AMD 890GX SB850 Chipset Debut: Phenom II X6 Ready

Name: AMD 890GX SB850 Chipset Debut: Phenom II X6 Ready - Page 11
Brand: AMD

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, March 02, 2010, 12:01 AM EDT

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 and motherboards alone.

Total System Power Consumption

Tested at the Outlet

Depending on their configuration, motherboards based on the AMD 890GX chipset should consume similar amounts of power to the older 785G. As you can see here, the Asus board used only slightly more power than the 785G under both idle and load condidtions. The Gigabyte board, however, consumed measurably more power than either, most likely due to higher default voltages being assigned to some core components via the BIOS.

Tags: AMD, Radeon, Phenom, Athlon, Chipset, AM3, IGP

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com