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Technology Stocks : Advanced Micro Devices - Moderated (AMD) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Petz who wrote (151585)	2/24/2005 6:36:27 PM
From: fyodor_	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 275872

Petz: Read and weep: ... "Athlon64 processors 3000+, 3200+ and 3500+ were amazing: they only consume 3.2 Watts in idle mode (running Cool & Quiet). An Athlon64 3500+ never required more than 31 Watts even under full load." source: www4.tomshardware.com I found that statement shocking and incredibly profound, if true. I therefore decided to dig up some "cleaner" numbers from a source I trust more than Tom's (I'm not a big fan of the doctor, as in M.D., not Ph.D.). From techreport's recent Intel 600 series review, in particular the page showing total system (excl. monitor) power consumption: techreport.com Under load, the 3500+ system consumes 155W. The best-performing, closest matching Intel system weighs in at 222W (660, 3.6GHz). The 650 (3.4GHz) is 6W less. That's close to a 70 Watt differential! At idle, the systems consume virtually the same amount of power. Intel's 500 series is even more of a power-hog, consuming something like 20W more than an equivalently clocked 600 series. The comparison above isn't entirely fair, though, because the benchmark in question (Cinebench 2003) benefits greatly from HyperThreading. This increases the 660's performance from near-identical to the 3500+ by 20%. In terms of performance/watt (for this particular benchmark), using the 640 (3.4GHz) would be more fair. It consumes 10W less, making the differential more like 60W. Still a shocking difference, IMHO, and something AMD marketing has completely failed to capitalize on. -fyo