Power-draw, and overclocking
| Power consumption - idle | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 | Intel Core i7 920 | AMD Phenom II 920 | Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 | AMD Phenom X4 9950 BE | AMD Phenom II 940 BE |
| 115 | 147 | 120 | 115 | 132 | 123 |
Idle and load power-draw is measured at the mains, via a watt-meter.
The idle figure represents the system simply running Vista with no other load imposed, and the triumvirate of processors had their respective energy-saving technologies - Cool 'n' Quiet and EIST - turned on.
The Phenom IIs take a touch more power when compared with the Intel Core 2 Quads, and the Phenom X4 9950 BE and Intel Core i7 bring up the rear.
| Power consumption - load (2D) | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 | Intel Core i7 920 | AMD Phenom II 920 | Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 | AMD Phenom X4 9950 BE | AMD Phenom II 940 BE |
| 153 | 255 | 195 | 155 | 229 | 201 |
Load is defined as running wPrime 1024M calculation which stresses all the cores. We expect the Core i7 system to be the most power-hungry, equipped with 6GB of RAM and the fastest processor around.
However, the two Phenom IIs draw around 200W, which whilst lower than the 9950 BE, is still almost 50W higher than the Core 2 Quad Q9300 and Q8200 CPUs.
Overclocking
A new manufacturing process just begs to be overclocked, and we used a basic Akasa AK-876 cooler and raised the CPU's voltage by 10 per cent, to 1.485V, to see how high the 940 part would go.
3.6GHz was our stable limit, and adding an additional five per cent gave us 3.73GHz, but we chose to go with 3.6GHz for formal measurements.
Rerunning the wPrime 1024M test, which took 385s at the stock 3GHz, the time was whittled down to 324s, coming close to the Core i7 920. Similarly, the CINEBENCH score went up from 12,432 to 13,612 - still behind Core i7 920.
