"Athlon 64 X2 4600+ And 3800+ Energy Efficient"

[9-inch]

...The EE 3800+ sneaked in under the wire at 119 Watts full load and the 4600+ wiggled in just under 150 Watts. At idle there is only a 9 watt differential between the two chips and they are easily the lowest power consumption of the group. For applications like HTPCs and other small form factor installations, these low power dual core Athlons will provide a bit more breathing room for the significantly smaller Power Supplies that are typically incorporated into these types of systems.

...At default voltages we were able to remain stable with a 15% increase in core speed on the 3800+ and a 10% increase on the 4600+. With a voltage boost .10v above standard Athlon 64 X2 ranges, the 3800+ hits a stable 2.6GHz and the 4600+ hits 2.8GHz. It goes without saying but your mileage may vary of course. Still at 2.8GHz you're looking at A64 FX-62 speeds on the 4600+ and 5000+ level speeds for the 3800+ at 2.6GHz.

www.hothardware.com

 

[turpit]

...The EE 3800+ sneaked in under the wire at 119 Watts full load and the 4600+ wiggled in just under 150 Watts. At idle there is only a 9 watt differential between the two chips and they are easily the lowest power consumption of the group. For applications like HTPCs and other small form factor installations, these low power dual core Athlons will provide a bit more breathing room for the significantly smaller Power Supplies that are typically incorporated into these types of systems.

...At default voltages we were able to remain stable with a 15% increase in core speed on the 3800+ and a 10% increase on the 4600+. With a voltage boost .10v above standard Athlon 64 X2 ranges, the 3800+ hits a stable 2.6GHz and the 4600+ hits 2.8GHz. It goes without saying but your mileage may vary of course. Still at 2.8GHz you're looking at A64 FX-62 speeds on the 4600+ and 5000+ level speeds for the 3800+ at 2.6GHz.

www.hothardware.com


http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/AMD-Response-Intel-Conroe-Energy-Efficient-Athlon-64-ftopict194147.html

 

[Viperabyss]

while we're on that topic? where are they? i can't find ANY major vendor selling them, and i thought they were launched on the 20th something of July?

paper launch

 

[jaguarskx]

...The EE 3800+ sneaked in under the wire at 119 Watts full load and the 4600+ wiggled in just under 150 Watts. At idle there is only a 9 watt differential between the two chips and they are easily the lowest power consumption of the group.

www.hothardware.com

I generally dislike power consumption reviews when the entire system's power consumption is used to guage the efficiency of a CPU. That's because AMD and Intel motherboards will throw off the results slightly. After all you can't benchmark an AMD CPU in an Intel motherboard and vice-versa.

I prefer Xbitlab's test methods better because they isolate power consumption of just the CPU. They also use the same testing method for GPUs.

It would be nice if more hardware review sites followed Xbitlab's lead.

 

[mesarectifier]

The people those CPUs are aimed at really don't put power efficiency/consumption at the top of their list of priorities.

The only place that this might be of interest would be HTPC (with small power supplies), although if AMD were thinking about that then they'd surely have the best solution in a Turion? (Mobile CPUs + HTPC usually goes quite good)