Efficiency
Efficiency is a comparison of energy to work. The Asus M3A79-T Deluxe produced the “most work” by winning a variety of benchmarks, but did it use the most power? We loaded each system with four instances of Prime95 to find out.
The M3A79-T Deluxe had the lowest full-load power consumption, while the 780a SLI drew the fewest watts at idle. The M3A79-T’s average power savings compared to the 780a SLI motherboard was approximately 4%.
Another look at the overall performance of each system should help define how significant Asus’ efficiency advantage was.
Combining the M3A79-T’s 3% performance lead with its 4% power reduction gives it a 7% efficiency lead over the 780a SLI motherboard we compared. Foxconn’s A79A-S was also a little faster overall than the 780a SLI, but its higher power consumption resulted in an overall efficiency decrease.
