AMD Phenom II X4: 45nm Benchmarked

Energy Consumption Under Heavy Load

At 100% utilization for all CPU cores, the differences between the 65 and 45 nm technologies become powerfully obvious. For this test, we measured the power consumption directly from the 12 volt rail that supplied the CPU.

CPU Power Consumption at 100% Load

Whereas the Phenom at 2.6 GHz requires up to 139 watts, the 2.8 GHz Phenom II requires only 88 watts. At 3.0 GHz, the Phenom II X4 940 is also significantly lower at 93 watts. But the Core i7 is outside the Phenom II’s reach at 74 Watts, and the Core i7 965 Extreme consumes only three more watts (94.9). The Core 2 Quad Q6600 comes in 5 watts under the Phenom II (at just under 83 watts).

System-Level Power Consumption At 100% Load

The Core i7 chipset requires a lot of power, while a Phenom II system consumes less power even when the more power-hungry CPU is factored in. AMD’s power consumption is about on par with a Core 2 Quad Q6600 system, and noticeably lower than that of a Core i7 platform system. When it comes to overall energy consumption, AMD makes a much better showing thanks to its more energy efficient chipsets.

  • one-shot
    YAY!, The day has come! Haven't read it yet. I am excited to see what it brings!
    Reply
  • firedogevan
    why focus on the q6600... wouldn't the q9550 or 9650 be a more accurate comparison given their respective locations in the product lineup?
    Reply
  • dechy
    Yeah, the price comparison table should of included a Q9550, which costs same as i7 920 but with the lower mobo/ram combo price.

    Ends up being the same price as the AMD bundle, but with a good more performance... there goes the whole "AMD price/performance" aspect of this chip.
    Reply
  • one-shot
    Great review. Maybe some overclocking later? There were some pretty high claims about its overclocking potential. I'll wait for AM3 before I retire my E6750.
    Reply
  • cangelini
    Coming up soon one-shot--I was working on that one =)
    Reply
  • V3NOM
    who cares about performance/watt? PRICE/PERFORMANCE is the big deal
    Reply
  • The Q9xxx series would trump the PhenomII in all the categories listed above. THG, it was downright *criminal* to have not included the Yorkfield chips in your performance per dollar and performance per watt analysis.
    Reply
  • nashville
    hey bert/tom's:
    good write up: thought id comment on i7 watts:
    "we measured the power consumption directly from the 12 volt rail that supplied the CPU", i read somewhere the only i7 core logic gets power from 12v rail, the uncore/cache part somewhere else. if this is true, you going to do another measurements?
    Reply
  • kirvinb
    I'm so happy to see Intel has some competetion. While these new processors are not mind blowing, they offer some decent performance at the price given. I am sure this will lower the price of the q9400 and q9550, which is exactly what I want to see. Maybe even the i7s price will lower and maybe we will be back in the good days..where intel and amd flipped sides of the powerhouse like every 6 months..!! Good Write Up..
    Reply
  • jj463rd
    On the forums someone mentioned "why did they use DDR2-800 RAM when DDR2-1066 would give better performance for the Phenom II".Wouldn't this skew the benchmarks by a little bit (perhaps 2 to 3%)?
    Reply