Date:
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Author:
Kyle Bennett
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Intel Core 2 Duo & Extreme Power Consumption

Are you wondering if Intel’s new Core 2 Duo and Extreme are raging infernos like their predecessors? We show you what kind of wattage you can expect to draw so you know what PSU is in your future. And we throw in AMD's Energy Efficient 3800+ as well.

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Power Consumption Testing

We tried our best to match up all the components as closely as possible between the systems. We used the same Antec 550W power supply, as well as the same exact hard drives, video card, and cooling systems. All of the testing numbers below also reflect a Koolance Exos cooling system being used. All controllers integrated onto the motherboard that were not needed for testing were turned off.

UPDATED with Speedstep and Cool n' Quiet Data

Idle - This is the system state with no programs running or anything else on the computer being accessed. The computer is sitting at the desktop with no screen savers running.

50% CPU Load – This reflects one instance of Prime 95 (In Place Torture Test) being run.

100% CPU Load – This reflects two instances of Prime 95 (In Place Torture Test) being run.

No power saving features are being used in their idle state as many gamers turn this feature off in the BIOS due to it negatively impacting full power usage with some systems. Your mileage may vary, and if your computer stays idle for long periods of time, we do suggest you investigate these settings.

Also, we have added one of the new "low wattage" AMD Athlon 64 processors into the mix. We were finally able to obtain one of these and thought it might be a processor that others were interested in. This 3800+ runs at 2GHz and you can find specs on the it here.

Idle Testing with Speedstep and Cool n Quiet

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The AMD CPUs idle down to approximately 900MHz to 1GHz and the Core 2 CPU's pull back to 1.6GHz.

Idle Testing

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Please keep in mind these wattages reflect NO power saving technology being used. We see that in a default idle state the Core 2 processors are very power hungry compared to the AMD Athlon processors. Again, there are other idle power reduction measures available that should be looked into when running any CPU at idle for long periods of time.

50% CPU Load Testing

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At 50% load, we see our AMD Athlon FX-62 jump out and take a narrow lead over the two Core 2 processors. The low wattage 3800+ has just now reached the FX-62's impressive resting wattage consumption.

100% CPU Load Testing

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Moving from 50% to 100%, we see our FX-62 take the greatest leap loading that last 50% by using another 31 watts of power. The Core 2 CPUs only bump up by about 20 watts each while our low wattage 3800+ needs only another 10%.