Hello! I hope you all find this useful.
I tested my new system with the Kill-A-Watt meter under a variety of conditions. I am posting the more interesting of the results here.
First, specifications:
EVGA 8800 GTS 320
Gigabyte DS3 (rev 3.3)
C2D E4320
G.Skill Micron D Memory
OCZ GameXStream Powersupply, 600w
No discreet sound card
Asus DVD
Samsung HDD (an older 7krpm 160gb drive)
The power draw is not including the monitor, which is a Samsung SyncMaster 940b and draws 36 watts during use.
(comment about frequency and power use removed - not sure what I was thinking when I wrote that, as it contradicted my entire post )
With the CPU Voltage at 1.1 and the system idling (1600mhz, 6x266), the power draw is 121 Watts (not bad, but I'm guessing AMD can crush that number)
At load, the system runs at 2.314 ghz (330.7x7), same voltage settings. Power draw is 152 Watts.
Increasing the Voltage to the stock voltage settings (1.35) at the same clock settings yields and idle use of 131W and a load use 180W
Using this information we can speculate as to the increased heat dissipation from the cpu that results from increasing the CPU Vcore from my undervolted 1.1 volts to the stock 1.35 volts. Assuming an 80% efficiency, an extra ~8 or so watts at idle and 24 watts at load are going through the cpu and probably the mb. If you want an idea of how much heat that is, try feeling some different-wattage bulbs. Your typical compact flourescent bulb using 9-13 watts, and a nice bright one uses around 20. leave one on for a while to see how much extra heat that cpu heatsink will need to dissipate.
A little side note / review:
The gigabyte ds3 rev 3.3 (f10 bios) has built in overclocking on demand, and it works rather well. While this cpu can't scale as much as the AMD CPUs, going from 1.6 to 2.3 is quite nice. I may work on finding a way to further reduce voltage when idle (perhaps RMclock?), since 1.1 volts is enough for full load (and therefor overkill for idle speeds).
p.s. Yes, I know others have done tests like this already. I think having a little redundancy is nice, and if you don't like it you don't have to read it.
Edit 1: Load = TAT full load. I was not stressing the GPU in any of these tests, though I fully intend to test that, along with a variety of other things. I actually just got my kill-a-watt meter, so I have just begun playing with it.
I tested my new system with the Kill-A-Watt meter under a variety of conditions. I am posting the more interesting of the results here.
First, specifications:
EVGA 8800 GTS 320
Gigabyte DS3 (rev 3.3)
C2D E4320
G.Skill Micron D Memory
OCZ GameXStream Powersupply, 600w
No discreet sound card
Asus DVD
Samsung HDD (an older 7krpm 160gb drive)
The power draw is not including the monitor, which is a Samsung SyncMaster 940b and draws 36 watts during use.
(comment about frequency and power use removed - not sure what I was thinking when I wrote that, as it contradicted my entire post )
With the CPU Voltage at 1.1 and the system idling (1600mhz, 6x266), the power draw is 121 Watts (not bad, but I'm guessing AMD can crush that number)
At load, the system runs at 2.314 ghz (330.7x7), same voltage settings. Power draw is 152 Watts.
Increasing the Voltage to the stock voltage settings (1.35) at the same clock settings yields and idle use of 131W and a load use 180W
Using this information we can speculate as to the increased heat dissipation from the cpu that results from increasing the CPU Vcore from my undervolted 1.1 volts to the stock 1.35 volts. Assuming an 80% efficiency, an extra ~8 or so watts at idle and 24 watts at load are going through the cpu and probably the mb. If you want an idea of how much heat that is, try feeling some different-wattage bulbs. Your typical compact flourescent bulb using 9-13 watts, and a nice bright one uses around 20. leave one on for a while to see how much extra heat that cpu heatsink will need to dissipate.
A little side note / review:
The gigabyte ds3 rev 3.3 (f10 bios) has built in overclocking on demand, and it works rather well. While this cpu can't scale as much as the AMD CPUs, going from 1.6 to 2.3 is quite nice. I may work on finding a way to further reduce voltage when idle (perhaps RMclock?), since 1.1 volts is enough for full load (and therefor overkill for idle speeds).
p.s. Yes, I know others have done tests like this already. I think having a little redundancy is nice, and if you don't like it you don't have to read it.
Edit 1: Load = TAT full load. I was not stressing the GPU in any of these tests, though I fully intend to test that, along with a variety of other things. I actually just got my kill-a-watt meter, so I have just begun playing with it.