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COPYRIGHT 2005 VNU Business Media Europe
Power consumption is an important issue for many PC owners, whether they're driven by economy, the environment or quieter operation. The trouble is, people want performance but the by-products are higher power consumption and noisier cooling.
Over the past few issues I've been looking at how the battery-saving technologies of the Pentium M processor can prove effective on the desktop. Unfortunately, the Pentium M and desktop motherboards designed to use it aren't cheap, but those wanting similar capabilities with conventional components needn't despair.
Unbeknown to many, both the Athlon 64 and latest Pentium 4 processors have effective power-saving technologies at their disposal. Rather than reinventing the wheel, these are based on the same techniques used by mobile processors: dynamic underclocking (see box on page 137).
With the ability to save power, money and allow a system to run more quietly, dynamic underclocking should rank as a feature worth shouting about, yet it's often overlooked. Worse, if you're building your own system, you may not even have the feature activated.
In this month's and future Hardware columns I'll be looking at the power saving capabilities of both the desktop Athlon 64 and Pentium processors, what you need to get them working and how effective they work out in practice. I'm starting with single-core models and the Athlon 64, as its Cool'n'Quiet technology beat Intel to dynamic desktop underclocking.
Cool'n'Quiet
AMD's Cool'n'Quiet was originally developed specifically for the Athlon 64 processor range. It works by reducing the processor clock speed and voltage when...
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