X-bit labs

Contemporary Platforms with Integrated Graphics (page 14)

Category: Chipsets

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 12/08/2006 | 10:38 AM ]

Power Consumption

In conclusion to our investigation of integrated chipsets performance we measured their power consumption. This parameter of the integrated systems is very important alongside with the systems’ performance.

First of all, we measured the power consumption in idle mode, i.e. when the systems are not processing anything. Note that during our test session we activated all power saving technologies, such as Intel Enhanced SpeedStep and Enhanced Halt State. We measured the overall power consumption of the platform except for the monitor.

In idle state systems with AMD processor are the winners. This is actually not surprising, if we remember that Energy Efficient AMD CPUs that we used for our GeForce chipset based platforms are extremely economical in idle mode.

Now let’s discuss the results of our second experiment during full CPU utilization created with the help of S&M utility.

The picture here is slightly different. Core 2 Duo E6300 processor used in i945G and iG965 based platforms boasts excellent thermal parameters showing better performance-per-watt than the Energy Efficient AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+.

The third experiment was conducted when we loaded the graphics subsystem to the full extent using 3DMark06 testing suite.

It is the power consumption of the chipset graphics cores that has the biggest influence on the results. And from this standpoint, the laurels belong to i945G and GeForce 6100.

The observed results also suggest some other tendencies. As we could notice, GeForce 6100 was a more economical chipset than GeForce 6150, and i945G showed better power consumption levels than iG965. Although this is quite logical: the chipsets with fewer supported functions and lower clock speed of the integrated graphics core are ahead here.