CORE Or Boost? AMD's And Intel's Turbo Features Dissected

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Intel arms its Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs with Turbo Boost. AMD's hexa-core Phenom II X6 chips sport Turbo CORE. Both technologies dynamically increase performance based on perceived workloads and available thermal headroom. Which one does the better job?

Benchmark Results: Power Consumption

As expected, switching the Turbo features on or off doesn’t change idle power.

However, peak power increases under Turbo Boost and Turbo CORE. The differences are small, though.

Patrick Schmid and Achim Roos