Seen Gibyte's Easy Energy Saver or Asus's EPU on AMD tested?

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Nil Einne
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Seen Gibyte's Easy Energy Saver or Asus's EPU on AMD tested?

Post by Nil Einne » Thu Mar 05, 2009 7:36 am

Hey all,

Gigabyte launched their Ultra Durable 3 line for AMD which includes Easy Energy Saver while Asus launched their pseudo AM3 line with EPU which appear to be some of the first AMD boards with such energy saving features, present on the Intel ones for a while. Both require AM2+ or Phenom processors, I presume designed to take advantage of things like the split power planes.

As some here may know, the Phenom (not II) line, including the 7750 has rather crap power consumption compared to the Brisbane line particularly at idle (I haven't seen any excellent reviews but what I have seen suggests it's easily 20W higher) which for most users is a big disadvantage. (If you're at load and taking advantage of all cores particularly for the X4 line you'd probably get better performance/watt of course nothing as good as Intel).

So I'm wondering how much the energy saving features, Gigabyte's EES and Asus's EPU, help to reduce the higher power consumption at idle. Anyone seen anything of use? Edit: In case I didn't make this clear enough, I'm only interested in AMD systems

Also interested in any other mobo with similar power saving features.

Cheers
Last edited by Nil Einne on Fri Mar 06, 2009 5:58 am, edited 1 time in total.

jessekopelman
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Post by jessekopelman » Fri Mar 06, 2009 3:20 am

Pretty sure Anandtech did a review of some boards with these features. Their tests found it didn't do much. But who knows if the high-end configurations they use are a good test?

burebista
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Re: Seen Gibyte's Easy Energy Saver or Asus's EPU on AMD tes

Post by burebista » Fri Mar 06, 2009 4:25 am

Nil Einne wrote:Anyone seen anything of use?
Here you go.

FartingBob
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Post by FartingBob » Fri Mar 06, 2009 4:26 am

ASUS's EPU was a complete PITA for me. Using the P5Q-Pro P45 board, when installed it would repeatedly BSOD on me. Something obviously didnt like being underclocked. In the end i just uninstalled it and have been running fine since. But its unlikely i'll ever try it again.

Nil Einne
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Re: Seen Gibyte's Easy Energy Saver or Asus's EPU on AMD tes

Post by Nil Einne » Fri Mar 06, 2009 5:42 am

burebista wrote:
Nil Einne wrote:Anyone seen anything of use?
Here you go.
Sorry perhaps I didn't make it clear enough, I'm only interested in AMD systems. I've come across that before and other reviews showing they help but they've been pretty useless since it's on Intel systems. The implementations for AMD systems have only just came out and require AM2+ CPUs so it's an interesting proposition.

As you can see, it does benefit particularly at idle in Intel systems. But whether that still holds for AMD systems, who knows? Particularly since this is the first implementation. If it does, then as I mentioned earlier the Phenoms could easily provide similar idle levels to the Brisbane cores but that's a big if.
Last edited by Nil Einne on Fri Mar 06, 2009 6:01 am, edited 1 time in total.

Nil Einne
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Post by Nil Einne » Fri Mar 06, 2009 5:56 am

FartingBob wrote:ASUS's EPU was a complete PITA for me. Using the P5Q-Pro P45 board, when installed it would repeatedly BSOD on me. Something obviously didnt like being underclocked. In the end i just uninstalled it and have been running fine since. But its unlikely i'll ever try it again.
I think both solutions have their issues. The original release of both EPU and DES were crap at overclocking but I believe they're better now. But I'm sure stability problems are not uncommon so it's always likely to be a hit or miss. However I've seen various reviews such as the one linked above which show they do reduce power usage when you get them working, at least for Intel systems.

(Actually I'm not really that interested in Asus just included it for completeness. Don't like how stingy they are with PCIe-1 ports on ATX mobos nor their crappy behaviour in often refusing to update their bioses to support new CPUs (like Phenoms and Phenoms IIs). Gigabyte seem mildly better and they are also less stingy with PCIe ports. Also at least here Asus boards of roughly equivalent feature specs tend to cost more then GB ones)

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