AMD A10 and A8 Trinity APU: Virgo Desktop Experience
Throughout all of our benchmarking and testing, we also 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.
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Idle power consumption is surprisingly similar between the various platforms we tested, with only a 6 watt spread separating AMD's latest Trinity-based APUs and Intel's Ivy Bridge-based offerings. Under load conditions, however, the AMD platforms consumed significantly more power than Intel's and virtually the same as the previous-gen Llano-based A8-3870K.
Though actual power consumption is similar between the A8-3870K and newer A10-5800K and A8-5600K, efficiency is improved with Trinity / Virgo. Both the A10-5800K and A8-5600K offer better overall and graphics performance than the older A8-3870K, but we'll have to save all of those details for our follow-on article we're working on for next week.
