4 ms·

> Almost doubling the TDP for a 25%-30% frequency increase isn't doing most any good Having 25-30% faster compile times, faster video renders, higher frame rat

> Almost doubling the TDP for a 25%-30% frequency increase isn't doing most any good Having 25-30% faster compile times, faster video renders, higher frame rates, snappier responses is huge. I don’t understand why you’re suggesting it’s not doing anyone any good. Our CPUs don’t run at 100% all of the time. If my CPU takes 200W instead of 65W for the small fraction of the day that I’m doing something CPU-intensive, the difference is absolutely negligible. I’m going to use more total power when I cook my dinner, probably. If you are the kind of person willing to give up 1/4 of your performance for slightly lower power consumption under load, then go for those slower chips. You’re not the target market for the premium grade performance parts.

chaimanmeow 4y ago
You have some good points, *if* the OS and apps that you are using are designed with care and regard for energy efficiency. In my experience it's often not the case. Edge with its sleeping tabs function is a big improvement and example when app writers do care a bit about not wasting loads of energy. But it's really a very mixed bag. Many browsers do not. And there is plenty of nuissance javascript that will peg the CPU and RAM all day long. If you're a Steam user, you know that almost all games, when you idle them in the background, and even in pause mode, peg one or a few CPU threads as well as the GPU. The problem is greatly reduced for those editing their windows power profiles (or for linux users, cpufreq-set) to have their processors run at reduced frequencies. For those it might justify getting 105W X's over the 65W. Now the almost 30% peak perf gain that the X models can sustain are potentially a big advantage. Yet real life usage speedup isn't as big as one might expect from looking at benchmark multithread compute scores; compiling has a lot of waiting on IO. And the single thread differences between the mellow frequency non-X and the souped up X versions are not very big, percentage wise. So you might get 30% speedup for some cases, but probably more typical difference might closer to ~15%. iGPU throttling is an area where the 65W models would be disadvantaged at, sometimes significantly. So in some cases (workstation type usage), especially if running without a dedicated video card, the 105W choice might admittedly make good sense. 65W vs 105W bottom line: I guess it's a case of YMMV.

chaimanmeow 4y ago

You have some good points, *if* the OS and apps that you are using are designed with care and regard for energy efficiency. In my experience it's often not the case. Edge with its sleeping tabs function is a big improvement and example when app writers do care a bit about not wasting loads of energy. But it's really a very mixed bag. Many browsers do not. And there is plenty of nuissance javascript that will peg the CPU and RAM all day long. If you're a Steam user, you know that almost all games, when you idle them in the background, and even in pause mode, peg one or a few CPU threads as well as the GPU. The problem is greatly reduced for those editing their windows power profiles (or for linux users, cpufreq-set) to have their processors run at reduced frequencies. For those it might justify getting 105W X's over the 65W. Now the almost 30% peak perf gain that the X models can sustain are potentially a big advantage. Yet real life usage speedup isn't as big as one might expect from looking at benchmark multithread compute scores; compiling has a lot of waiting on IO. And the single thread differences between the mellow frequency non-X and the souped up X versions are not very big, percentage wise. So you might get 30% speedup for some cases, but probably more typical difference might closer to ~15%. iGPU throttling is an area where the 65W models would be disadvantaged at, sometimes significantly. So in some cases (workstation type usage), especially if running without a dedicated video card, the 105W choice might admittedly make good sense. 65W vs 105W bottom line: I guess it's a case of YMMV.