News AMD still insisting on its ACP rating

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2009/02/06/amd-still-insisting-on-its-acp-rating/1

AMD is still rating its CPUs with ACP "average" power consumption, instead of a "total" power limit and claims its own TDP values can't be compared to Intel's - but why?

 

Is it just me or is there some logic missing from that, They are moving from a standard that isnt measured by anyone in quite the same way to a standard that isnt measured by anyone else AT ALL to give customers a better comparisson?

 

But AMD has always done this. Remember, they were the first CPU company to drop raw speeds from their chip names in favour of a number that somehow related to the computing power of that CPU.

Still, I'd like to see some kind of standardisation brought to the market - preferably something like TDPmax & average TDP, where the average is always taken at a certain processor load, say 30% or 50% - in much the same way that mpg figures that car manufacturers use are measured at certain speeds.

 

It's all marketing rubbish. I want two ratings:
PPD - Peak Power Draw - the maximum amount of power the CPU could possibly draw.
PTO - Peak Thermal Output - the maximum amount of heat the CPU could ever need dissipating.

 

Why not just power/floating point calcs to give a useless figure for dumbies? :>

 

Those are the same =P

Anyhow, I'm not too concerned about it. There are enough review sites out there that I can find a site using the CPU I want to buy with cooling similar to what I am going to use to get an idea of what my temps should be like.

 

That's because you couldn't compare the clock speeds of those AMD CPUs to Intel CPUs. That was a smart move by AMD to ensure people had a decent comparison between brands. But this is ridiculous.

 

They've obviously done the math and found that their numbers don't measure up to Intel's.

If they had better numbers, they'd be rubbing them in Intel's face.

 

Thats more than likely the case, all there R&D has come to a point where its no where near the competion.

I do like where AMD is going tho, chipset is produced by them, CPU and GPU aswell.

So a well built driver and app could throttle a computer down for power saving really effectively.

 

I never thought anything of the power rating of processors. It is pretty meaningless except for HTPCs and Laptops, standard computers and especially Gaming rigs don't need to worry about heat too much as they can have the proper cooling systems to remove the heat, this is my opinion and for others it does make a difference. Especially in a server enviroment.

 

Tell that to anyone who has tried to overclock a modern amd cpu and killed a motherboard (looking at you bindi haha) because the board is only rated to the power draw stated by amd rather than its true tdp especially when overclocked, it frys motherboards something fierce when your cpu is rated at a reported say 125w but it drawing more and your board that is rated for 140w tops can't handle the true draw especially when you get into black edition overclocking

 

I would say, why would you overclock it when you know the motherboard can't bear the TDP? Its like shooting on your own foot LOL That's why a regular motherboard don't overclock well if compared to overclocker's motherboards. Because when you're overclocking, you need a better components to bear the higher power draw and the higher thermal dissipation. A TDP measured with the processor running in standard clock-speed, when you overclock it, the TDP will rise exponentially (IIRC) so you need a motherboard specialized for overclockers.

 

That is exactly what AMDs TDP refers to. The maximum power draw @ maximum voltated (the cpu is designed for and run at). Intel on the other hand bases the it's TDP on testing the cpu under real world scenarios and get an average from that.

Basically AMD basically gives us the theoretical upper limit while intel gives us the upper limit for "regular-real world use".

 

i can't believe there is no website on the whole world wide wastedump (w²w²) that compares cpus on a reliable manner?

 

max TDP (i.e. full load) is useful to know for design concerns.

ACP is good to know for professionals because AVERAGE power consumption helps them calculate the TCO over several years.