The x86 Power Myth Busted: In-Depth Clover Trail Power Analysis
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 24, 2012 5:00 PM ESTWireless Web Browsing Battery Life Test
For our final test I wanted to provilde a snippet of our 2013 web browsing battery life test to show what its power profile looked like. Remember the point of this test was to simulate periods of increased CPU and network activity, that could correspond to more than just browsing the web but interacting with your device in general.
Those bursts of power consumption are the direct result of our battery life test doing its job. That the tasks should take roughly the same time to complete on both devices, making this a good battery life test by not penalizing a faster SoC with more work.
Note that the W510's curve ends up lagging behind Surface RT's curve a bit by the end of the chart. This is purely because of the W510's garbage WiFi implementation. I understand that a fix from Acer is on the way, but it's neat to see something as simple as poorly implemented WiFi showing up in these power consumption graphs.
I always think about GPU power consumption while playing a game, but going through this experiment gave me a new found appreciation for non-gaming GPU power efficiency. Simply changing what's displayed on screen does burn an appreciable amount of power.
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vvv - Wednesday, January 2, 2013 - link
Idle power comparisons on a sample size of one should not count. You would think that binning makes all samples look alike but you will be surprised.Wolfpup - Thursday, January 3, 2013 - link
This is just so impressive...since at least the late 90's I've been wanting exactly this-an actual x86 PC in a mobile form factor. And...it's actually here.Heck, this Atom could go in today's CELL phones no problem (the bigger, higher end ones anyway). It's better than Vita's CPU (although granted, wasn't available at the time).
An actual tablet that can be SMALLER than ARM tablets even, real Windows, real x86...same price. Soooo impressive!
Granted the hardware will keep getting better and the software kinks will get worked out, but...it's actually happening!
shriganesh - Saturday, February 9, 2013 - link
Very nice comparison! x86 does seem to be very power efficient! Except the Tegra 3's companion core isn't working. Compare an x86 Android tablet/phone with ARM tablet/phone. That will be more of an apple to apple comparison.All the guys rooting for Intel. Beware! Intel crushed AMD with Core CPUs. But when AMD lost the battle, there were no more moderately priced intel CPUs! Intel is like Apple! They always charge a premium.
I hope Intel looses to the armada of ARM CPU designers (Samsung, nVidia, Quailcomm) just for the sake of cheap CPUs. With the world heading towards internet of everything, the last thing we need is COSTLY intel CPUs!