Energy Consumption: Burdening the Complete System to the Maximum
The energy consumption of the complete system is not good when the energy hungry CPUs are loaded to the limit. The energy saving Sempron 64 3000+ needs, under full system load, 97.0 watts, 70.1 W of which fall away through the system.
The hungriest processor, the Athlon 64 X2 6400+, needs 177.3 W, while 73.9 W are due to the system. In total, it needs about 3.8 W more.
The Phenom slides into second last place when fully loaded. When processors alone were being tested to full capacity the Phenom 9600 did better, at 8.07 watts behind the Athlon 64 X2 6400+. When the complete system is measured, the gap is reduced to 2.11 W.