Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6800
Power Consumption
We have one final data point we'd like to cover before bringing this article to a close. In this section, 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.
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Please keep in mind that we were testing total system power consumption at the outlet, in these tests, 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 9.5 and SANDRA XI running on the CPU.
As you'd expect from a processor running 266MHz higher than its similarly outfitted counterpart, the new Core 2 Extreme QX6800 consumes more power than the QX6700. Somewhat surprisingly, the QX6800 also consumed a bit more power while idling, despite the fact that both processors drop down to a similar low-speed state when not in use. We'll have to chalk up the 6 watt delta while idling to voltage fluctuations and slight differences in the processors due to being manufactured at different times. While under load, however, the approximate 20 more watts consumed by the QX6800 can be attributed to its higher frequency. What is also interesting to note is that the dual-core Athlon 64 X2 6000+ consumed almost as much power under load than Intel's quad-core offerings. AMD is going to have to transition the manufacturing of their high-end processors to the company's 65nm process node to bring power consumption in-line with Intel at the high-end. For their lower-speed chips, AMD has already done so, and relatively lower-wattage processors from AMD are already available.
