Intel Core 2 Chipset Power Consumption Shootout

Name: Intel Core 2 Chipset Power Consumption Shootout
Item: Intel Core 2 Chipset Power Consumption Shootout
Author: Anand Lal Shimpi

by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 12, 2006 12:53 PM EST

44 Comments | Add A Comment

44 Comments

In our Quicktime encoding test, performance is fairly close between all three platforms, once again making it boil down to power consumption.

Quicktime H.264 Encoding Test

...which obviously favors Intel's P965, as the nForce 570 SLI draws just under 5% more power than the P965.

Quicktime H.264 Encoding Test

Rounding off our look at encoding performance/power consumption is our iTunes MP3 encode test, and the standings don't change here either:

iTunes MP3 Encoding Test

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44 Comments

jonp - Saturday, October 14, 2006 - link
Whoops. Intuitive logic doesn't always pay off. See the following chart which gives energy costs/BTU for 2006: http://www.npga.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=914">DOE Energy Costs . You can see that energy cost from electricity is almost double that of natural gas. You may help heat the building, but it will cost you more. And remember that a lot of electricity comes from coal fired power plants (CO2 producing) and every wire consumes it's own share of energy released as useless heat. Ok probably too much off the chipset topic, sorry.
DigitalFreak - Thursday, October 12, 2006 - link
Quick, call Al Gore!

Thanks for the good laugh.
Lonyo - Thursday, October 12, 2006 - link
10w is not all that inconsiderable, look at it over multiple components and it becomes significant.
10w just for the mobo is, IMO, quite a chunk.
smn198 - Friday, October 13, 2006 - link
Could you measure the power draw of just the chipset by increasing the voltage of the northbridge by 0.2V and then re-running the tests? Take the difference between +0.2V and normal and then you would have isolated the power draw for the chipset and can work out the power draw for the chipset alone.