Intel Core i7-980X Gulftown Hexa-core Processor Review

Testing power consumption has become just as important and relevant in recent years as judging performance of these processors.  And unfortunately, testing power consumption has also become a lot more complex than it used to be.  Where as we used to just simply test and idle and a load configuration from the wall, new advancements in multiple-core processors, changes in how power planes are controlled on these CPUs and software complications give us a bit more to think about in our power testing.

Idle power consumption is definitely higher than Clarkdale and Lynnfield here (though part of that could be the motherboard/platform differences) but the Core i7-980X is still lower than the results on the Core i7-975 and other Bloomfield CPUs.  Why?  Likely because of the 32nm process technology and slight tweaks to power efficiency in the new core.  Under a full load, keeping mind that this is 6 cores not 4 like Bloomfield, the Core i7-980X is using LESS power than the Core i7-975 and about the same amount as the Core i7-920 at stock settings.  Pretty impressive. 

Performance per Watt Measurements

Now I want to evaluate how the different processors tested here relate to each other in terms of performance per watt.  To do this I took the load power consumption of each processor and divided it into the benchmark result to create a new metric like Hz/watt (for Euler3D) or FPS/watt for the games.