Power Consumption: Athlon 64 vs. Athlon 64 X2

In Part II of our preview of Intel's dual core processors, we noted that the addition of a second CPU core generally didn't increase overall system power consumption by that much. In fact, the Pentium D 2.8GHz vs. single core 2.8GHz comparison yielded only a 15% increase in system power consumption under load for the dual core CPU. While we didn't look at power consumption in our dual core Opteron review, armed with desktop parts, we were ready to look at how desktop power consumption was affected by the move to dual core.

Single core AMD CPUs have always consumed less power than single core Intel chips; in fact, the 130nm Athlon 64 FX-55 consumes less power than a 3.0GHz Pentium 4 (5xx or 6xx series).

How much more power would a dual core Athlon 64 X2 consume? To answer this question, we looked at three CPUs on the same platform and measured system power consumption. We used a 130nm Athlon 64, a 90nm Athlon 64 and a 90nm dual core Athlon 64 X2 - all clocked at the same frequency and with the same per-core cache sizes. The results are below:

AMD Single Core vs. Dual Core Power Consumption

At idle, the Athlon 64 X2 falls directly between the 90nm Athlon 64 and the 130nm Athlon 64, but does the same hold true when the system is fully loaded performing our WMV HD encode test?

AMD Single Core vs. Dual Core Power Consumption

Surprisingly enough, it is. Clock for clock, the Athlon 64 X2 will consume less power than a 130nm Athlon 64, and less than 20% more power than a 90nm Athlon 64. Note that the Athlon 64 X2 4200+ compared here also consumes less power than all single core 90nm Intel Pentium 4 CPUs. Even the Athlon 64 X2 4800+ consumes less power than all single core 90nm Pentium 4 CPUs.

If you're worried about the Athlon 64 X2 generating too much heat, there's no reason to be concerned - if you're happy with the heat levels of your current 130nm Athlon 64, the X2 will run even cooler.

Index Business/General Use Performance
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  • Ender17 - Monday, May 9, 2005 - link

    Would have been nice to have a 2.8GHz Pentium D so you could get a sense of how the Intel chips scaled with an increase in the clock speed.
  • RadeonGuy - Monday, May 9, 2005 - link

    Great Article Anand

    very depthful
  • ashegam - Monday, May 9, 2005 - link

    I'm having a woodygasm :)
  • nourdmrolNMT1 - Monday, May 9, 2005 - link

    looks very promising

    MIKE
  • potato pc - Sunday, October 20, 2019 - link

    I just looked into this article because my destkop in 2019 on windows 10 has it.

    man its insane how dual cores were powerful at this time.
  • brug69 - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link

    so crazy that this was 15 years ago, and yall never had a clue that there would ever be 64 core processors today...
  • DARK_BG - Wednesday, September 16, 2020 - link

    Hah I was reading this review 15 years ago and with their prices back then I was only dreaming about the 1024kb dual core ones :) Well I took it 3 years later second hand Athlon 64X2 4800+ :D Still working on Asus A8N-E with a ATI HD4850 now used by my grandfather just to read the news :)
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