System Power Consumption

The four result values are as following:

• AMD Cool'n'Quiet / Intel SpeedStep: Windows Vista with Aero off, sitting at the desktop (1920x1080 32-bit) all windows closed, drivers installed. Processors have their power saving technology enabled, left in idle until power draw is stable.
• Idle: Windows Vista with Aero off, sitting at the desktop (1920x1080 32-bit) all windows closed, drivers installed. Processors have their power saving technology disabled, left in idle until power draw is stable.
• Load: Prime95 is used to increase load on all available cores and measurements are taken when power draw is stable.

AMD managed to decrease the power consumption by an extra ~20 W, compared to the Phenom II X2, which is good, but not good enough. There is still a lot of room for improvement, as the Low Voltage Graphs will show. AMD's C'n'Q does its job quite nicely though, reducing idle power load by 12 W.



We checked the undervolting capabilities too. As it turns out, it can maintain stable operation at 2.80 GHz with just 1.1 V core voltage. The stock core voltage is 1.425 V, and while it's understandable that AMD needs to increase voltage for safety margins, going all the way to 1.425 V feels just a little too much. Branding here plays a major role too, as AMD needs to distinguish the 45 W Energy Efficient models from normal 65 W models.
With a few simple BIOS tweaks and a few hours of stability testing, you can make your own Energy Efficient model. We managed to reduce the Load power consumption by additional 30 W.

Heat

Sadly, the tested model gave faulty temperature readings, like many other AMD processors out there. Under idle it showed a reading below the ambient temperature, which was enough to dismiss readings as not valid. AMD Overdrive was used to monitor the core temperature.