Intel Corp (INTC)

[tekate]

Tom's Hardware Botches Intel Atom Efficiency tests Badly

http://www.formortals.com/Home/tabid/36/EntryID/84/Default.aspx


After praising Tomshardware for doing a good job fixing their flash storage efficiency article, I must point out that Tomshardware's made another horrendous error by claiming that and Intel D945GCLF system with an Intel Atom 1.6 GHz processor consumes 59W idle power. Mr. Dandumont who authored the article claims that he used an "80 Plus" power supply implying that he was getting at least 80% efficiency on the PSU (Power Supply Unit) but that is a huge mistake.

UPDATE 7/21/2008 - Tomshardware's Senior Editor Matthieu Lamelot has responded that they used the Tagan EasyCon U15 530 W power supply. My 600W guess was fairly close and it means that Tomshardware loaded their PSU to roughly 3.6% load and that translates to roughly 30% efficiency which makes their benchmarks very inaccurate and misleading. Tomshardware should at least test with a good 80 Plus 220W PSU but ideally they should test with a sub-100W PicoPSU.