Energy Efficiency: AMD vs. Intel

Intel vs. AMD: Power Dissipation and Efficiency

Power Dissipation : AMD Still in the Lead

As we have seen, Intel has significantly reduced the power dissipation of its Core 2 processors. Now, the next question is how the new stepping compares to the company’s other processors and those from rival AMD.

We compared a number of AMD and Intel processors. On the AMD side, we have a selection of 90nm EE CPUs as well as the newer 65nm versions. The measurements were taken on the following boards :

Foxconn’s Q9657MC-8KS2H Intel 965G board uses a 4-phase voltage regulator.

ECS’s RS485M-M board is built around the ATI-RS485 chipset and utilizes a 3-phase voltage regulator.

We measure the power dissipation directly at the CPU socket, meaning that the board’s voltage regulators are also factored into the final result.

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