Re: lower power PCs

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Lewis Gardner" <lgardner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:483efdb2$0$4969

<stuff snipped>

> Use a Dell D series laptop and a D/Dock and you can have one half-height
> standard PCI slot.

I don't know how much power a 1.X+ GHz processor takes (I thought the D's
ran from about 1.4 to 1.7 but that's a wild guess) but a 400MHz Fujitsu
tablet linked to an Acom 500GB USB drive never drew more than 30W and mostly
drew about 19W.  I'm going to run the same tests with a Compaq 2GHz
Celery-based laptop next, since I really want to move up to something that
can process video in reasonable time frames.  Either one will represent a
serious savings over the current dual 300MHz box at 175W now that our
electric rates appear to be nearly 16 cents a kWh.  Although PEPCO lists a
base rate at .1008, the fees, tariffs, charges and other adjustments add at
least 6 cents more per kWh so you have to devide the monthly charges by the
kWh used to find out how bad things really are.

Chip makers are finally seeing the light, and Via's new Nano processors
allegedly are drop in replacements (for the mostly soldered!) C7 chips that
can handle Blu-ray decoding.  Via's previous line of chips were not known
for their graphical prowess.  The Nano chips all appear to use less than one
watt - some as little as 100mW!  This reviewer says:

<<Up until now, it's been impossible to build a VIA-based HTPC capable of HD
DVD/Blu-ray playback; the C7 processor couldn't handle the task even when
aided by the hardware decoding engine on a modern ATI or NVIDIA video card.
Nano, however, changes this. One of the demos I saw on my trip to Centaur
yesterday was of a 2GHz Nano flawlessly (and smoothly) playing the Blu-ray
version of Blue Planet. CPU usage during playback varied between 39 percent
and 75 percent, with an average rate of approximately 60 percent. Although
the CPU in question was an as-yet-unreleased 2GHz processor, the 1.8GHz chip
may also be capable of handling the load. >>

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080529-via-takes-the-wraps-off-isaiah
-meet-the-nano.html


--
Bobby G.