AMD Athlon X2 BE-2350 Review --- TheThirdMedia Hardware

Power Consumption

The new Athlon X2 BE-2350 may have a very attractive TDP rating, but in order to test real power consumption, the entire system must be taken into account. Power consumption is measured using a power meter connected to the power point, reading total power drawn in real time from the test machine. Bear in mind that we try our best to eliminate discrepancies by using identical hardware components for testing when possible, but this is impossible with two different platforms. The system configuration for this section of the review is the same as what's listed in the Test Setup page. However, there is one change to the AMD configuration.

The nForce 590 SLI board we were using for benchmarking did not play nice with AMD's Cool?n?Quiet (QnC) drivers. As such, we switched the motherboard to an AMD 690G for power consumption testing. Do take note that the AMD 690G's mainstream and HTPC audience oriented boards are by-default more power efficient than full-fledged high-end desktop boards like the Intel D975XBX2 and the nForce 590 SLI motherboards (the difference in power draw can be up to 10W). The rest of the hardware remains exactly the same. AMD results with and without CnQ are captured to see its benefits on the new processor. On the other hand, we only list the Intel results with power saving features enabled (EIST and Enhanced C1E) because we've noted no difference in power draw from our previous test runs with and without the power saving features. This goes to show how deep Intel's power saving techniques are embedded within the chip.

Idling on Windows Desktop

Power consumption of the Athlon X2 BE-2350 seemed impressive under idling conditions compared to Intel's equivalent low-end models, the Pentium Dual Core E2160 and Core 2 Duo E4300. Even without QnC enabled, the BE-2350 still draws less power than the Intel processors. With QnC enabled, AMD proves that their new energy efficient models can save up to 10W of power overall. However, note that the difference might be lesser had the Intel system been tested on an equivalent mainstream platform.

3DMark CPU Test 2

In order to measure power consumption at full load, one of the easiest and most effective tool is 3Dmark06's CPU Tests. The CPU test is highly multi-threaded and is able to really tax the processor to represent power draw when under intense processor usage. Here, the Athlon X2 BE-2350 draws around 111W of power with or without QnC enabled and, putting it on average around 5W more efficient than the Intel processors.

3DMark06 HDR/SM3.0 Deep Freeze Test

In a balanced gaming scenario which involves the power hungry graphics card quotient, the Athlon X2 BE-2350 is still able to perform better than both the Intel Pentium Dual Core E2160 and Core 2 Duo E4300. However, notice that the average power consumption difference is now narrowed down to 1 - 2W between processors.



	TheThirdMedia Hardware → CPU Guide → CPU Article > AMD Athlon X2 BE-2350 Review