AMD FX: Energy Efficiency Compared To Eight Other CPUs

Features
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We've already seen AMD's Bulldozer architecture come up short in the performance benchmarks. However, the company also claims it made important improvements to power consumption. Can FX-8150 at least score some points in the energy efficiency department?

Multi-Threaded Efficiency

The total run time of our threaded benchmarks is not as devastating to AMD's FX-8150 as the single-threaded collection. AMD is beaten by Intel's six-core Gulftown design (Core i7-980X), and it cannot hold off the Core i7-2600K. It's close to several other processors, though.

Taking a look at average power consumption, the FX-8150 finishes in last place. Even its predecessors were more energy efficient.

It's a bummer that this represents a best-case scenario for AMD, where its architecture's resources are best-utilized.

This isn't as bad as the single-threaded application benchmarks, though. And while the average power draw is high, the benchmark does not run for that long and the resulting total power consumption in watt-hours is quite low. With that said, Intel's processors offer better efficiency, regardless of the CPU model.

Patrick Schmid
Patrick Schmid
Editor-in-Chief (2005-2006)

Patrick Schmid was the editor-in-chief for Tom's Hardware from 2005 to 2006. He wrote numerous articles on a wide range of hardware topics, including storage, CPUs, and system builds.