Malvado wrote:I'm pretty sure most people here have their PC's on for obscene hours a day(mine rarely turns off). This baby adds more to my bill then everything else put together.
I call bull crap on that. Here is why:
HLT command in x86 & AMD64 processors tell the CPU to turn off when not active. While the theoretical use of max power (say 1000 watts for latest and greatest power supplies), you will never peak that for more than a few seconds out of your day. When playing a game, most of the energy goes to your video card which for any given nvidia card is 100 watts constant average) and then 48 watts for an average amd64 processor at full tilt, and another 10 to keep the Harddrive alive for I/O.
PS3 and the Cell processors in particular run at FULL speed with no HLT (short for halt), consoles are not considered 'Computers' in that you do not use it for word processing, it is a dedicated gaming machine. As such, there is no logical reason to implement HLT when the only use is gaming, and when it is turned on, it will go full blast all the time.
Modern day PCs on the other hand run word processors & office type applications and games, when your computer is on doing nothing, it hardly uses any power (10 watts to keep the memory 'RAM' refreshed). When you play a game, it goes full tilt, when you use a MS Word, it uses perhaps 11 watts.