Power
Power consumption is monitored throughout our testing. And because our benchmark suite is scripted, it’s easy to subject each APU to the same workload and evaluate consumption during the entire run.
Our power data is interesting, though I’d caution against taking it as gospel. The motherboard vendors we’ve talked to indicate that Turbo Core functionality isn’t working perfectly yet.
With that said, A8-3850, A10-5800K, and A8-5600K are all rated for 100 W, while the A6-5400K has a 65 W thermal design power.
We immediately see that the Llano-based A8 (the yellow line) doesn’t drop to as low of an idle power consumption number as a Trinity-based chip. Otherwise, the three 100 W APUs all appear to place relatively close to each other.
Run the averages, and you actually see the trio end up within 4 W of each other. A8-5600K averages 101 W total system power use, while the A10 lands at 105 W. The Llano-based APU is in between.
The little A6-5400K-based machine averages just 83 W of power consumption through our benchmark suite. But look at that green line. It takes so long to complete testing that power use over time ends up being worse than the quad-core chips.
