As I have worked alot to reduce the Power Consumption of my Network, I've been going through just about all components possible.

One question remains :
What is the most efficient Socket AM2 Motherboard / Chipset ?

From what I've heard, NVidia Chipsets are the most power-hungry.
I've also heard the AMD690V/G Chipset is quite power-saving, but I haven't found any comparison to the VIA K8T890 Chipset, which I run exclusively.

One of my doubts concerning the AMD Chipset is the Integrated VGA, while power-saving I assume it cannot beat the 1996 vintage S3 Vision 968, ATI Mach64, Cirrus Logic and Matrox MGA1064 PCI cards I run to save as much energy as possible.

Any suggestions, experiences or Links to Hardware Reviews covering this scenario ?

Chipsets powerconsumption is not handled often in reviews. Though there are some reviews out there that look at powerconsumption of the motherboard.

I'd guess your safest bet would be a chipset with as little features as possible.

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I'd guess your safest bet would be a chipset with as little features as possible.

Not always true - there's also the possibility of using a mainboard that has many things integrated. ;)

So then you can use less cards in the PCI slots, etc... :D

But @Falcon is correct - there is very little info about power consumption of mainboards... :-/

It's quite odd, actually...

The most energy conserving Chipset so far was the last ULI, unfortunately bought up and destroyed by NVidia (what a surprise, instead of integrating the superior qualities of the aquired tech, they just kill it... go figure) :P

That thing was like 30W (!) below its corresponding NForce competitor, too bad there are no AM2 Boards of it.

So the decision for me is either VIA K8T890 or AMD690...

The way it looks, I'll have to get a '690 for testing myself.

Take a look @ this - it's not AMD board, but it's VERY power-efficient:
http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39717
VIA EPIA Pico-ITX format mobo with VIA C7 CPU 1 GHz with 1GB sodimm DDR2 533. CPU uses 9W and the whole motherboard (16 quadrat cm large) uses 3.5W. It's a thin chance you'll find something more power efficient ;)


Comment from review:
"The energy footprint is so low that if you kept a DVD player, set-top box and some sort of music playback device on standby, together they would consume similar amounts of power as this Epia board."

Yes, and it's also very very slow ;)

wrote on 27.05.07 at 10:17:18:

Yes, and it's also very very slow ;)

Well yes, but - you mentioned network... not 3D rendering or HDTV decoding  ;)

Uhm, okay, that was meant as my "Network" - which does networking along its primary job :
Computing scientific data as fast and efficient as possible :)

For networking alone I would take a 486.

wrote on 27.05.07 at 10:17:18:

Yes, and it's also very very slow ;)

I'll vouch for that, using one right now.

Very slow indeed, flash movie playback gives it fits.

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Very slow indeed, flash movie playback gives it fits.

OMG LOL! ;D

Well, testing is complete.

I aquired two Boards with the AMD RS690V-Chipset :
MSI K9AGM2-L
GigaByte GA-MA69VM-S2

Problem :
On the MSI Board, the integrated X1200 only shuts down when a PCIe-Videocard is present. The mechanism fails to detect a PCI Videocard, however, thus making it impossible to run it with disabled Onboard VGA off a low-power PCI Card.

The GigaByte Board allows to use a PCI VGA instead of Onboard Video, but the Onboard actually does not fully shut down (allocates no resources but the Chip still clocks up to spec).
That means the full power is wasted for running the Onboard Video despited not being used at all.
Also noteworthy, the tiny Heatsink on the Videochip becomes too hot to touch, even under ideal conditions (Motherboard sitting free on the Table, not even mounted in a case). I can only speculate what insanse temperatures this passive cooler would reach under full 3D workload, eventually posing a fire hazard.
I had to place a 30mm Fan onto it to maintain a reasonable temperature curve.

Result :
The RS690 Chipset itself would be a nice, power-saving piece of equipment, but failing to physically shut off (=cut power completely) the Onboard X1200 Video Core, it clearly falls behind a comparative VIA K8T890 & PCI Video combination by approx. 8-10W.
It also means having a significant hotspot on the GigaByte Motherboard, something I've never been a friend of. Nothing in a Computer should become ever hot enough to cause skin burns or even worse.

That leaves the VIA K8T890 the most power-saving AMD Socket AM2 Chipset existing, ahead of the AMD R690V and far ahead of any NVidia Chipset. The only Chipset that could have beaten it was the ULI Chipset...