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LOSTCIRCUITS
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| AMD's Phenom X3 8750 - The Power of 3 | |
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(Author: Michael Schuette, April 27, 2008) | |
Power Consumption
Three cores should use less power than four but the power consumption of the Phenom series of CPU is a composite figure with the individual cores and the NB+L3 cache each contributing. Keep in mind that the split voltage plane provides AMD with a means to throttle the cores in frequency and voltage while keeping the NB+L3 cache running at full power. Realistically there is no way around this, since AMD's CPUs can throttle on a per core basis but that also requires that if any core is running under load, the memory controller and cache will have to do the same, regardless of what the other cores are doing at the same time.
Windows Idle Power
The X3 8750 draws 25.2 W, that is 16% less power than the X4 9850. Keep in mind that because of the idling, both CPUs are defaulting to 1/2 of their nominal clock speed, meaning that the X3 8750 is running about 50 MHz slower than the X4 9850. In addition, the NB is running at 1.8 GHz as opposed to 2 GHz on the x4 9850. Bottom line is that in idle, the power savings are marginal.
Max Power
Under full load, the reduction in core number bears fruit in terms of power savings, the delta of 30W almost directly scales with the disabling of one of the four cores, especially if the NB frequency and overall lower clock frequency are factored into the equation.
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