Legit Processor Reviews

AMD Athlon II X2 250 and Phenom II X2 550 Processors

Manufacturer: AMD
Product: Athlon II X2 250, Phenom II X2 550
Date: Mon, Jun 01, 2009 - 08:00 PM
Written By: Nathan Kirsch -
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Power Consumption

Since power consumption is a big deal these days, we ran some simple power consumption tests on our test beds. The systems ran with the power supplies, case fan, video card and hard drive model. To measure idle usage, we ran the system at idle for one hour on the desktop with no screen saver and took the measurement. For load measurements, POV-Ray 3.7 was run on all cores to make sure each and every processor was at 100% load. Both processors were tested on a system using identical hardware.

Power Consumption Results

Results: The power supply that we have dedicated to just our CPU testing systems recently failed and is no longer in production. Since we had to the change power supply all the power consumption results of the processors will have to be re-tested. For the time being we ran power consumption tests on some of the AMD Phenom II processors to see how the two new comers do. The AMD Athlon II X2 250 uses the least amount of power, which makes sense as it is a dual-core part with just 2MB of L2 cache. The Phenom II X2 550 and Phenom II X3 720 both consume roughly the same amount of power and both do contain 6MB of L3 cache. Expecting the AMD Phenom II X2 550 to consume less power than the triple-core Phenom X3 720 we contacted AMD and showed them this chart. They responded by saying this:

"You likely have a very cool-running X3 in your hands.  Remember, we spec the max spec... but CPUs can run under that max spec... so there can be variation.  So if you got one of the hotter running X2s that got closer to it's max TDP and a very cool-running X3, you could easily explain the numbers you're seeing." AMD PR

Next Page - Overclocking


Review Index
Page 1 - Athlon is Back!! Long Live Athlon II X2
Page 2 - The Test System
Page 3 - Sandra 2009 Memory Bandwidth
Page 4 - Photodex ProShow Gold 3.2
Page 5 - Sony Vegas 8.0c
Page 6 - Microsoft Excel 2007
Page 7 - Cinebench R9.5
Page 8 - Cinebench R10
Page 9 - POV-Ray 3.7 Beta 25
Page 10 - POV-Ray Real-Time Raytracing
Page 11 - Futuremark 3DMark06
Page 12 - World in Conflict
Page 13 - Crysis Warhead
Page 14 - Power Consumption
Page 15 - Overclocking
Page 16 - Final Thoughts & Conclusion