Test Results: Idle
Both minimum and minimum average numbers are taken and calculated from measurement results five minutes after booting. The system is idle at this time, though some spikes of activity still occur.
Athlon X2 7750
The results are very interesting indeed. As noted before, running Cool'n'Quiet with the Windows power policy set to “Balanced” offered minimal savings. It’s only when we change the voltage that we're able to significantly save more power--about 13 watts lower consumption, or a total of 20 watts compared to running without power management. That's a savings of 25%.
Athlon X2 7850
The Athlon X2 7850 exhibits a different behavior, more likely since it correctly applies a lower voltage when Cool'n'Quiet is enabled. Enabling Cool'n'Quiet saved around 13 watts, and lowering the operating voltage for both the processor’s p-states saves us an additional 9 watts (total savings are 22 watts, or 22%).
Athlon II X2 250
The Athlon II X2 250 is probably the least power-hungry processor in AMD’s entire lineup; it's certainly the least power-hungry of the CPUs we've tested here. With Cool'n'Quiet enabled, system power consumption with this processor is much lower than the Athlon X2 7750 or 7850. With tweaked voltages, you can see even lower levels of consumption. We went from around 76 watts with no power management to 72 watts with Cool'n'Quiet. We even saw 63 watts when we tweaked the p-state voltages.
Note: on the new Socket AM3 platform, we were able to go well below the numbers above. Idle power consumption drops to 39-41 watts when undervolted. That's quite a jump, even when compared on the TA790GX 128M, which sits at 50 watts idle.
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Thanks for that, as well as the article.
I said this before on the preliminary article and I'll say it again... why is the 710 running at a NB frequency of 1600MHz when others on that platform are running at 1800MHz? I've got mine on a GA-MA78G-DS3H with a 2000MHz NB, so the CPU is perfectly capable of running at its default speed. I don't know... maybe I'm missing something here, and I'm very happy for you to tell me what it is!
Additionally, I've gotten optimised steppings of 1.6, 1.9, 2.2 and 2.6GHz at slightly higher (say, 0.25v) voltages than you have and it works fine on the DS3H.
This article is a nice read. Now I can use the tips they have on intel 25w test and this and build a great, cheap and energy efficient HTPC. Just wondering, does this apply on 785g mobos say like the asus m4-evo?