AMD 65nm Quads - whatâ€™s the idle power consumption?

smilingcrow · Post by **smilingcrow** » Fri Mar 27, 2009 11:44 am

Iâ€™ve seen so many conflicting reports on idle power draw for the AMD 65nm Quads that I have no sense of what they actually consume. They generally seem to add 20W or more at idle to the overall system power draw compared to a dual-core in the same system but Iâ€™ve seen data showing as much as 40W more and as little as a few watts more.

Are the differences down to CnQ not working initially and are there differences between the early buggy stepping and the later ones? If anyone has first hand experience of upgrading then please share your data. Thanks.

Note: Iâ€™ve seen a little bit of data on the 45nm Quads and they seem to have a noticeably improved idle power draw.

austinbike · Post by **austinbike** » Sat Mar 28, 2009 8:43 am

I had a 65nm Opteron 1356 in my system (75W ACP, quad-core). With 2GB of memory, DVD-RW, 2.5" SATA HD, 2 120mm fans (one on the heatsink and one case) and a Gigabyte 780-based board.

I was drawing ~60W at idle and ~90W at full load.

smilingcrow · Post by **smilingcrow** » Sat Mar 28, 2009 12:45 pm

austinbike wrote:I had a 65nm Opteron 1356 in my system (75W ACP, quad-core). With 2GB of memory, DVD-RW, 2.5" SATA HD, 2 120mm fans (one on the heatsink and one case) and a Gigabyte 780-based board. I was drawing ~60W at idle and ~90W at full load.

Thanks. Any ideas what it would consume at idle with an Athlon X2? Iâ€™m guessing nearer 40W.

The 90W load figure seems amazingly low; what were you using to load the CPU and what clock speed and voltage were used?

austinbike · Post by **austinbike** » Sat Mar 28, 2009 1:28 pm

The athlon X2 was ~42W. Same config, dual core. ~2.5 or 2.6.

I have had so many different procs in that system that it is hard to say the exact config. If you seach on my posts I am pretty sure I have uploaded a lot. 690 boards, 780 boards, opteron, phenom, athlon. Most have temps and fan speeds, but generally speaking, power is ~40-42W for duals, ~60W for quads. New 45nm quads will be lower, buy you'll have to wait for that.

smilingcrow · Post by **smilingcrow** » Sat Mar 28, 2009 1:52 pm

austinbike wrote:The athlon X2 was ~42W. Same config, dual core. ~2.5 or 2.6.
I have had so many different procs in that system that it is hard to say the exact config. If you seach on my posts I am pretty sure I have uploaded a lot. 690 boards, 780 boards, opteron, phenom, athlon. Most have temps and fan speeds, but generally speaking, power is ~40-42W for duals, ~60W for quads. New 45nm quads will be lower, buy you'll have to wait for that.

Thanks again. I was figuring on a roughly 20W difference at idle between 65nm duals and Quads. The 45nm Quads look a lot closer to the 65nm duals though so it will be interesting to see what a native 45nm dual will manage.

Iâ€™m still curious as to what software and CPU speed/VCore you used that managed 90W at load with the Quad!

Mats · Post by **Mats** » Sat Mar 28, 2009 6:18 pm

Look here.

austinbike · Post by **austinbike** » Sun Mar 29, 2009 3:36 am

smilingcrow wrote:
austinbike wrote:
Iâ€™m still curious as to what software and CPU speed/VCore you used that managed 90W at load with the Quad!

Well, maybe I mis-spoke. 90W at load, not full load (not 100%), probably more like 30% on the four cores, but they were each bouncing up and down, not solid.

smilingcrow · Post by **smilingcrow** » Sun Mar 29, 2009 6:41 am

Mats wrote:Look here.

Nice one. The Phenom II series are looking much nicer.

austinbike wrote:Well, maybe I mis-spoke. 90W at load, not full load (not 100%), probably more like 30% on the four cores, but they were each bouncing up and down, not solid.

I did wonder whether you have some magic dust that you sprinkle on the thermal paste!

Mats · Post by **Mats** » Sun Mar 29, 2009 8:43 am

smilingcrow wrote:
Mats wrote:Look here.
Nice one. The Phenom II series are looking much nicer.

Indeed, but SPCR contradicts those results, although not by much.

austinbike · Post by **austinbike** » Sun Mar 29, 2009 2:00 pm

smilingcrow wrote:I did wonder whether you have some magic dust that you sprinkle on the thermal paste!

Well, let's just say that the 45nm, with 25% more clock, are running lower power than the 65nm. That's all I will say at this point

smilingcrow · Post by **smilingcrow** » Sun Mar 29, 2009 2:12 pm

austinbike wrote:
smilingcrow wrote:I did wonder whether you have some magic dust that you sprinkle on the thermal paste!
Well, let's just say that the 45nm, with 25% more clock, are running lower power than the 65nm. That's all I will say at this point

Thatâ€™s not surprising really; it was the 65nm load figures that you later qualified that got me wondering. Anyway, itâ€™s good to see that AMD have found their supply of magic dust.

austinbike · Post by **austinbike** » Sun Mar 29, 2009 2:27 pm

45nm is magic dust enabled. Plus a 6MB cache doesn't hurt for performance.