AMD Phenom II X4 810 and X3 720 BE Processors

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.

These new 45nm Phenom II processors are quite power friendly.  While idling, they consumed the least amount of power of the bunch when paired to DDR2 memory.  And the same holds true while under load.  When using DDR3 memory, the new AM3 processors still consumed relatively little power, but we suspect the Asus motherboard we used didn't completely exploit the C1E power state available in the new Phenoms with its current BIOS, hence the slightly higher power usage.