AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Review --- TheThirdMedia Hardware

Power Consumption

If you recall our comments from our original Phenom II article, we noted its commendable power savings quotient when the system is at idle - mostly thanks to its extremely throttling down to just 800MHz and finally being able to shut down various unused segments of the processor. Unfortunately, the C1E state on our 'certified for operation' Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P motherboard wasn't working out as utilities reported the full speed; power draw too was on the high side of 130 watts for the system.

This however should be rectified on further BIOS updates as has been the case for other motherboard models according to the number of BIOS signatures popping up to resolve the new CPU's full support. That aside, we continue to present you our full load power measurement findings as follows.

3DMark06 CPU Test 2

Choosing the CPU-only test portion of the 3DMark06 benchmark to focus upon power consumption based on a mostly CPU-only load, the difference between Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition and Phenom II X4 940 seems to have a higher power draw difference than when comparing the 940 and 920 models. Do note though, the 955 processor using a newer AM3 platform whereas the other pair of processors are using the existing AM2+ platform and this only means that various platforms and motherboard implementations can have an affect on the power consumption of your system.

Compared with the Intel platforms, especially the Core 2 Quad 9550, the Phenom II X4 955 draws about 15% more power. But against the Core i7-920, the AMD system actually fares better. Though the Core i7-920 draws more power, it also performs better than the Phenom II X4 955 - in some scenarios. In other cases, the Phenom II X4 955 is able to rival the Core i7-920, so for the first time in a long while, AMD is able to deliver a decent CPU in both power and performance aspects.

SPECviewperf 10 Full System Loading - Quad-Core Run

Going with an even heavier system load and this time stressing the GPU as well, the power draw difference between the Phenom II and Core 2 Quad narrows down further to just a 7%, while the AMD system also betters the Core i7-920 by about the same difference as well. Not too shabby at all.



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