> consumption numbers for some standardized workload
It would be nice if any of the synthetic benchmarks included "10 hours of power-on, with 7 hours of web browsing, 2 hours of CAD, and a bunch of just-plain-idle time". Of course the choice of OS and mobo would matter a lot here too, but...
...I think it's entirely valid that idle power is probably a large part of power consumption and it's wholly ignored by current benchmark techniques. TDP is great for sizing heatsinks, but maybe I want to estimate my power bill.
SilentPCReview used to do a lot of this work, since heat means fans means noise. They'd have a "recommended system" every few months, which was the current performance-per-watt champion combo of CPU+mobo. I'm sitting in front of my last build from their 2008-era recommendation right now. But they're mothballed and I don't think anyone else has taken up that particular torch to run with it.
It would be nice if any of the synthetic benchmarks included "10 hours of power-on, with 7 hours of web browsing, 2 hours of CAD, and a bunch of just-plain-idle time". Of course the choice of OS and mobo would matter a lot here too, but...
...I think it's entirely valid that idle power is probably a large part of power consumption and it's wholly ignored by current benchmark techniques. TDP is great for sizing heatsinks, but maybe I want to estimate my power bill.
SilentPCReview used to do a lot of this work, since heat means fans means noise. They'd have a "recommended system" every few months, which was the current performance-per-watt champion combo of CPU+mobo. I'm sitting in front of my last build from their 2008-era recommendation right now. But they're mothballed and I don't think anyone else has taken up that particular torch to run with it.