Power Consumption

We measured the power consumption using Extech Power Analyzer 380803 device. This device was connected before the system PSU, i.e. it measured the power consumption of the entire system without the monitor, including the power losses that occur in the PSU itself. When we took the power readings in idle mode, the system was completely idle: there were even no requests sent to the hard drive at that time. We used LinX program to load the Intel Core i7-860 CPU. For more illustrative picture we created a graph showing the power consumption growth depending on the increase in CPU utilization as the number of active computational threads in LinX changed in nominal mode as well as during overclocking. Besides Gigabyte GA-P55-UD3R, we also included the results for all other LGA1156 mainboard we tested before.

Against the background of Biostar TPower I55, the power consumption of Gigabyte GA-P55-UD3R in nominal mode seems a little high. However, do not forget that Turbo Boost technology barely works on Biostar mainboard under heavy load. Core voltage doesn’t increase that is why power consumption is low, but the processor clock frequency multiplier also doesn’t increase that is why power-saving occurs at the expense of performance. If we compare the power readings of Gigabyte GA-P55-UD3R against those of other mainboards, it will even seem a little more energy-efficient. The results comparison will be much more illustrative during processor overclocking when Biostar TPower I55 behaves exactly the same way as other solutions and doesn’t affect our perception of Gigabyte GA-P55-UD3R results.

Yes, now we see clearly that during overclocking Gigabyte GA-P55-UD3R mainboard is quite energy-efficient in all cases except maximum CPU utilization. We have already pointed out that this mainboard is pretty aggressive when it comes to opposing the voltage drop, it increases the voltage more and thus shows less appealing power consumption readings but only when all CPU cores, including virtual ones, are utilized.