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Power Consumption

The Core i7-4770K Review: Haswell Is Faster; Desktop Enthusiasts Yawn
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As an architecture, Haswell is being lauded for enabling the “biggest battery life increase in Intel’s history.” But of course, battery life isn’t a consideration on the desktop. Larger form factors that aren’t power-constrained give Intel more headroom to offer higher thermal ceilings (which is why we have Sandy Bridge-E-based chips rated for 130 W).

Core i7-4770K’s TDP is 84 W, 7 W higher than the 77 W Core i7-3770K. But it also employs on-package voltage regulation, moving components previously on the motherboard into the processor itself. How does this translate to efficiency?

First, let’s look at our complete benchmark run, graphed out over time.

We’re truncating the end of the chart for readability, but essentially, AMD’s A10-5800K trails off at the end, taking far longer to finish all of our workloads than any other processor. The big spikes are indicative of where 3DMark is running, so we can see Core i7-3930K got there first, followed by Core i7-4770K, with Core i7-3770K and -2700K not far behind.

Other landmarks are more difficult to identify, though we do see the FX-8350- and Core i7-3930K-powered systems averaging much higher draw from the wall than other platforms. The difference, of course, is that Sandy Bridge-E also finishes the suite notably faster than Piledriver.

The script we use for testing builds in short idle periods between benchmarks, which, more than anything, is necessary for slower systems so that they don’t fail taking too long to shut down or launch certain applications. Even still, if we averaged power consumption during the entirety of our run, you’d come away thinking that these platforms were hogs, since most of the time they’d be active. We add 1,800 seconds (30 minutes) of idle time to the back end before shutting each system off automatically.

With this idle time factored in, each GTX Titan-equipped platform draws what we’d consider to be a reasonable amount of power for high-end hardware performing a number of demanding tasks. The Core i7-3770 predictably achieves the lowest consumption result thanks to its 77 W TDP. Next is the 84 W Core i7-4770K, followed by Intel’s 95 W Core i7-2700K.

Because we also know that each sample represents two seconds, we also know exactly how long each system is powered on. So, we can take that figure, multiply it by the average power consumption, and get an idea of how much power was used during each run. Again, it appears that Intel’s Core i7-3770K leads the way, with -4770K behind. A look at the logs suggests that the Haswell-based chip isn’t idling as low as the -3770K, even though all power-savings features are enabled in both motherboard UEFIs.

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  • 1 Hide
    phil_livesey , 1 June 2013 16:56
    Yet another competition not open to UK residents, despite this being on the UK site. Thankyou Tomshardware!!!!
  • 0 Hide
    Pailin , 1 June 2013 18:06
    Sounds... disappointing after hearing about the Uber high LN OCs.
    Also thought I recently heard somewhere of others getting Nice 5GHz+ OC's on water and Very low vcore's - perhaps you guys have a Poor batch?
  • 0 Hide
    das_stig , 1 June 2013 19:46
    So once again, the UK site publicises a competition as part of a review and once again, it's limited to the US readers. Come on TH tis just sucks and shows that you don't give a toss about the rest of the world. The internet is a global community, it doesn't stop at the US border. Surely your programming monkies can code a conditional statement to blockout content if outside the U.S of Ass or are they to busy coding up more ad boxes ????
  • 0 Hide
    daglesj , 1 June 2013 21:01
    Guys, you are posting this on the useless and superfluous UK version.
    No one will be reading it.
  • 0 Hide
    mi1ez , 2 June 2013 11:01
    Quote:
    the only arrangement emerging today is the quad-core SoC

    SoC is pushing it a bit given it doesn't contain RAM, USB, network, etc.
  • 0 Hide
    bwrlane , 2 June 2013 14:08
    Great article, but what a let down. Ivy Bridge was already a disappointment, but Haswell is far more disappointing even than that. My 2700k based PC can manage 4.84GHz under full load, while remaining stable. My 3770k PC can do 4.74GHz. The IPC improvements are almost exactly compensated for by the lower attainable clock speed.
    But with Haswell, the world has gone backwards. Apparently, a 4770k can be pushed to 4.4GHz and that's it. That's a 7% reduction in clock speed. Since most benchmarks don't show a 7% improvement at stock, Haswell is slower than the Ivy Bridge that it replaced.
    For years we've been hearing that the answer to all our tech questions is "you have to wait for Haswell for that". But as this article shows, that was a lot of hot air.
  • 0 Hide
    doive1231 , 2 June 2013 19:33
    What a load of baloney we were spun about Haswell graphics. I read it would be a real step change and we should expect something special. Well, the comparisons between HD4000 and HD4600 are a real kick in the teeth. Nothing more that a few frames per second in most tests. Bah, Intel. And not I won't be getting Crystalwell.
  • 0 Hide
    selfmade_exe , 2 June 2013 21:45
    amd trinity gets bottlenecked by 1600 ram!!!
  • 0 Hide
    JRAtk94 , 2 June 2013 23:42
    Yay for AMD.
    Finally, AMD wins on price AND performance.
  • 0 Hide
    selfmade_exe , 3 June 2013 22:22
    TO ALL THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS TEST: I DARE YOU "CLEVER" TESTERS TO TEST AMD TRINITY WITH 1866 RAM OR ABOVE, AND ALSO COMPARE WITH RICHLANT FLAGSHIP. ALSO, PLZ RUN GPU_CAPS_VIEWER -> THE JULIA SET WITH GPU OPENCL AND COMPARE WITH TRINITY! PERIOD!
  • 0 Hide
    Tedfoo25 , 5 June 2013 08:34
    I'm quite impressed actually. With a decent overclock, you are essentially getting a 3930k on the cheap with a socket that will have CPUs developed for it in the future.
  • 0 Hide
    mateau , 11 June 2013 15:22
    Haswell is old tech already. AMD just rekeased FX-9590 a 5 ghz 8 core MONSTER that is sure to stomp all over Hasbeen. And the FX-950 is unlocked for overclocking!!!!!
  • 0 Hide
    Alps , 11 June 2013 19:26
    "several strides behind"?? I'll but an AMD FX-8350 and overclock it, thanks for the usual biased review!!
  • 0 Hide
    Alps , 11 June 2013 19:26
    "several strides behind"?? I'll but an AMD FX-8350 and overclock it, thanks for the usual biased review!!
  • 0 Hide
    Alps , 11 June 2013 19:26
    "several strides behind"?? I'll but an AMD FX-8350 and overclock it, thanks for the usual biased review!!
  • 0 Hide
    Alps , 11 June 2013 19:26
    "several strides behind"?? I'll but an AMD FX-8350 and overclock it, thanks for the usual biased review!!
  • 0 Hide
    Alps , 11 June 2013 19:29
    "several strides behind"?? I'll but an AMD FX-8350 and overclock it, THANKS for the usual BIASED review!!
  • -1 Hide
    genz , 16 June 2013 19:49
    Why are we comparing a dual module CPU to a quad core/8 thread one? Shouldn't you be using the quad module/8 core AMD chip?
  • 0 Hide
    genz , 16 June 2013 19:49
    Why are we comparing a dual module CPU to a quad core/8 thread one? Shouldn't you be using the quad module/8 core AMD chip?
  • -1 Hide
    genz , 16 June 2013 19:51
    Why are we comparing a dual module CPU to a quad core/8 thread one? Shouldn't you be using the quad module/8 core AMD chip?