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Re: Increasing minimum 'i386' processor



On Mon, 21 Nov 2011, Patrick Schoenfeld <schoenfeld@debian.org> wrote:
> well, its obvious that the absolute power consumption, which is what
> you measure, has increased, given that the performance of the systems
> has increased as well. 

If you are setting up a network of machines for bitcoin mining then it's most 
likely that modern systems would give the best value for money.

> Measuring absolute values is all nice to compare the effective cost of
> running a system, but it does neither support nor weaken the point that
> modern systems are much better at power-saving.

If you have tasks which require little CPU power (such as a DNS server) and 
the system is idle most of the time then comparing the idle power use is the 
most important thing.

Another example is the Internet gateway system I use.  It's a P3-800 and I 
have no plans to upgrade it because it can handle higher speeds than my ADSL 
link and that's all that is required.

> Also to actually draw any conclusion from your statistics, one would
> need to know more about the hardware in question. Especially its unclear
> weither the PSUs used in the systems all have the same efficency.

Whether the PSUs are of the same efficiency doesn't matter much as the options 
for switching them are limited.  In the unlikely event that the P3 class 
desktop PCs I tested gave better results than Pentium-D and other newer 
systems because of having better PSUs it wouldn't matter as the newer systems 
need SATA connectors and an extra 4 pins on the motherboard connector.

But I don't expect that PSUs have become less efficient, if anything I would 
expect them to have improved slightly in recent times.  Maybe a P3 system 
would use even less power if it had a PSU taken from a newer system such as a 
Pentium-D.

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