Power thoughts
| HEXUS.power - idle-power reading | ||
|---|---|---|
| AMD Athlon X2 7750 BE | AMD Athlon X2 6000+ | Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5200 |
| 111 | 76 | 70 |
Idle and load power-draw is measured at the mains, via a watt-meter, and a single BeQuiet 430W PSU is used for both the AMD and Intel platforms.
The idle figure represents the system simply running Vista with no other load imposed, and the triumvirate of processors had their respective energy-saving technologies - Cool 'n' Quiet and EIST - turned on.
Surprisingly, the Phenom-derived X2 7750 comes out looking bad here, but we suspect that our test motherboard, a Gigabyte 790GX board, may not have been correctly identifying the processor, despite using the latest BIOS, so take the numbers with a pinch of salt.
| HEXUS.power - under-load reading | ||
|---|---|---|
| AMD Athlon X2 7750 BE | AMD Athlon X2 6000+ | Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5200 |
| 175 | 161 | 100 |
Load is defined as running two instances of Prime95 torture test with maximum memory allocation, to isolate the CPU and RAM subsystem. Looking at on-paper specs, the Athlon X2 7750 (B3-stepping) has a TDP of 95W, the Athlon X2 6000+ (G2-stepping) is purported to be 89W, and the Intel Pentium Dual Core E5200 (M0-stepping) some 65W.
The Intel numbers look (rather too) good, shaving off some 75W when compared to X2 7750, but we reckon that's a platform/CPU tweak more than anything else. Still, 75W is hugely significant in the grand scheme of things.
