the v5 was using an ssd, 4db ddr3 (not ddr3L/RS afaik) and 50% brightness on its ips screen, I dont know for sure what was amds draw or the rest of the system but 7-9W total system power browsing isnt too bad, although it is ~4W aboves amds larne test system with the dual core.
7-8W for web browsing, assuming similar actual loads, is bad vs the Exynos 5250 Chromebook which is something of an upper bound (power-wise) for the competing choices for Pandora. That's a few W higher. I can't find anywhere that says what kind of RAM is used in this Acer machine except that I have seen some claim that it's only DDR3-1066 (nothing about voltage). Chromebook is using DDR3L-1600 (disregard what Amazon says, it's wrong). I also found an unboxing that says the Acer machine is using an HDD, that can make an even bigger difference, but it shouldn't be that huge while running web browser tests because the storage should be mostly idle unless something really bad is happening. 4GB vs 2GB uses a little bit more power but nowhere close to 2x because you only actually access one stick at a time (unless they're on separate channels). I remember seeing reports from some papers that showed it was something like 20%. It'll also depend on if the memory is a single SODIMM, two SODIMMs, soldered on the board, or what. But none of this sounds like it should contribute to that much of a difference by itself.
quad a9s tegra and snapdragon are ~3W idle, dual a15 is 3.5W -display may be to blame. amd larne -read somewhere it is a 13" display was idling at supposedly 2.8W and chippy, from his latest post 8W idle -higher than the live stream
Of course it's fair to expect a 10" display to use a few W. Also for Tegra 3 in Surface RT it apparently doesn't have good regulation of its GPU so it's always using too much when the display is on.
Standing usage immediately before test: 7.9W (7% utilization, ave 1Ghz clock in quiescent state)
Test max power drain (ALU Test): 12.3W (94% CPU load by Crystalmark Process)
Test power: 4.4W
Normalised: 790mw/Core/Ghz
Test 2 – FPU
Standing usage immediately before test: 8.1W (7% utilization, ave 1Ghz clock in quiescent state)
Test max power drain (FPU Test): 13.1W (94% CPU load by Crystalmark Process)
Test power: 5W
Normalised: 900mw/Core/Ghz
These numbers are all over the place. First it's 7-8W while web browsing, now it's 8W idle.. I'm having a hard time taking this seriously. I want real power measurements by reviewers who know what they're doing.
Anyway, this is following the still dubious practice of estimating CPU power consumption by taking peak minus idle, that might work well when your CPU uses several dozen W at full load and is known to have decent power savings at idle like an IB or Trinity. But I can't look at 8W idling for this platform and really believe the CPU is using almost. Besides that 7% average utilization isn't low enough for me to consider it really almost idle.
Check out this review of a different Acer Aspire v5 model (v5-171) with i5 and 37Wh battery, similar screen etc:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6467/acer-aspire-v5171-notebook-review-the-death-and-rebirth-of-the-netbook/4
There are two interesting facets from this:
1) SSD + DDR3L improves power consumption by 13% at idle
2) This only uses about 6W at idle with the HDD + 6GB DDR3 (over two SODIMMs) configuration
Meaning that unless Acer is using much worse parts for this v5 (doubtful) either the idle power consumption is significantly worse or chippy's idle numbers are not really representative. Note that the E-350 chip gets by far the worst idle power draw here (8.5W); part of that is due to the larger 13.4" screen but maybe part of it is just worse idle performance for the CPU.
:lol:
