Kai Schaetzl wrote on Sun, 03 Aug 2008 16:57:20 +0200:
I disagree about the reason. I think they are actually not so efficient. At least not if I compare to a low-voltage CPU.
Just checked how much that AMD 4850e CPU drains under various conditions. There are *huge* differences. I checked whole power consumption of the machine. I don't know what "at wall" means. Did you measure the power consumption of the cpu alone or does "at wall" mean the same as I did?
Here are the figures, considering this is for the whole machine I think it's quite good.
idle: 1000 MHz: 76W 2500 MHz: 98W
1 core under load: 110W 2 core under load: 120W
So, that's not just the processor, it's the whole machine. It takes into account the powerdrain from the processor plus (probably) faster fans plus any other drain from memory/chipset that may be higher underload.
Kai