How thirsty is it?
The platform generally dictates idle power consumption, and FX-8150 is good here.
Here's where it becomes somewhat sketchy. Hammer all the cores on FX-8150 and under-load power-draw, evaluated at the mains, jumps to around 205W. However, near the end of the benchmark, which lasts five minutes, the figure jumps to the reported 223W. Running the same test on the 1100T shows no spikes; it's very consistent at 189W.
The real problem for Bulldozer isn't how it performs against a sibling chip - such information is of relative unimportance - but against the competition. And while FX-8150 can trade blows against the Core iX chips in full-on benchmarks, it doesn't hold a candle to either the 2500K or 2600K in power-draw tests, which both ship with 95W TDPs - or some 30W lower than FX-8150's 125W.
Power-draw is inextricably linked in with cooling, and it's clear which range of chips is better for mainstream chassis. Indeed, rumour has it AMD will be bundling in a watercooling kit with select FX processors.
