Only 75 Watts At 3.10 GHz

Since the processor is made on a 65 nm production process and uses the G2 stepping, it has a thermal design power (TDP) of only 65 W. We compared the thermal dissipation of all currently available AMD and Intel processors, and made a very pleasant discovery when we looked at the results of our overclocked 5000+ Black edition.

When we overclock our 5000+ Black Edition by 500 MHz (29 %) to 3.10 GHz, we see that the power consumption increases only minimally. Due to the fact that the CPU runs at its stock voltage, it only draws 8 W more than it would at stock speed. However, when we set the CPU to run at 3.30 GHz, which requires an increase in core voltage, the thermal power dissipation suddenly jumped to 108 W.

Thanks to its low power dissipation, even older coolers can be used with this CPU.

Due to its older 90 nm production process, the results of the Black Edition 6400+ are much worse.

Another thing that struck us was that the 5000+ Black Edition draws about 4.7 W less power than the normal 5000+, which is also made on a 65 nm process. This is proof that the stepping update from G1 to G2 brings some energy savings with it.

Compared to Intel's Core 2 Duo processors, all of AMD's CPUs currently look bad where energy consumption is concerned. At 3.10 GHz, the 5000+ Black Edition is about as fast as the E6550 while drawing 30 W more power. On the other hand, while the AMD processor consumes 47% more energy, it also costs $40 less, and price usually takes precedence over power consumption when users are looking to upgrade.