Power, Heat, And Efficiency
HPC mode prevents the FX-8150 from dropping down to 3.3 GHz in full-load situations. Naturally, we expected power consumption to go up as a result. Fortunately, we tested the system and found no noticeable difference between the two patched configurations.
Little to no difference in power consumption translates to minimal difference in power regulator heat, too.
It's not quite possible to compare the Intel and AMD configurations here. First, the Intel board employs a different voltage regulator. Also, by AMD's standards, we're comparing a quad-core processor to an octa-core model.
Efficiency is up slightly with the Windows 7 patches applied to our FX-8150-based machine.