most boards should be able to give you control, no?

david25 wrote: Would Vista mange to boot and allow me to install any required MB drivers?

95%, yes. It should not go beyond a few reboots to get your system up and running. Worth a shot, imo.

No it might not be a game changer but B3 will have to be quite a decent revision because if it's not then that will not go down well! If they can tweak it to improve performance (at least a decent bit) but more importantly reduce power consumption a good bit they're in with a shout. It's a bit frus...

We need more competition in this segment. I was considering a similar system for myself but when I added up all the components cost. I decided it's not worth it. I believe, we will be seeing quite a lot of reasonably priced products by the end of 2012, though.

ARM making Intel/AMD sweat. GOOOOOOOOD!

Clearly, this is ARM territory. Maybe next year...

My current Biostar is also only 4+1 and works fine with my FSB overclocked to 250Mhz with my Athlon II X4 630 at 3.5Ghz, but I guess more powerful CPUs might need 8+2. 8+2 requires less power to achieve the same clocks and also provides cleaner energy. A must, if you are eventually going to get a B...

doveman wrote:I thought I'd found my ideal board in the Asrock 890FX Deluxe5 until I realised the CMOS battery is in a really stupid (hot) place, under the VRM cooler.

Chances are, the board is going to be replaced sooner than the need for a new battery. I had a good laugh

What i really want to see is new GPUs... maybe they will come PCIe 3.0. Either way seems its the time that all manufactures will adopt and release their mobos with. New powerful GPUs won't be out before Summer 2012. You still have some time... then ;) Thanks for the headsup, there are rummor of AMD...

In a few watts range. I'd say not worth it.

DDR3 1.5v is fine. DDR4 will be your next stop

Short answer. Yes. The energy-efficient Athlons are good undervolters. You can build a cheap system ( 760G /80G based) within 60W power-envelope. Run off the brick, literally. Thanks. My pleasure. I have a similar system with 235e equipped. Does everything you mentioned up above. Certainly media en...

The general rule is simple: don't fix, what ain't broken. The time that you will spend on building / reinstall / tweaking all those systems will easily outweigh all the benefits that come with modern hardware. Unless of course, new software requires a significantly faster machine. Best upgrades for ...

Supposed to be even more power-efficient than the current line-up. They definitely will be more efficient. Even if the new power-saving feature doesn't deliver, the CPUs have been shrunk so a higher efficiency is a given. That's right. Supposedly, the top part is 77W TDP rated (down from 95W). Quit...

Abula wrote:What i really want to see is new GPUs... maybe they will come PCIe 3.0. Either way seems its the time that all manufactures will adopt and release their mobos with.

New powerful GPUs won't be out before Summer 2012. You still have some time... then

Why would you want to go with mobile SB? There are low TDP parts for desktop. BUT... you can also pick a relatively cheap 65W/95W part and undervolt/clock it. Unless of course, you have very rigid power requirements. 3) I doubt that board is going to be "future-proof". 4) New Intel cpus are due to r...

The new B3 stepping will likely address some of the issues but it won't be a game-changer. Sadly. It's hard to recommend it over SB.

I was looking at the Athlon II X2 245e as a CPU for an HTPC I'm building for my brother, on a motherboard with IGP HD3200. He's quite poor, so I'm thinking that he'll appreciate the low power consumption (45W) and thus cost of this CPU :) Would this be a suitable CPU for HTPC (MediaPortal), video e...

Petr wrote:There is no reason for BIOS undervolting when you have control of P-States.

PhenomMsrTweaker is software driven. That's not the explanation I was hoping for. But thanks anyway

As the processor gets hotter it will needlessly draw additional power. It only makes sense to build such a system if you could limit the load of the processor. 25W is still quite a lot, especially for smaller cases. Nothing has changed in this business. The cooler, the better. Complete fanless would...

Undervolting the thing in bios usually suffices for me. This can be useful under certain circumstances though. Had anybody made an in-depth research in this field?

So I can count on a difference of about 5 W between the 640 and the 955 at idle then? Yes, it's "about" 5W. Speaking of idle/load energy efficiency, 610E & 615E are very good if you can find them. If you are concerned about idle power consumption and don't want to spend a fortune, just get a C3 Ath...

No idea what the idle power consumption is on the GTS 450 but you get the idea. My Palit 450 GTS consumes about 18W at idle (contrary to many reviews that I have found on the net). I have not tested on-die Intel graphics yet but overall power consumption has also to do with specific motherboard des...

what's funny is this.

With CPUs I can force running the lowest P-state easily without any mod. With GPUs, apparently, I can't. Nvidia have the best drivers? Think again.

Wish 3dfx was still around. Oh well.

lodestar wrote:The only way to activate Performance Level 0 is I suspect to edit the BIOS using NiBiTor 6.0.2 or a similar tool.

Yeah but ideally it would be nice to do without flashing bios every time I need it. Thanks.

MSI Afterburner wouldn't let me go below 400 Mhz and RivaTuner won't work on W7. Thanks.

Hello, I am not happy to play divx in "Low-Power 3D" @ ~400/800/325. Is there a way to force 50/100/135 for such tasks? Another pain is old games like Age of Empires, again... I want this fixed to Standard 2D instead. Card in question. I would like to keep the ability for full throttle but use it on...

Mostly curious... a question to Geforce 8+ owners. How have you found Cuda technology? Any practical usage and/or thoughts?

Cheers.

I've accidentally made a crash test. A cheap system case fell off my table on to the floor (about 100cm high), landing on one of its sides with a CM 212 Plus firmly attached to the motherboard. Amazingly, but there has been no damage. Just done testing it all over again. I am sure, a combination of ...

Todays' mid-range graphics cards like to consume about 10 to 15w doing nothing, under load it could go as high as 100w but it depends on the make. High-end cards idle around roughly 20-30w... under load 200w easily. You go crossfire you double it. It's crazy. I suggest you study this first. Performa...

If I want value... I take CoolerMaster. Zalmans are not on the cheap side, nor the quality side. I had orginal Al-cu 7000 and now CNPS-10X quiet both had very good quality and price worth the performance you were getting (especially if you factor in STG-2 bundled to every CNPS).. I have used Zalman...

If I want value... I take CoolerMaster. Zalmans are not on the cheap side, nor the quality side.

Noctua 140MM @ 900 RPM is quite audible but at least I like the way it sounds! It's like a good car engine, you hear it but it sounds nice. This is something no textual review can express, nor dB show.