Neil, I've got to say, shouting something over and over again isn't going to convince people of your point of view, especially people like Bluefront who paint everything they don't like/ agree with as Liberal for some reason. as for Al Gore, he's got people thinking, though arguably most of those ar...

just to muddy the waters, saw this review on the fud - little difference at idle with 4850e if you ignore the OC results, bit different with a X4 9600, then all over the place at load. Can't get my head around the differences between processors at load, guess that might be the VRM (or other) efficie...

mattthemuppet -- I'm not sure that you can compare the TechReport's results with ours like apples to apples. 1) The boards are different: Our Asus vs their Zotac 2) The system configs used are quite different: Our 45W TDP x2 4850e, 1GB RAM and 1W notebook drive vs their 95W TDP Phenom 9600, 2GB RAM...

They also used a mATX board too, which is more comparable to the 780G board tested by both of you. Any ideas? The chipsets are just one factor in motherboard power consumption. The VRM design is much more significant factor. Also voltages for the memory and other chips can make a significant differ...

great to see such a low power HTPC (or basic desktop) mobo, thanks for the review. The power consumption results are the complete opposite, but with a similar margin, to that found at the TechReport . They did use a Phenom, more memory and a raptor, but i would have though that would have just incre...

jaganath + autoboy - you're both right. People are starving as a result of diversion of food crops into biofuel production (Oxfam and Unicef have both published reports to this effect) AND this is partly (though not solely) a result of the US' drive towards biofuel production, via local subsidies an...

autoboy, I think we're arguing different things - I'm banging on about wealth and poverty in developING countries. You're a 100% right about average and median wealth in developed countries. In fact, part of the growing constraints on cheap resources is in my opinion due to the rising amount of disp...

sorry guys/ girls if anyone took my comments personally, they weren't meant as such, and I'm certainly not trying to tell anyone what to do or how to live. Life's too short to start doing that :) I 100% agree that the whole green thing is a bandwagon that companies are jumping on left right and cent...

This will lead the thread even more off topic, but I really don't get why people jump down other peoples throats for stating that oil prices are going up (and will most likely keep doing so for the foreseeable future) and that in that environment electricity costs aren't the biggest problem. Certain...

I'm not criticising the review, which was very well done, more the rationale for these cards existance. Having products at all price points. There will always be someone who just can't/won't pay those few bucks more. (In addition, these cards made a lot of sense for silent gaming systems, at least ...

I have to admit I struggle to see the point of these cards, particularly when compared to the newer IGPs, such NVidia's 8200 and AMD's 780G series. They use quite a lot more power than an IGP, cost more but still can't play modern games at reasonable resolutions and detail. if you're just after a vi...

thanks guys, looks like its 6 of one and 1/2 dozen of the other. I'll just see what's in stock when I get my other stuff - doesn't look like I'll go wrong with either!

Extrapolate, pls. okay :( Going by the WD3200 and 6400 reviews it looks like each platter uses ~2.2W at idle and ~3W load, which equates to 1/3 energy use of a 2 platter drive and 1/2 the use of a 1 platter drive. Therefore I guestimate that for a 3 platter drive (F1 1TB) each platter would use 1/4...

very nice, thanks for the review! I was going to go for a single platter WD3200AAKS but here in Oz few sites will tell you whether they're selling a single or double platter drive and then the review added extra uncertainty. I've now narrowed my choice down to the WD6400 or the Samsung 640GB drive -...

such a tease!

ooh, very impressive, particularly the anemometer. The vibration meter sounds like it has a lot of potential too - be interesting to see how quantitative readings correlate with your subjective scores. I've already suggested to Cyril at the Techreport that he outsource the sound measurement part of ...

great review and surprising too. I wonder if the reason the efficiency and noise profile seen in this PSU haven't made it down to lower rated models is because they command significantly lower premiums than these crazy gamer models? I'm also perplexed by the standy noise reduction thing - if it redu...

congrats to the winners and bugger I didn't win again

I think everyone, winners or not, should feel very proud of what they've contributed to. The fact that so many other tech sites now include (admittedly half baked) sound measurements to their reviews shows what an impact SPCR is having!

this is so cool, what an awesome project. So impressive to see how much people have contributed - just goes to show that excellence, rigour and humility can be rewarded !

pay day today, so here's another $50 (Lifetime patron, yay!). Don't think I'll be able to give any more or my wife truly will have my balls

Good to hear it's going so well, can't wait to see the first pics!

here's another TR article showing similar idle power draws for 3870/70-512mb cards. Incredibly the 9600GT undercuts the 3850-512mb at load, hmm.

let me see - here is where they compared the standard 3850-256mb and 3870-512mb cards, then here they tested a bunch of 3850/70-512mb cards and here is the clearest demonstration of similar idle power draw between the 3850 and 3870 512mb cards. Load draw is consistantly higher in the 3870 cards, but...

congrats to the winners and bugger I haven't won again in equal measure! One day, one day :) Keep up with the updates Mike, it's fascinating to watch these projects develop. A photo blog a la Anand Home theatre thing would be a good idea too - people are always more likely to contribute if they see ...

Are donations being linked to forum usernames at all? Since the email addresses used on PayPal and on the forums might not be the same, this could be interesting (though I believe mine are the same, so I'm not sure why I'm even asking). that's a good point - my Paypal email is different to my SPCR ...

ooh, fancy! I was going to cry poverty (2 children, 1 1wk old) but I figured $50 is less than what i can spend on thomas the tank engine accessories and it'll make a big contribution to a very valuable resource. good luck with the quotes/ project and as soon as I have a bit more spare cash I'll dona...

I'd go for an E8400 and a 8800GT myself too, but given that Mike said that this system was being designed/ tested ~4mths ago it's likely that those parts either weren't around or not in enough quantity for a commercial system. Being a boutique builder I'm sure they'd tweak it to a customer's wishes....

wether it's TIM or solder it has a similar melting point to what ever's used to stick the core to the substrate - I remember some OCing site trying to remove the heatspreader from a P4 extreme and he had to heat it up so high to remove it that he pulled the core off with it. I think he was inspired ...

nice review and very timely. Just a shame I can't buy one here in Australia :( One thing to bear in mind though - Techreport tested both a 256Mb and 512mb version of the 3850 and the 512mb version had very similar power draw at idle and load as the 3870. The two models are after all pretty much the ...

Tom's and Anand's figures are pretty similar for the QX9650 (quad core) and the Xbitlabs are for dualcores, showing that the 45nm CPUs (E8***) are more efficient.

All depends on whether your software can make use of >2 cores. If it can, then one of the new 45nm quads (Q9***) would be perfect.

thanks Mike. It'll be suspended anyway (like the 120Gb 7200.7 IDE I have now) and by the time I'll upgrade there should be enough views out there, and enough 1 platter drives floating around, to make things simpler. Then again, with baby no.2 about to arrive, I probably wouldn't be able to hear the ...