing CRT monitors with FPDs and determined that the
power savings of using LCDs was worth it though everyone
turning off their monitors would also provide about the same
returns at a lower cost. Changing hardware is a lot easier
than changing behaviour and we've replaced a lot of CRTs though
not all. There are eyesight and space advantages too.

If you talk to the average user about power consumption,
someone with a P4 may realize that their desktop in the living
room is noisy and generates a fair amount of heat. But they
won't really mention it as they've gotten used to it though
they may not like it.

California has had power problems going back to 2000/2001
though some of the power companies were to blame for that.
Still, there was a supply crisis. If you have a million
PCs (probably very, very conservative number) in businesses
able to save 10 Watts, you have a small power plant.

Prices for electricity go up exponentially as demand increases
(at least they did when I watched wholesale prices in 2000)
so a general push to CPUs that use less power would be a good
thing for California.

Now Windows-XP and power management is a pain as the default
for desktops is to use a mode that generally doesn't go into
the lower power mode.

I upgraded a PIII SpeedStep from ME to XP and had a lot of
problems getting SpeedStep to work. ME left the BIOS settings
as you set them. XP decided it was smarter and set them for
you. Even if you set them in the BIOS.

I will have to do some experimenting with CPUID and the power
management stuff on this machine.

[jhalada]

wbmw,

DBS is a funny thing. It's absolutely essential for the mobile space because people value battery life, and it's becoming a big deal in the enterprise space because it arguably saves on power in dense compute areas with a lot of daily usage. However, it is almost moot on the desktop, where few people outside of the enthusiast community use their computer intensively enough to worry about a larger electric bill, and the things plug into the wall, so battery life is a non-issue.

What are you talking about? Complete opposite of what you posted is true.

The demand based power management, such as Cool'N'Quiet provides the biggest benefit when system is under light load, or idle, which is how most people (except gamers).

Under heavy load (when running a 3D game) system is running at 100% clock speed and voltage most of the time, therefore C'N'Q (or DBS) is irrelevant.

Hoping for a desktop takeover based on people saving dollars and cents on their electric bill is wishful thinking in the extreme.

AMD has not been able to exploit this (marketing-wise) but saving power (in addition to saving dollars) is very much a hot button issue among many people, even more so than saving dollars.

Joe