That's if you're going full tilt on everything all the time, so literally: never. It'll never give you a correct answer unless you tell it exactly what you're going to do with the hardware.

Just use a calculator with real numbers (70-120w is far more realistic).

Random try with different AIs, this prompt:

> what's the price for electricity for operating a PC in the UK. assume an average office workload, with occasional gaming. 8 AM to 10 PM every day, for one year. 3 hard drives, 2 SSDs, i7 7700K CPU, 1080 Ti GPU.

Gemini: Therefore, the estimated annual electricity cost for running your PC in the UK under the given conditions is £125.00.
Copilot: Annual Electricity Cost: 567.21 kWh/year * £0.24/kWh = £136.11/year
ChatGPT: Annual cost = 751.44 kWh × £0.34/kWh = £255.49.


I had to reformulate for ChatGPT, because it kept assuming 10 hours of office work/day and 4 hours of gaming/day...

 

If you have to point to electrical consumption in a debate over which OS/machine is better, you are really grasping at straws. For that mere 63 cents a day difference, you could be saving the elephants. Right?

 

This is nice feature. I saw that on Linux on JACK but it requires lot of additional configuration to sync both interfaces.

Preempt RT or low latency system kernels really work, I had no problems with the drivers for my peripherals. I was getting the latency down to 3ms. JACK Audio is great because it allows routing everything to everything even beyond daw. However, the biggest problem for me is the lack of software and the need to use WINE. Developers mostly don't give a damn fuck about this OS, which is a shame. I have been sitting on audio on Linux (Debian 12) exclusively for the last 2 years. Now I have temporarily returned to Windows, and so I am looking for alternatives. But for the moment my sanity is returning and my fascination with the M4 is waning.

 

The macOS dirty secret is that it doesn't actually make any attempt to word sync the interfaces, that's still up to you by using external word clock signals if and when the interfaces support it. CoreAudio itself just lets the signals drift out of sync however they want.

Most users don't care; but will still hawk about device aggregation as a macOS wonder-weapon.

 

Personally M chip is the way to go for a laptop, dunno, don't think that M4 is significant upgrade from what you have or going with AM5, especially if you aren't hitting the limits of your current setup. macOS direction isn't far away from where Windows is going, so you aren't gaining much there either, you are actually losing fair share of tools and backwards compatibility, Apple is just pushing forward at all cost's and doing even more questionable stuff on the long run. Microsoft is essentially trying to pull Apple on their users, so your dissatisfaction with them is pushing to 11 on other side. So just stay on 10 or Linux, it's not worth the hassle if you don't have laptop that actually benefits small TDP, greater battery life and hassle free DPC, which isn't the problem on PC desktops that much, laptops, yeah.

 

A lot of speculations going on, but I'd wait and see actual real-world tests before I give Apple any money!
I'm thinking of getting the Mac mini Pro myself.

 

ChatGPT lies alot. Ask it for a source.

 

No, it does not. It reads website information aka "training". It can give inaccurate results, just like Wikipedia. It has no reason to "lie", which means being deceptive on purpose. It has no reason to be deceptive, but people do. People say things they cannot prove all the time. Just like your post.

 

Last edited: Nov 2, 2024

You may not have encountered any such incidents, but if you use such AIs enough, you may know that all these AIs lies at times, actually a lot and they can go lengths to defend their lies. It is called 'AI hallucination'. Search the term on Google. I have enough incidents of such lying that I always cross-check, especially when the thing is important.

In the field of artificial intelligence, a hallucination or artificial hallucination is a response generated by AI that contains false or misleading information presented as fact.

 

You are presenting the situation in reference to it doing bad math. Nowhere does he show how, or where; his Current PC: £608.61 information comes from to do any calculations. Yet you jump to claiming the AI has gotten it wrong, and not the user.

My last PC had multiple nVidia GPUs in it, and drew all sorts of power when running certain software. And it was not even close to that.

You blame user error on the AI. No matter what way you alter these numbers, usage and machine differences; you are not going to come up with an additional 400 pounds in cost. Garbage in= Garbage out.


You: what does the electricity cost for 1 pc to run for 1 year, average in UK

ChatGPT said:
The electricity cost to run a PC for one year in the UK varies based on several factors, including the PC's power consumption, hours of daily usage, and the average electricity rate. Here’s a basic breakdown to estimate the cost:

1. Power Consumption: On average, a typical desktop PC consumes between 150-300 watts (0.15-0.3 kW) depending on the components and usage. For instance:
   • Idle/Desktop use: ~60-100 watts
   • Moderate load: ~150-300 watts
   • High-end gaming or processing: 400+ watts
2. Usage Hours: Let’s assume the PC runs 8 hours per day on average.
   
   
3. Electricity Rate: As of late 2023, UK residential electricity prices have averaged around 34p per kWh (though it can vary by provider and plan).

Example Calculation
Let’s assume:

• Power Consumption: 200 watts (0.2 kW)
• Daily Usage: 8 hours
• Annual Usage: 365 days

1. Daily Consumption = 0.2 kW × 8 hours = 1.6 kWh
2. Annual Consumption = 1.6 kWh × 365 days = 584 kWh
3. Annual Cost = 584 kWh × £0.34 = £198.56

Summary:
For a typical desktop PC used moderately (8 hours per day at 200 watts), you can expect an annual electricity cost of approximately £198 in the UK. For gaming PCs or higher power consumption setups, this cost could be higher.

 

Last edited: Nov 2, 2024

Hi guys,

Thanks for addressing my ChatGPT result.

ChatGPT wasn't wrong but it failed to ask questions, if it was real AI it would have asked me how many hours I actually use the PC in order to produce an accurate figure. It was also my own fault for not considering this - a perfect example of how crucial the prompt is.

The following may be nearer to the truth but I have long Covid brain fog so I will leave it to younger and brighter minds to determine. There will also be a slight increase from peripherals but probably not great enough to concern myself with. What is interesting is that if these figures are correct a Mac Mini would probably pay for itself within its expected lifetime (10 years?) and it uses only a fraction more power than the Firebat, which is pretty incredible when you compare the machines. However, maybe it's still not correct!

My PC
Total Cost Per Year: 365 days * 62.70p/day = £228.86

Savings Per Year
Switching to Mac mini: £228.86 - £46.54 = £182.32

Switching to FIREBAT T8 Pro Plus: £228.86 - £9.24 = £219.62

By replacing your main PC with the Mac mini, you would save approximately £182.32 per year. If you switch to the FIREBAT T8 Pro Plus, you would save approximately £219.62 per year.

By replacing your main PC with the Mac mini, you would save approximately £182.32 per year. If you switch to the FIREBAT T8 Pro Plus, you would save approximately £219.62 per year.

___

If anybody would like to try this for themselves here's my PC configuration:

Asus ROG Maximus IX Formula LN77231, Intel Core i7 7700K Kaby Lake LN76864, Noctua Intel/AMD NH-D15 Silent CPU Cooler, Zotac GeForce GTX 1080 Ti AMP! Extreme Edition Plus 3 hard drives and two ssd drives

 

I'd advise you to ignore the Mac Mini and go for the Mactini:

 

base mac nvme speed 1500mb/s lol ? i'm riding 7000mb/s on pc. big difference when loading pianoverse or kontakt libz. ciao !

 

Why use chatGPT for simple calculation?

M4 mini is specified to draw up to 155W continuously, which is already more then my current system (thanks to ryzen). It's good that they don't draw much energy, but unless you're coming from a gaming rig or some of the recent Intel chips it's really not much difference.

What surprises me more is that apparently with the base chip you can't use two screen with more then 60hz?? Am I missing something ? 60hz is unbearable. I think everything they make is designed so that any professional user will upgrade to the much, much more expensive versions.

 

Last edited: Nov 2, 2024

Curious. What "changes" are taking place? There is no "recommended by a/v creators" anymore. You're talking about a supposed performance chasm between the two platforms that has been non-existent for decades. There is really only personal preference anymore that tends to dictate one platform over another IMO... To be perfectly honest I despise BOTH hardware platforms. I use PC's because they are more malleable and there's no proprietary corporate bullshit to deal with.

Personally, for all that one has to deal with on apple hardware I do not need more problems from OS or hardware in order to get stuff working correctly. There's also the added cost of hardware due to apple being proprietary. With apple, be prepared for much more "iffy" support from the warez scene as far as releases go. Also, implementing scene releases on apple seems much more tedious than on the PC side with the newer systems at least... If your software use is all "legit" then no problem I guess, but I doubt very many here could make that claim.

Side note: "apple intelligence"? If that's anything like microsoft "intelligence" then both are a contradiction in terms.

 

Last edited: Nov 2, 2024

Apple Silicon platform is fine for audio/video/AI, but do note base Macs are adequately inferior to more pricier options,
really depends on scale of your projects, "upgrade" pricing for more RAM and storage is ridiculous to say politely,

AI performance is about on par with old GTX1080Ti, and much worse than current RTX 4* series gpus from nVidia, but if you'd have lots of unified memory on Mac (for ex. 64GB) then you could load big AI models that else would require some 48GB nVidia RTX 6000 Ada (which indeed is much more expensive than such Mac Studio or Mini)

this is the model I would only consider, but I'd still wait for actual benchmarks and reviews

 

It's just plain ridiculous that Apple is still advertising "Gaming" for their GPUs on and on.

 

This is a general simplification so that I don't have to write a detailed article about why I am looking for an alternative to WIN11 and Linux. There are many reasons, for me they are important. If you are further curious about this then search for the term Windows Recall.
For Linux: RHEL close source and Fedora drop X11, flatpak, snap etc.

I don't want to discuss all of my fears about future of open source, GNU etc.

 

I totally get it. But looking to apple - the OG of corporate computer espionage and proprietary B.S. (next to mickeysoft), as any sort of better alternative answer to your concerns is, IMO, like going from the frying pan into the fire. Apple (and microsoft) are both pioneers in regards to attempting to ram their corporate snouts as far up their users behinds as they can. Which is why I have stuck with the PC platform due to the fact that most, if not all (up to this point anyway), privacy concerns can be addressed with reverse engineering on the user end. This is not really feasible on the apple side as far as I know.