You're correct that I do not know the "exact" impact that these systems have on my power bill. I do know that they aren't significant though. I haven't always had 4 systems running in my house. It started out as 1 and as my family has gotten older we have added computers to meet increased demand. I haven't actually put together a bar graph comparing usage between 1 computer and 4 computers, but I do know that my power bill is more or less the same now as before. Have they added power consumption? Absolutely. Just not enough that it has had a major impact on my power bill. In my home my big power consumers are my appliances. Electric washer and dryer, dishwasher, electric range and oven. The computers are a drop in the bucket compared to them. So again, I come back to I just really don't get the hang up over a few watts, when in a lot of peoples situations, (I'd dare say I'm not the only person out there with electric appliances) computer power consumption is a drop in the bucket on their power bill.Without knowing what your bill is without these systems running, you have no idea what difference it makes... Maybe you'd be at the lower end instead of middle?
Unless you have a ton of disposable income, power consumption is an issue... And if you HAVE unlimited money, why would you be buying AMD - they only make sense for cost per performance... Only Hardreset would be buying AMD if money was no object!
I don't really consider myself as a fan of amd over intel or visa versa, I like both company's, have computers running hardware from both companies and hope they both do well as that is better for me as a consumer because of increased competition. Since intel came out with the core processors and left amd behind, their progress has really slowed without having to outdo amd. I built my 2600k system when they first came out, I actually had to wait a month for the motherboard because of the chipset recall intel had on them. I have contemplated off and on a few times since then upgrading, but every time I have looked into it, I have come to the conclusion that the cost per performance gain to upgrade my 2600k system just wasn't worth it. I am really hoping that when zen and intel's next gen processors hit the market next year that it will be, and that amd will stay relevant enough to push the progress along faster than it has been going the last 5 years.
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