X-bit labs

A Secret Disclosed: AMD Sempron 3000+ for Socket 939 Review (page 9)

Category: CPU

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 10/12/2005 | 09:43 AM ]

Power Consumption

Besides measuring the speed of the Sempron 3000+ for Socket 939 in our benchmarks, we also checked its power consumption level (we hadn’t measured the power consumption of value processors from AMD or Intel before, by the way).

Our method remains unchanged. We measure the consumed current (that goes along the 12V CPU power circuit) with a clip-on ammeter. The real voltage in the circuit is verified with an ordinary multimeter. Based on the fact that the CPU is fed by the PSU through a separate circuit, this method is not very accurate since the CPU power converter is not 100% efficient, yet its accuracy is satisfactory for our purpose, especially since the power consumption of processors may vary a little from sample to sample.

There were two test modes:

• Idle (0% CPU load; Cool’n’Quiet and IEST disabled)
• Burn (the CPU is fully loaded by S&M 1.7.3 utility)

The results are presented below:

The diagrams show that the power consumption of different Semprons is roughly the same or a little lower than that of Athlon 64 processors that have the same frequency and voltage but four times the Semprons’ L2 cache memory amount. Intel’s value processor, Celeron D, looks a real voracious beast against AMD’s CPUs, consuming much more power than Sempron or even Athlon 64.

So, if you want to have an inexpensive and also economical system, you may want to consider value CPUs from AMD first since they will permit you to save some money on your electricity bills.