Power Consumption

Idle Power Consumption

Idle power consumption is a strong point of the Phenom II architecture, only the i7s manage to draw less power. Under load, the 965 draws the most power of anything on the chart - there's its 140W TDP hard at work.

Load Power Consumption - x264 HD Bench Pass 2

Gaming Performance Overclocking
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  • Roland00 - Thursday, August 13, 2009 - link

    The 200 dollar price isn't a mail in rebate, Micro Center a small computer store chain with about 30 stores market itself as a computer builder destination. They lose about 80 dollars on the processor to get you into the store and hoping to sell you enough other stuff (or assembly or warranties) to make up for their loss leader.
  • steelicon - Thursday, August 13, 2009 - link

    ROTFLMAOBBQ! Agreed! They get you in more ways than one, either it's the Processor itself, the Chipset, the DDR3 or all of them combined. Good thing we have another choice of platform!
  • steelicon - Thursday, August 13, 2009 - link

    Will this run on an old AsuS Crosshair NV590A-SLI motherboard? I surely do hope so...
  • grimpr - Thursday, August 13, 2009 - link

    A really fast CPU, some minor tweaks to the K10 architecture and AMD stays "current", but the TDP's are ridiculous, 140W!!, for non existing gods sake! at 95W TDP and at the same price they would be excellent purchases to Intels Lynnfields. Clearly they are positioned at gamers,a crowd long lost to AMD. For uses other than happy jerking at intel compiler optimized benchmarks and moronic SuperPi's with analyzing miniscule FPS differences at games, the AMD Phenom II 905E at 65W TDP is an excellent buy. Something about the 45nm SOI manufacturing of this chips from AMD makes us wonder...
  • FireSnake - Thursday, August 13, 2009 - link

    You really need to grow up with this 140W and take a very close look at the power consumption table ;)
  • JimmiG - Thursday, August 13, 2009 - link

    It's not like the 140W TDP happened by accident or took AMD by surprise. 120 - 140W has been the target TDP for high-end CPUs for a long time. At this targeted TDP, AMD found a 3.4 GHz chip could be produced with decent yields. Some thought, research and design goes into the launch of a new CPU even if it's just a 200 MHz clockspeed bump.

    Don't worry, we'll not see a 160W or 180W CPU any time soon since 140W is a sensible target. Modern heatpipe coolers, mobos and PSUs have no trouble with them.

    If you think the difference between a 65W and a 140W CPU is too much, you must live in a very dark house or apartment since each light bulb consumes almost that entire difference.
  • PrinceGaz - Friday, August 14, 2009 - link

    My lightbulbs consume between 12 and 20W of power each as I long since left behind inefficient incandescent bulbs.
  • hyc - Thursday, August 13, 2009 - link

    You guys are reading way too much into that 140W TDP spec. Look at the loaded power consumption results, the 965 is 223W vs 220W for the 955. So it's using a whopping 3W more than the 955, BFD.
  • Griswold - Thursday, August 13, 2009 - link

    Some people seem to miss the T for Thermal in that figure indeed.
  • hyc - Thursday, August 13, 2009 - link

    Ah, so which part of the Laws of Thermodynamics did you skip in school?

    You can't emit more power out (thermal or otherwise) than you took in.

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