Q: Why don't desktops us mobile cpus?

On Wed, 21 Dec 2005 14:54:22 +1100, "Michael C"
wrote:

"Gargravarr" wrote in message
. ..
Worse case power consumption scenerio:

Athlon 64 3500+ 90 nm 151 Watts
Athlon 64 3500+ 130nm 179 Watts
Pentium P4 3.4 GHz 90nm 236 Watts

Don't seem to nearly the power pigs you think they are huh?

What are you talking about? That's huge compared to 60watts max! I could
literally turn every light on in my entire house with that power!


Single core Athlon 64, around 3800 can be about 100W idle.
Above is either a better endowed system (I didn't read the
parts list) or taken at full load. We can ignore full load
entirely, because at full load, these systems are performing
at a level a 60W system simply cannot, therfore it would be
more appropriate to consider the % of CPU utilization
paralleling the performance level seen with the lower
powered system OR consider underclocking the system.

Too few stop and consider underclocking... if one took an
Athlon 64 and lowered the bus speeds, lowered vDimm and CPU
vCore, then used an otherwise low-spec system it could end
up at 60W fairly easily.

I don't know that it's of any consequence what would power
your lights though- do you walk everywhere? If not, the
energy consumed to power a vehicle could also, easily power
your lights.

On Tue, 20 Dec 2005 17:21:08 -0800, ISOHaven thoughtfully wrote:

Then buy a laptop! Your point still eludes me.

If you put a mobile processor in a DESKTOP case with DESKTOP components
you will NOT save anything. You wont save power and you wont save
money. Not enough to force manufactures to create MORE PRODUCT then they
already are producing.

You keep responding with the same thing. I DON'T NEED THAT MUCH
COMPUTING POWER. Yet you keep failing to answer the same question that
people keep asking you. Even though sometimes it was a "round about"
point.

What are you trying to GAIN by doing this?

"Maybe I should have asked why are there desktop cpus now that there are
mobile cpus"
Sorry, but that's a silly question. So I guess now that we have hybrid
cars why are we still making and buying gas cars?

Yes why aren't they making hybrid engines. And not many people raise
a stink when Ford or GM stop producing a specific model.

Or maybe EVERY car
company should make only Kia Rio's? I think the real problem here is
you are unaware of the statistics of the average PC user. You seem to
think the average user doesn't need any power. I think you are wrong.
More businesses use computers then home users so Intel STILL needs to
make powerful cpu's so like you where told before, why should they make
twice as many cpu's just because you want them to? I think Intel has a
pretty good handle on the market and I think they know a little more
about what they should or shouldn't do then you.

I was in a Forbes 50 corporation and they never bought bleeding edge
computers just slightly above average computers when they had to replace
aging equipment every 2-3 yrs. A friend of mine just bought one
out-of-date powerful company computer for his daughter, PII 450, 384ram,
20g hd, cdrom. Yep real powerful.


"So if Intel/AMD stopped making "desktop" cpus and only manufactured
"mobile" cpus what would be the loss?" Actually the real question would
be, what would be the gain? Also maybe YOU don't give a damn about
power (horsepower) but many of us do so I would kindly appreciate it if
you NEVER become the world dominator on cpu's and take away my consumer
right to have a very powerful system just because you are on some green
peace trip.

Buy an IBM, Sparc or Amdahl for all I care. You keep ranting about
powerful cpus and missing the point about manufacturing 2 cpu types for
the same consumers home/office non-mobile vs. mobile.

If IBM and AMD dropped the "desktop" cpus and only manufactured "mobile"
cpus no one would care as long as the cpus perform. The NGs are unique
because NG groupies are more PC savvy than Joe or Jane Average.
The hardware NG groupies know more about hardware than some tech
support people and pay more attention to components. Even so not to
many are dropping $1000 every 6 mo. just to get the newest cpu or graphics
card.

On Wed, 21 Dec 2005 14:57:05 +1100, "Michael C"
wrote:

"ISOHaven" wrote in message
. ..
...and lets not leave out the fact that using a mobile cpu means less
processing power so it's going to take the cpu LONGER to compute thus
using MORE energy then you might think. This is why a real world study
would have to be done and we'll get nowhere here discussing this.

A mobile CPU will use less power at 100% than if an idle P4 (not in power
saving mode).

Michael


So the real key here is not to choose a mobile CPU, it's to
avoid a P4.

There's going to be two camps mostly, those that do the
traditional low-requirement tasks such as surfing, office,
email, etc, who can continue using their Coppermine P3 era
system and those CPUs at lower speeds can consume under 20W,
even less at idle. Then there are those who want, need,
whatever-you'd-call-it, the max performance their budget
will allow, and for those people the mobile CPU, and further
the entire platform optimizied similarly for low power, is
not the option they want, especially if it isn't any
cheaper.

I'm not against low-powered systems, but when it comes down
to it, we can't decide what someone else buys in a free
society so long as it's legal. Additional taxation is
generally frowned upon as well, so what is the incentive
going to be? Those who want the lower energy bill for
finanical reasons might tend to just keep using their old,
low powered system that does use under 75W (typically).
Much commontion is made about the fastest speeds of P4 but
how many people do you know that have that particular CPU?

The deterrent will be what is slowly occuring- energy costs
go up. They haven't risen high enough yet to prompt many
people to seek these power saving measures. Offhand I'd
estimate (not having tried to take a count) that fewer than
1 in 10 homes I've been in, in the past few years were using
CCFL lights, at least not in any area that I saw, noticed.
I believe I would have noticed as I do tend to from the
slightly off-color of CCFL.

"kony" wrote in message
...
Single core Athlon 64, around 3800 can be about 100W idle.
Above is either a better endowed system (I didn't read the
parts list) or taken at full load. We can ignore full load
entirely, because at full load, these systems are performing
at a level a 60W system simply cannot, therfore it would be
more appropriate to consider the % of CPU utilization
paralleling the performance level seen with the lower
powered system OR consider underclocking the system.

It's probably worth considering the power used on average for a range of
users. If a CPU is slow it might cause the user to be at the PC longer.


Too few stop and consider underclocking... if one took an
Athlon 64 and lowered the bus speeds, lowered vDimm and CPU
vCore, then used an otherwise low-spec system it could end
up at 60W fairly easily.

It would be interesting to see how a that compared to a pentium M in both
power and speed.

I don't know that it's of any consequence what would power
your lights though- do you walk everywhere? If not, the
energy consumed to power a vehicle could also, easily power
your lights.

The power in a bog stock corolla could power energy saving lights for 100
houses. If cars in general weren't so inefficient it could easily do 300
houses.

Michael

On Wed, 21 Dec 2005 14:59:18 +1100, Michael C thoughtfully wrote:

"jaster" wrote in message
news
On Tue, 20 Dec 2005 11:29:45 -0800, ISOHaven thoughtfully wrote:

I think a direct answer to your question is: The reason they don't
make very many mobile CPUs for desktops is because there is NO MARKET
for it. Take a look around, is anyone else asking this question? No.

Well someone has to be first.

Actually you're far from the first. I've heard of mobile cpus being used
in desktops a few times before and from my experience by the time I've
heard of it the idea is newish but not that new.

Michael

Yes probably as you or someone else posted the great links to Newegg and
Mini-itx. It's just that I wonder who is servered by non-server,
non-workstation "desktop" cpus when many of us can use high-end "mobile"
cpus pricing aside. Or why haven't Intel and AMD just dropped "desktop"
cpu development and manufacturing replacing them with "mobile" technology
cpus. Motherboard manufacturers make boards to fit cpus not the other way
around.

On Wed, 21 Dec 2005 00:10:11 GMT, jaster
wrote:


You haven't been in the newsgroups much otherwise you'd have read all the
posts about heating and noise. Laptops don't seem to have those issues.

They certainly do. People just accept it. Unquestionably I
can hear when the fans kick on, on my laptop. It then
becomes louder than any fans on the desktop system I'm
currently typing on, though it's mostly due to the higher
RPM and small fan. Even so, the laptop heat issue is
another kind, that of only making the reductions to the
extent of it being necessary for the thing to work at all in
a small battery powered form factor. They don't really care
what the CPU uses from a 'green' aspect.




My money and computing is irreverent as to why AMD and Intel continue to
produce "desktop" cpus.

Why does it bother you? You CAN choose a Via Eden if you
want one.


I understand for use in workstations and servers
but not for Joe and Jane Average.

Ah, so you feel you should decide what someone else does?
Ironically enough I somewhat agree, that some people need
babysitters to retrain their behavior when it comes to
pollution causing activities, but that doesn't mean it's
realistic to ponder over it, as if that would do any good.
Posting the topic here also does little good, perhaps you
should be petitioning the motherboard and CPU manufacturers
to produce more of the products you want.

If Intel only produces "mobile" type
cpus everyone would buy "mobile" cpus and motherboards.

So you feel fit to force this on everyone?
What about that "next" guy that comes along and decides that
someone you want, isn't good for other people so you'll just
have to do without (whatever)? It seems easy enough to
suggest until that kind of principle starts effecting your
desires rather than those of others.

I don't feel they should devote resoures to a designated
"mobile CPU, but rather the more direct approach, to make
them ordinary desktop CPUs, simply lower power consuming
ones. The catch- they won't be able to just ramp up clock
speed for the gains, it's going to cost more per each CPU,
and designs will probably not last as long either so there's
more development costs as well.

There is still a very real next-killer-app on the distant
horizon for PCs, virtual reality, and sooner than that,
effective voice-command control. Don't expect the industry
to concede performance in favor of power until these
milestones are met, unless it just happens to coincide with
their agenda, like continuing to use passive cooling (so
ultimately, CPU TDP can't go up much more from what it is
right now unless something exotic like nanotubes or other
revolutionary cooling methods became cost-effective).



Youngsters don't remember that early PCs were developed and
manufactured only for office use and enthusiasts who could obtain PCs
until Flight Simulator, Sinclair and Apple opened the market.

Anyone with internet access can Google for "low power" or
"efficient" or whatever the catch-phrase and find
information about alternative platforms. If they have that
goal the information is out there. They don't have that
goal.

"kony" wrote in message
...
So the real key here is not to choose a mobile CPU, it's to
avoid a P4.

To find something that's lower power isn't it?

There's going to be two camps mostly,

Not everything is black and white. There's also those people like myself who
need something pretty quick but don't have to have the latest and greatest.
Not everyone plays games or spends their days ripping dvds.

those that do the
traditional low-requirement tasks such as surfing, office,
email, etc, who can continue using their Coppermine P3 era
system and those CPUs at lower speeds can consume under 20W,

Have you actually checked that? Why do they have 250W power supplies if they
use 20watts?

I'm not against low-powered systems, but when it comes down
to it, we can't decide what someone else buys in a free
society so long as it's legal. Additional taxation is
generally frowned upon as well, so what is the incentive
going to be? Those who want the lower energy bill for
finanical reasons might tend to just keep using their old,
low powered system that does use under 75W (typically).
Much commontion is made about the fastest speeds of P4 but
how many people do you know that have that particular CPU?

The incentive would be a system that has similar speed but much less power
usage and not much greater cost. Plenty of people do buy based on the
environment, it might be hard to imagine if you don't yourself but plenty
do. Especially seeing the power usage of P4s and AMDs has been a hot topic
in the last few years. Personally a lower powered CPU gives me the
impression that it will be more stable also. That's possibly a total load of
******** but plenty of product has been sold based on impressions.

Does anyone here know the actual performance difference? Someone told me the
mobile CPUs were quite fast but I haven't had that confirmed.

The deterrent will be what is slowly occuring- energy costs
go up. They haven't risen high enough yet to prompt many
people to seek these power saving measures. Offhand I'd
estimate (not having tried to take a count) that fewer than
1 in 10 homes I've been in, in the past few years were using
CCFL lights, at least not in any area that I saw, noticed.
I believe I would have noticed as I do tend to from the
slightly off-color of CCFL.

On Tue, 20 Dec 2005 23:58:42 GMT, jaster
wrote:

On Tue, 20 Dec 2005 20:04:42 +0000, kony thoughtfully wrote:

Exactly why cpu and motherboard manufacturers should consider mobile
cpus.

Actually that is exactly why they wouldn't, because they're (desktops) not
running off battery power the vast majority of the time.


I think you're stuck in a "it's a desktop stupid" line of thought.

To a certain extent, yes... I am in favor of lower-powered
CPUs, and generally advise such alternatives when people
makes posts about building a fileserver or something else
that needs not have modern performance levels, but to be
frank I don't see the benefit of this argument. Focusing on
lesser evils won't do much good if the greater ones aren't
tackled first. There are far more energy hungry devices out
there than the typical CPU in Joe Average's system.


Maybe
I should have asked why are there desktop cpus now that there are mobile
cpus.

One possibility is that yields are higher. Another is that
it's inherant that they can run faster, all else being equal
(which is not quite the case currently as P4 is long in the
tooth but Pentium-M caught a few by surprise).

I think there is a huge market for desktops. Some people are
making laptops their next PC, some even buy docking stations and monitors
for their laptops.

So if they buy a laptop with it's inherantly lower expected
lifespan, and other supplimentary products, the cost is
higher initially and replacement inverval is lower. When
has it ever not been about cost?

So if Intel/AMD stopped making "desktop" cpus and only
manufactured "mobile" cpus what would be the loss?

Performance for one. If you argue they dont need the
performance, it still doesn't matter, they can buy lower
performing products today that use less power. They choose
not to.

The key here is that you feel self-rightous in thinking it
would be ok to (force?) everyone to do what you feel is
best. Maybe in the long term it would be best, maybe in the
grand scheme of things the CPUs won't make any difference.
Maybe desktop CPU research will uncover something
revolutionary that helps both desktop and laptop CPUs run
cooler, so stopping development on them will only hurt
everyone.

Ask the CPU manufacturers. They have to stay in business.
I'm sure if Intel felt they could reduce CPU power
consumption *for free*, no loss on their part, they would.
Do you expect a joint pact between AMD & Intel to
simultaneously stop competing for highest performance or
best publically-perceived product they can deliver? Do you
know of any other industry that does this?



I see now you're not asking "why not" at all, you're just trying to argue
their benefits as if it makes any difference... which it doesn't, even if
your points are valid (and some are), it makes no difference as to why
they aren't used, those are not the factors others are considering.

As I said in another post VIA lead the way in quiet and cool cpus but AMD
now leads the field. It is worth considering especially since there is
a reference model for $100 laptops run off a hand crank.

Then buy one? Put up a website and praise it.
You are taking the opposite approach necessary, toying
around with ideas like "what if they stopped making them",
when instead you should be thinking "what can I do to
persuade others to want specific products such that they
sell well enough to prompt manufacturers to focus more on
those market segments".




[snip]

True, and many people don't need the fastest system available at any point
and time, so they keep using their current system, not buying a new one
with mobile CPU. When the time comes to upgrade again, then they will get
more performance per $ without a mobile CPU, or if you argue they don't
need the performance, they will still get a lower cost system without the
mobile CPU. Any way you look at it, the choice is lower power or lower
cost.

Most don't need the fast system available as long as it runs
the software you use and most mobile cpus can run most software.

Nobody claimed they need the fastest, but the idea of 'as
long as it runs the software' is clearly wrong. If that
were true, only the slowest CPUs available would sell,
especially since they're cheaper in the desktop product
range. Indeed one can buy an old Via C3 Eden board w/CPU
for around $100. It runs the software but not fast enough
for most people. You don't care but they do- part of a free
society is choice, their choice is different.

Cost is
irreverent if you're a purchaser of bleeding edge technology, like the
newest cpu and graphics card available.

Not at all, they only pay the premium FOR the performance,
not paying the premium to NOT get it instead.

I wait 6 months and what
cost $300 now costs $150 and it's the same computing power it was 6 months
earlier.

That seems a bit too extreme to be realistic, but somewhat
true, the tech sector does market fairly well, but then
again it's an unusal market segment you're considering, as
OEM systems don't depreciate to anywhere near 1/2 value as
still new, orderable products. They simply buy from same
product tiering which overall has only gradually declined in
recent years.

It should not be a difficult thing to make a mobile desktop board, but
there has to be the perception that the market would buy sufficient
quantity. That's a gamble... are you willing to finance that gamble?
It's a hard thing to predict new trends.

The market will buy anything the manufacturers sell if they think they
need it, before there were mobiles everyone had desktops now many have
laptops. Desktops are modular not so much laptops but for
general computing laptop cpus can do the same job as desktop cpus.

No, they can't. They can do the same job as slightly older
desktops maybe, but then someone would just keep using their
older desktop if performance didn't matter, the last thing
they'd do is buy a new system at a cost premium.

"Your such a ****ing asshole YOU ARE THE ONE WHO BROUGHT UP 'GREEN". YOU
MADE it A topic within a topic. "
Wow...you still dont get it. You absolutly amaze me....

"But you won't quote yourself cause you know damn well."
What the **** are you talking about? All the text is here dude, what is
there to quote? I already explained myself about a dozens times and you
still don't get it. You are a very sad and pathetic idiot at that.

"all this crap about why something isnt one way or another, is just your
opinion"
Very Good!!!!! Now you are catching on. A little at least. Why I said what
I said is EXACTLY my opinion. Good boy!

"get over yourself."
You are the one having issues with this...not me.

Oh wow. Now you decided to jump on the dip**** boat. So I guess you didn't
see the following post:

----- Original Message -----
From: "ISOHaven"
Newsgroups: alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,alt.comp.hardware
Sent: Tuesday, December 20, 2005 5:56 PM
Subject: Q: Why don't desktops us mobile cpus?


...and yes I meant "idiocy".

I posted that right away as I didn't want the other dip**** to lower himself
to correcting spelling and grammar. That's actually a PLUS ONE for him as
you beat him to it. Congrats as I pin the dip**** medal on you.

It's a shame that so many dickheads reside on this newsgroup. Time to whip
out the filter function.