AMD Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition CPU Review

We'd like to cover a few final data points before bringing this article to a close. Throughout all of our benchmarking and testing, we monitored how much power our test systems consumed using a power meter. Our goal was to give you all an idea as to how much power each configuration used while idling and while under a heavy workload. Please keep in mind that we were testing total system power consumption at the outlet here, not just the power being drawn by the processors alone.

The Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition consumed slightly more power than its lower-clocked counterparts in the Phenom II X4 family, and even nudged ahead of the much lower-clocked six-core Phenom II X6 1090T. Intel's quad-core processors, however, used much less power under idle and load conditions. The Sandy Bridge-based Core i5-2500K in particular was far more power efficient--not only is the chip faster than the 980 BE, it's more power friendly too.