How much more energy does an i7@ 4ghz consume?

Ninja Please!

Ninja Please!

Ninja Please!

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Hey mates,
I'm a noob when it comes to amps/watts/volts other than a basic understanding of how electricity works. So my question is how much more power do you think I consume at 4ghz 1.24v, than say at 3.8ghz 1.18v?

If these i7's could clock to 5ghz, would it make economical sense to run them at that 24/7 drawing power like that? At what point to you notice an OC on your electric bill? My wife pays mine and says we are on some sorta fixed rate so I really don't know.
 
Thanks for the link! It would seem that 3.8 would be quite a bit more energy efficient. Especially when factored that the extra 200mhz is not at all noticable doing anything ever. My game load times are the same, boot times are the same, same same same until we get to energy. Looks to be a waste to run @4ghz all the time which means if you could get to 5ghz by continuing to up the vcore and such it would surely be expensive on the electric bill.

I just wonder when these companies go hog wild to get 7ghz benchmarks how far from a desktop that really is (providing cooling wasn't an issue).
 
speedstep is your friend
i run 4.4ghz 24/7
speedstep puts it at 2.6ghz when idle and drops the voltage to 0.98v :eek:
 
Tis a shame that 12x is the lowest the CPU can go to. The fact that the Phenom II can go lower is the reason it's so much more energy efficient when not under load.

By the way rjkoneill, if you look at that article, idle power consumption still rises quite sharply at ~3.9GHz, it's not just load power.
 
It would be interesting to see what voltage they're pumping into the chip to get those overclocks. Judging by the steep increase between 3.8GHz and 4GHz I assume they needed quite a voltage hike to get there.

Also going by the date of the article I'll assume it's not a D0 chip, which would also support the possibility of needing a higher voltage to hit 4GHz.

In other words, with D0s hitting 4GHz with ease and pretty low voltages, it's likely that our own results would be quite different. I doubt we'd see quite the same increase, and as the THG article isn't giving us enough information, I don't think we can really draw any conclusions from it.
 
i7 was designed by intel to be super efficiant

the fact that we all got one and clocked it by 40% means that it isnt

it really is that simple

i dont read toms hw

every time i have read it there are lies

multiple lies
 
Yes, it is efficient in terms of performance per watt under load, but the idle power consumption is pretty shocking compared to PII and C2Q platforms.
 
Well if power consumption is your main concern you shouldn't really be entertaining any quad, a nippy dual core would be far more sensible.

Unfortunately in computing if you want the best it tends to come with a high power draw.
 
Indeed - Surely this is akin to buying a Ferrari and then crying over your MPG?
 
Totally agree - if you want MPG, get yourself a nice Astra diesel. (Core2 duo/phenomII)

And if you want minimum possible idle usage, a phenomII BE is a superb direction to take it - cool'n'quiet reduces the speed to 0.8 or 1.6gHz (c'n'q has an extra stage) regardless of overclock assuming you overclock with the multiplier only. Same theory works with intel extreme chips, but they tend to be top end only.
 
Aren't the CPU Voltage for 4Ghz in Tomshardware set at 1.5V? ..So surely the power consumption wouldn't be anywhere near this high in a normal test??
 
Last edited:
Mattus said:
Nah. The CPU can change state very quickly, in a tiny fraction of a second.
Click to expand...
Exactly. Obviously it has an impact - even if it is very small - but it changes so quickly and the reduction in electricity costs and component wear more than makes up for it. Afterall, most tasks desktop tasks simply don't benefit from a 4GHz quadcore running at full speed.
 
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