AMD Spider Platform - Phenom, 790FX, RV670

Name: AMD Spider Platform - Phenom, 790FX, RV670 - Page 13
Brand: AMD

by Marco Chiappetta — Monday, November 19, 2007, 12:01 PM EDT

We have one final data point we'd like to cover before bringing this article to a close. Our goal was to give you all an idea as to how much power each of the system configurations we tested used while idling and running under load.

Power Characteristics

Processors and Platforms

Please keep in mind that we were testing total system power consumption here at the outlet, not just the power being drawn by the processors alone. In this test, we're showing you a ramp-up of power from idle on the desktop to full CPU load. We tested with a combination of Cinebench R10 and SANDRA XII running on the CPU.

While idling and under load, the Phenom powered test systems drew more power than all of the Intel powered systems; only the Quad-FX rig consumed more. Due to the relative immaturity of the platform, however, we suspect the AMD Athlon 64 X2 and Phenom systems' power consumption numbers are skewed a bit on the high side. What's interesting to note is that with double the execution cores and much more cache, the Phenom 9700 draws 30 more watts than the Athlon 64 X2 4600+ while idling an 53 more watts while under load.

Tags: AMD, Phenom, Platform, 790FX, fx, Pi, PLA, id, AM

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