AMD Athlon 64 X2 65nm Brisbane-Core

The HotHardware Test Systems AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Powered

Back when AMD introduced their Energy Efficient Athlon 64 X2 3800+ and 4600+, we did a complete comparison including processors from both Intel and AMD.  In that review, it was obvious that AMD came up with an extremely efficient processor when it came to low power consumption.  This review, in essence, can be considered an extension of that piece, with today's focus being an apples-to-apples comparison between the AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ 90nm "Windsor" and the AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ 65nm "Brisbane".

AMD Athlon 64 X2 65nm "Brisbane" Power & Thermal Characteristics - IDLE

In our first overview of power consumption, we recorded the idle wattage of our test system with Cool'n'Quiet Enabled and with it Disabled.  All measurement were recorded at 30 minute intervals using a Kill-A-Watt meter at the outlet.  In all testing, a stock cooler was used along with Arctic Silver 5 thermal grease.

With Cool'n'Quiet enabled, each processor dropped down to 1000MHz from 2600MHz, which resulted in an overall system draw of 87 watts with both "Brisbane" and "Windsor" cores.  With Cool'n'Quiet disabled, we start to see more of a variation between the two cores, with the "Brisbane" weighing in at 7 watts less compared to the "Winsdor" based model.

Next we used ASUS Probe II to monitor the CPU temperature, once again with Cool'n'Quiet enabled and disabled, waiting 30 minutes before recording each result. 

With Cool'n'Quiet enabled, both processors ran at nearly the same temperature of 18-19C.  When we disabled Cool'n'Quiet, like our wattage test, we saw a slight increase in the variations, with the "Windsor" core idling 5C higher than the "Brisbane".