Final set of results from the Power Management Blueprint

[Colin Ian King]

Hi,

Now beta2 is nearly here I ran some (very simple) tests last night and 
this morning on Unity 2D vs 3D to see how they compare in terms of power 
consumption on a HP Mini 210 (Atom N450) and a Lenovo X220i 
(Sandybridge, i3).

Data:
     
http://zinc.canonical.com/~cking/power-benchmarking/unity-beta2-results/unity-2d-vs-3d.ods

Results:
     
http://zinc.canonical.com/~cking/power-benchmarking/unity-beta2-results/unity-beta2-2d-vs-3d-results.txt

Quick Summary:

For 3D animation and busy rendering (which we suspect this keeps the 
compositor busy) Unity 3D consumes more power than 2D.  This is more 
apparent on newer Intel Sandybridge chipsets because 2D seems to keep 
the GPU powered down which is known to save 25-40% of total system power 
due to the i915 RC6 power saving mode.

For some operations, such as desktop zooming, 2D is more expensive 
because we don't have GPU assist to scale images.

Finally, for idle systems, 2D and 3D are comparable in power consumption.

..but see the unity-beta2-2d-vs-3d-results.txt for more details.  Oh, 
and the sigma (std.deviation) is rendered poorly on web-browsers.

Colin