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Review: Energy efficiency for the masses?

This review is also available in German.


Since about three months ago, AMD is selling energy efficient versions of the heavily delayed AMD Propus die. The core has lost its massive L3 cache, but AMD decided to increase the L2 Cache to 1MB per core. All cores features 64kB L1 cache for data and instructions. The normal Propus CPUs have a 65W TDP rating, while the energy efficient CPUs have a rating of 45W. The 245 runs at 2.90GHz, while the 240 has to manage with 2.80GHz.





It's time to check if the reduced CPU VCores do have an impact on power-consumption, because energy efficient CPUs come with a price premium. For some reason, the Athlon II X2 CPUs are only specified with 1067MHz but do overclock quite well up to 1600MHz. However, we test everything according to the official specification.

Testbed:

Motherboard:
MSI 790GX-GD70 (provided by MSI)
AMD 790GX/SB750

CPU-Cooler:
Scythe Kama Angle (provided by Scythe-Europe)

Memory:
G.Skill 4GB Kit PC3-12800 (provided by G.Skill)
1067MHz CL7-7-7-21 CR1T 1.30V for Athlon II X2
1333MHz CL7-7-7-21 CR1T 1.30V for Athlon II X4 

Graphics Card:
MSI R4850-2D1G-OC (provided by MSI)

Power supply:
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 500W (provided by PC Power & Cooling)

Hard disk:
Samsung F1 1000GB RAID-Edition (provided by Ditech)

Case fans:
SilenX iXtrema Pro 14dB(A) (provided by PC-Cooling.at)
Scythe DFS122512LS

Case:
Cooler Master Stacker 831 Lite (provided by Cooler Master)

OS:
All tests are performed with XP SP3. As 64-bit software is still not very common, we stick with the 32-bit version. We will change to Windows 7 when we swap the graphics card for a DX11 capable one.