3 ms·

It's not about die area at all. It's about the SSD and chipset and WiFi etc. each using power on top of what the CPU uses, and ending up as a much larger percen

It's not about die area at all. It's about the SSD and chipset and WiFi etc. each using power on top of what the CPU uses, and ending up as a much larger percentage of system power draw for a 15W CPU than for the same system with a 60W CPU that has around four times the multi-thread performance by having four times as many of the exact same cores.

aurareturn 2mo ago
You lost me. Maybe you can articulate what you're arguing from the start?
- AnthonyMouse 2mo ago
  Suppose you have a system that under some workload will draw 10W to run the chipset, WiFi, SSD and so on and another 15W to run the CPU, so that it's 25W in total. The 15W CPU has X number of cores and gets a score of 1000 on some benchmark. Performance per watt is 40 points per watt. If you put 4X of the same cores in the same system then the CPU uses 60W, the WiFi etc. still use 10W, so the whole system uses 70W. It scores 4000 points and the performance per watt is 57 points per watt. You got four times the multi-thread performance and performance per watt went up.
  - aurareturn 2mo ago
    That's why any CPU reviewer worth their salt will isolate CPU power.
    - podocarp 2mo ago
      Which reviewer does that? How do you isolate CPU power? Measuring the pins? Software reporting is half bullshit. Also nobody even reports idle power. Don't tell me idle is hard to define bla bla we all know what's idle. Even an inaccurate figure is better than no figure. And there are community compiled lists that are very helpful when building systems. So where is the reviewer worth their salt you're talking about?
      - aurareturn 2mo ago
        Notebookcheck always isolates CPU power by measuring idle and draw from the wall. Many top quality CPU reviewers also do this. Chinese reviewer Geekerwan is probably the best at it. In the past, written reviews like Anandtech will always do it. Today, anyone with video editing software thinks they can review CPU performance. Ever since Youtube, there have been plenty of low quality reviewers that mislead people. I didn’t know who this Jeff guy was but now he’s on my list as one. There are still some who do proper reviews.
        AnthonyMouse 2mo ago
        > Notebookcheck always isolates CPU power by measuring idle and draw from the wall. That's not actually isolating CPU power. To begin with, the CPU itself has idle power draw. Measuring that way would favor a CPU that has worse power management because it would be excluding the draw the CPU itself fails to shed at idle. It also gets it wrong the other way. The SSD etc. is using however much at idle but that isn't the amount it uses when running the benchmark. Many of them don't have very fine grained power management and will draw ~100mW at idle but consume close to full power under even moderate load.
        aurareturn 2mo ago
        You can never fully isolate CPU power. Even software reading of CPU power is not always accurate. The most accurate is reading from the wall. Thats what Notebookcheck does. For all intents and purposes, it is good enough to get a read on CPU efficiency. Furthermore, if you are comparing equivalent systems, it is good enough to compare the two.
        AnthonyMouse 2mo ago
        > You can never fully isolate CPU power. Even software reading of CPU power is not always accurate. And what results from this when you compare system with a 15W CPU to one with a 60W CPU on performance per watt when both systems have an additional 10W draw from non-CPU components?

aurareturn 2mo ago

You lost me. Maybe you can articulate what you're arguing from the start?

AnthonyMouse 2mo ago
Suppose you have a system that under some workload will draw 10W to run the chipset, WiFi, SSD and so on and another 15W to run the CPU, so that it's 25W in total. The 15W CPU has X number of cores and gets a score of 1000 on some benchmark. Performance per watt is 40 points per watt. If you put 4X of the same cores in the same system then the CPU uses 60W, the WiFi etc. still use 10W, so the whole system uses 70W. It scores 4000 points and the performance per watt is 57 points per watt. You got four times the multi-thread performance and performance per watt went up.
- aurareturn 2mo ago
  That's why any CPU reviewer worth their salt will isolate CPU power.
  - podocarp 2mo ago
    Which reviewer does that? How do you isolate CPU power? Measuring the pins? Software reporting is half bullshit. Also nobody even reports idle power. Don't tell me idle is hard to define bla bla we all know what's idle. Even an inaccurate figure is better than no figure. And there are community compiled lists that are very helpful when building systems. So where is the reviewer worth their salt you're talking about?
    - aurareturn 2mo ago
      Notebookcheck always isolates CPU power by measuring idle and draw from the wall. Many top quality CPU reviewers also do this. Chinese reviewer Geekerwan is probably the best at it. In the past, written reviews like Anandtech will always do it. Today, anyone with video editing software thinks they can review CPU performance. Ever since Youtube, there have been plenty of low quality reviewers that mislead people. I didn’t know who this Jeff guy was but now he’s on my list as one. There are still some who do proper reviews.
      - AnthonyMouse 2mo ago
        > Notebookcheck always isolates CPU power by measuring idle and draw from the wall. That's not actually isolating CPU power. To begin with, the CPU itself has idle power draw. Measuring that way would favor a CPU that has worse power management because it would be excluding the draw the CPU itself fails to shed at idle. It also gets it wrong the other way. The SSD etc. is using however much at idle but that isn't the amount it uses when running the benchmark. Many of them don't have very fine grained power management and will draw ~100mW at idle but consume close to full power under even moderate load.
        aurareturn 2mo ago
        You can never fully isolate CPU power. Even software reading of CPU power is not always accurate. The most accurate is reading from the wall. Thats what Notebookcheck does. For all intents and purposes, it is good enough to get a read on CPU efficiency. Furthermore, if you are comparing equivalent systems, it is good enough to compare the two.
        AnthonyMouse 2mo ago
        > You can never fully isolate CPU power. Even software reading of CPU power is not always accurate. And what results from this when you compare system with a 15W CPU to one with a 60W CPU on performance per watt when both systems have an additional 10W draw from non-CPU components?