Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[pgerassi]

Dear Upc:

Emperical results trump on paper analysis. Scientists use experiments to prove and disprove theories. Michaelson and Morley set out to find ether drift by their inferometer experiment and ended up proving that ether doesn't exist. Intel's Prescott documentation states that Prescott doesn't use all that much power than AMD K8's stated power usage. But when looked at by experiment, the difference is significant and large. Whether one looks at idle or under load, Prescott based systems use more power.

How much is due to the CPU? Most of it. Power supply and NB do not take more than 40% or so worst case. CPU fan doesn't use more than 4W, so 68W*60%-4W = 30W minimum. More likely 68W*75%-4W = 47W typical. That is significant when compared to the 90-115W TDPtyp of Prescott. The actual TDPtyp of Athlon 64 would be in the range of 43-68W, well below the family power envelope of 89W.

I take emperical (experiment) based results over paper. Due diligence is needed for both anyway. Look at what happened at Anandtech for good reasons why.

Pete