AMD Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition CPU Review

Name: AMD Phenom II X4 980 Black Edition CPU Review - Page 6
Brand: AMD

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, May 03, 2011, 12:00 AM EDT

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.

Total System Power Consumption

Tested at the Outlet

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.

Tags: AMD, CPU, processor, phenom II, AM3, Black Edition, 980

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