Power consumption and overclocking
| Power consumption - idle (system) | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intel Core i5 750 | AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE | AMD Phenom II X4 905e | Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 | Intel Core i5 661 | Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 |
| 45 | 45 | 44 | 45 | 32 | 44 |
Idle power-draw is pretty good on all systems. The CPU-and-GPU combination appears to pay dividends for Core i5 661, to the tune of 10W.
| Power consumption - load 2D (system) | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intel Core i5 750 | AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE | AMD Phenom II X4 905e | Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 | Intel Core i5 661 | Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 |
| 118 | 146 | 86 | 77 | 73 | 86 |
Crank up the load and the '661 still takes first place. The impressive benchmark performance of the Phenom II X4 965 BE comes at the cost of higher energy expenditure, and that's why we included an energy-efficient 905e into the mix. The Core i5 750 is also something of a power-hog, too.
Overclocking
Cranking up the frequency by placing the Core i5 661 on an ASUS P7H57D-V EVO motherboard, we managed to raise clockspeed from the default 3.33GHz to 3.7GHz using default voltage and a Thermalright MUX120 heatsink. Adding 10 per cent to various voltage lines enabled us to overclock the engineering-sample chip to 4.26GHz - in line with other Core ix CPUs.
In terms of the IGP, we managed a decent overclock, from 900MHz to 1,066MHz engine, resulting in a benchmark performance of 21.7fps in Company of Heroes: DX10, compared with 20.32fps with default-speed graphics. There's not much extra performance from the core increase, clearly.
