A Look at Energy Efficient Processors From AMD & Intel
The guys over at the Tech Report put AMD's new energy efficient X2 3800 up against Intel's Core 2 E6300. Both of these processors have low power draw, are cheap, and are at the bottom of their respective product lines. Those of you who are thinking about putting together a SFF or HTPC box should pay attention.
"The Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Energy Efficient Small Form Factor, meanwhile, has a different mission in life. It's not bad on the desktop, with a WorldBench score better than a Pentium D 960 and decent performance in today's games. But the EE SFF can't keep up with the E6300 on the performance front, and it's not much of an overclocker, either. Instead, the EE SFF would look most at home in the living room, on a low-power motherboard inside of a home theater PC case. With the right motherboard, its power consumption is ridiculously, wonderfully low. If you're not looking to build a quiet, cool PC for some reason, though, you're better off grabbing the 65W or 89W version of the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ - or better yet, the Core 2 Duo E6300."
If you think those two processors are pretty nice, with their low cost and energy efficient design, but you would like a bit more power, check out AMD's Energy Efficient X2 4600 . Dave took a hard look at the EE 4600 last week, along with the EE 3800 . It has similar power characteristics as the Energy Efficient 3800 but with a lot more punch.
