Power Usage And Temperature Benchmarks
We ran our power benchmarks on the Asus M4A785TD-V EVO motherboard in order to keep the focus on CPU power instead of graphics card consumption. It is notable that the newest 0410 BIOS on this board (that supports the Phenom II X4 965) has broken C1E support, so we couldn't test it with this feature enabled.
Keep in mind that there is only a 15 watt difference between the 140W TDP of the original Phenom II X4 965 and the 125W TDP of the new revision, so we're not expecting any miracles here:
We're only seeing a 10W difference under load here, and an insignificant two watts at idle. That figures, because the 140W TDP of the original Phenom II X4 965 is probably a little pessimistic. In any case, the 125W TDP of the new revision doesn't offer much of a real-world advantage. The most significant aspect of the lower TDP is likely the fact that some board manufacturers can now officially support it on 125W models if they want to.
Now let's look at idle and load temperatures:
Not much of a difference to see here; certainly nothing to write home about.