Dual Core Power Consumption - Intel vs AMD

addyngan · Post by **addyngan** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 9:14 am

I am just wondering about this out of curiosity. From various reviews i saw on the web, the power consumption at full load of the intel dual core SYSTEM is more than 100W higher than the athlon X2 counterpart. Why is the difference so big, provided the TDP of the processors are only 20W apart? (110W for X2, 130W for Pentium XE) Is this simply some under/over estimation of the processor power from the two companies, or is the rest of the system so different to make up the huge power difference? AFAIK, the intel system have separate north/southbridge chips, but the nforce4 one chip solution is also well known be to run very hot a.k.a pretty high power as well..

1. http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/2005050 ... on-19.html
2. http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content ... 4x2&page=4
3. http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=14 ... ert&pid=18
4. http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q2/pe ... ex.x?pg=16
5. (this one reports the 'actual' processor power instead of system) http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/di ... 840_5.html

I found the power difference too good to be true, and I wonder how the people who are using intel deal with the 100W extra heat in their quiet system. I am glad i went for the AMD route.

frankgehry · Post by **frankgehry** » Fri Jul 29, 2005 9:21 am

just read the intel 570 review and the p180 case review here. why not also read a more current article at tom's http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050603/index.html