Power, Heat, and Efficiency
Intel provided a fairly simple motherboard composed of a few high-quality components, allowing the firm to show off the power-savings nature of its new platform. The board with the greatest number of features, ECS’ P67H2-A2 falls to the bottom.
ECS also had the highest voltage regulator temperature, so a few extra watts were probably wasted in conversion.
We averaged the performance difference of all motherboards across all non-synthetic benchmarks to determine “work,” since efficiency is a comparison of work to energy. The best-performing motherboard sets the frame of reference at 100%.
It’s no surprise to us that eight of the boards finished in a dead heat, yet the tiny scale of Jetway’s loss is a little surprising, since its pre-realease firmware had no Intel Turbo Boost functionality.
Cutting features and using only a few high-efficiency CPU regulator components allowed Intel to finish nearly 9% over average, while ECS digs a much deeper hole at the bottom.