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13 October 2009
7 Comments
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mos6507 
I think one of the reasons I'm still into classic videogames is I've always stayed on the sidelines of the computer hardware treadmill. I had a Playstation 1 when it first came out, and then proceeded to get very few games for it. I had a PS2 as well and didn't buy many games for it. And don't get me started on PC games. My rig has never been where it should have been to facilitate cutting edge gaming, and so I keep procrastinating on getting into games. The most recent PC upgrade was a Pentium IV 2.4 GHZ system I put together a few years ago. I made the fatal mistake of buying into an PCI+AGP motherboard at the time when everything was shifting to the new PCI Express standard. And I had a graphics card without HDMI, hence no Blu-ray.I keep waiting for the upgrade cycle to slow down long enough for me to jump on board, but no matter what is current today, something better seems like it's just on the horizon. This paralyzes me from buying anything due to instant obsolescence.Like when Netbooks first came out, I thought, gee, great, except for the crappy integrated graphics. Now ION is coming out, but wait, ION2 is also on the horizon. Plus Intel has a new class of 32nm chips with 45nm integrated graphics that would work similar to Ion.And on the desktop front, I was going to rebuild my motherboard with an EFIX board in order to run OSX. So I was going to get a P45 motherboard. But then along comes Core i7 boards. And then comes Snow Leopard that obsoletes my unused EFIX dongle. I would have to use a new EFIX dongle to enable Snow Leopard.And talk about standards. USB is on its way to 3.0. SATA is already up to 3, right? Now they are talking about Light Peak (fiber optic).Anytime you get a new motherboard you are stuck with whatever ports are on it and the socket standard. But Intel changes the form-factor of its CPUs constantly. So the odds of doing a processor upgrade within the lifecycle of the motherbaord are slim to none.And take my daughter's computer. It's a Mac Mini. It's got the core2duo, but the integrated graphics, so when I tried installing Windows on it, games ran like crap. So that computer is effectively obsolete unless I share my rebuilt PC for her. The original Mac Mini I got for my mom is a G4 so that is EOL on the OS front.And what about my 24" 1080P display? It has dead pixels and the screen quality is not that good. Now these sorts of monitors are dirt cheap, but what do I do with my old monitor? Sell it on Ebay and deal with the hassle?At the end of the day I really do not like generating all this clutter and eventual ewaste. So even though I can currently afford to stay on the treadmill, my conscience can't deal with the stream of waste involved in doing so. I just don't relate to people who are constantly replacing their computer hardware like it's a new pair of shoes. But will there ever come a time when any of us can kind of settle down with some gear and say "this is good enough"? Every time I jump back on the treadmill, that's what I fool myself into thinking. But it never happens.And this is the result.
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EricBall
Tue Oct 13, 2009 12:08 PM
I know what you mean. My home PC is a 1GHz Athlon (IIRC) with nForce integrated graphics. It's last "upgrades" were a USB2 PCI card (to connect a used iPod Color) and a PCI WiFi card (so it can sit in the family room which doesn't have a network jack). It works well enough for it's current task set. But I don't even think about trying to use it for games - that's what consoles are for.
That's one change I have made. I have a PS3 and a Wii (and older consoles) for playing games. Economically, it makes little sense to try to stay on the bleeding edge to play PC games. With a console there's no upgrades (other than extra & special controllers) - games simply work.
Last year I bought my wife a MacBook, and it handles her requirements well enough. Perhaps I'll buy another home PC at some point in the future, but right now my current home PC, the MacBook and my work laptop handle my requirements.
One other thing I've learned is PC "upgrades" are fantasy. Buy what you need to meet your current and expected requirements; but don't expect you will be able to upgrade. Even if the upgrade exists, the stock will likely disappear before you want to upgrade.
That's one change I have made. I have a PS3 and a Wii (and older consoles) for playing games. Economically, it makes little sense to try to stay on the bleeding edge to play PC games. With a console there's no upgrades (other than extra & special controllers) - games simply work.
Last year I bought my wife a MacBook, and it handles her requirements well enough. Perhaps I'll buy another home PC at some point in the future, but right now my current home PC, the MacBook and my work laptop handle my requirements.
One other thing I've learned is PC "upgrades" are fantasy. Buy what you need to meet your current and expected requirements; but don't expect you will be able to upgrade. Even if the upgrade exists, the stock will likely disappear before you want to upgrade.
mos6507
Tue Oct 13, 2009 12:17 PM
I think what bothers me the most is that desktop PC hardware still hasn't gotten the memo on power consumption. To me there shouldn't be a disconnect between desktop and laptop hardware. I know there is a growing number of people going with micro ITX/Nettops but the whole jet-engine fan overclocking thing seems really anachronistic to me. I had an Athlon 700 back in the day and that thing sounded like a hairdryer the fan was so loud.
CPUs are getting more energy efficient but now GPUs are turning into monsters with active cooling, etc...
A top gaming rig will pull over 500 watts. Now, a space heater maxes out a typical wall circuit at around 1,500 watts. As far as I'm concerned a PC should not pull down more than 100-120 watts these days. If it does, then it's a failure of R&D.
Just think of all the fossil fuels used to power these things, and how you're typically going to leave the PC on idle while you mostly web-browse. All that power goes to waste just redrawing a 2D browser window.
CPUs are getting more energy efficient but now GPUs are turning into monsters with active cooling, etc...
A top gaming rig will pull over 500 watts. Now, a space heater maxes out a typical wall circuit at around 1,500 watts. As far as I'm concerned a PC should not pull down more than 100-120 watts these days. If it does, then it's a failure of R&D.
Just think of all the fossil fuels used to power these things, and how you're typically going to leave the PC on idle while you mostly web-browse. All that power goes to waste just redrawing a 2D browser window.
EricBall
Tue Oct 13, 2009 8:11 PM
Most modern GPUs will power down anything which isn't in use. So if you're just doing 2D or frame buffer, then they don't use that much power. Modern CPUs do the same thing (sometimes a little too aggressively). And there are PCs which don't use that much power, but they have performance metrics to match. So if you want that killer 3D game, or video transcoded in near realtime, than you are going to be burning watts.
However, I suspect if you found a current PC with performance equivalent to that Athlon 700 it would probably use far less power. The problem is the industry makes more money selling faster systems, although people are discovering they don't need faster systems - especially if they aren't playing games or don't mind waiting for CPU intensive tasks to complete.
However, I suspect if you found a current PC with performance equivalent to that Athlon 700 it would probably use far less power. The problem is the industry makes more money selling faster systems, although people are discovering they don't need faster systems - especially if they aren't playing games or don't mind waiting for CPU intensive tasks to complete.
Hornpipe2
Thu Oct 15, 2009 1:10 PM
An interesting (partial) solution to the e-Waste problem:
http://www.freegeek.org/
If I had enough free time, this is the charity I would start in my hometown.
http://www.freegeek.org/
If I had enough free time, this is the charity I would start in my hometown.
EricBall
Fri Oct 16, 2009 10:42 AM
Hornpipe2, on Thu Oct 15, 2009 3:10 PM, said:
An interesting (partial) solution to the e-Waste problem: http://www.freegeek.org/
Although cascading PCs to charities is a idea which has been around for a while, the problem is the donated PCs are often considerably older than what is required to run current software & OS levels. So then you have to also scrounge up software/OS which will run on those systems - software/OS which is probably no longer supported and may have well exploited gaping security holes.
mos6507
Fri Oct 16, 2009 6:20 PM
The other problem with older computers (at least PCs) is that the amount of computing per watt they do is poor. So if you are browsing the web or whatever, you might be pulling down a lot more watts doing that basic stuff with the old CPU cranked at 100% capacity than a modern CPU closer to idle.
So an older computer has the benefit of not requiring any more energy to make it (stale embodied energy) it will suck down more energy than if it were just chucked for something more efficient.
For instance, the Athlon 700 I used to have. It ran hot. Really hot. I don't know how many watts it pulled down but even though its total MIPS suck compared to today, the watts per MIP suck.
So that's the one good thing about the treadmill. The problem of course is that all that extra computing tends to get used. Even for browsing, you've now got HULU and HD youtube clips that eat CPU like there's no tomorrow.
I think that's why Atom/ION has gotten so much attention for being able to get reasonable performance (including 1080P) without much energy usage.
What I haven't seen, though, are gaming-rig style systems that are able to speedstep their way down to Atom levels. In theory they could, but they just weren't designed to do it. You'd have to go the KVM route and keep the power rig off unless you really needed it.
That's probably what I'll do. I'll use a dual-core Atom/ION system for basic stuff and only fire up the main box for bleeding edge games and content creation. I just don't like powering computers up and down all the time.
So an older computer has the benefit of not requiring any more energy to make it (stale embodied energy) it will suck down more energy than if it were just chucked for something more efficient.
For instance, the Athlon 700 I used to have. It ran hot. Really hot. I don't know how many watts it pulled down but even though its total MIPS suck compared to today, the watts per MIP suck.
So that's the one good thing about the treadmill. The problem of course is that all that extra computing tends to get used. Even for browsing, you've now got HULU and HD youtube clips that eat CPU like there's no tomorrow.
I think that's why Atom/ION has gotten so much attention for being able to get reasonable performance (including 1080P) without much energy usage.
What I haven't seen, though, are gaming-rig style systems that are able to speedstep their way down to Atom levels. In theory they could, but they just weren't designed to do it. You'd have to go the KVM route and keep the power rig off unless you really needed it.
That's probably what I'll do. I'll use a dual-core Atom/ION system for basic stuff and only fire up the main box for bleeding edge games and content creation. I just don't like powering computers up and down all the time.
Thomas Jentzsch
Sat Oct 17, 2009 2:34 AM
mos6507, on Sat Oct 17, 2009 2:20 AM, said:
The other problem with older computers (at least PCs) is that the amount of computing per watt they do is poor. So if you are browsing the web or whatever, you might be pulling down a lot more watts doing that basic stuff with the old CPU cranked at 100% capacity than a modern CPU closer to idle.
Unless you are referring to a P IV, I don't think that old computers are that bad. And AFAIK producing a computer costs more energy then it uses in its whole life!
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