Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Edition Processor Review

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.

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 Intel Core i7-975 processor uses significantly more power than the AMD Phenom II X4 955 as you can tell by the chart above. Both the Core i7-975 and the Phenom II X4 955 are the flagship processors for each respective company, so these would be the numbers to compare. Keep in mind that the Core i7-975 is a 150W TDP part and the Phenom II X4 944 is a 125W max TDP part.