Intel X38 Express Chipset Debuts

Name: Intel X38 Express Chipset Debuts - Page 14
Brand: Intel

by Marco Chiappetta — Wednesday, October 10, 2007, 12:01 AM EDT

Power Consumption

Before we bring this article to a close, we'd like to cover a few final data points. Throughout all of our benchmarking and testing, we monitored how much power our test system was consuming using a power meter. Our goal was to give you all an idea as to how much power each configuration used while idling and under load. Please keep in mind that we were testing total system power consumption at the outlet here, not just the power being drawn by the motherboards alone.

Total System Power Consumption & Acoustics

It's All About the Watts and Decibels

As you can see, the DDR2-equipped P35 motherboard consumed the least amount of power both while idling and under load. Somewhat surprisingly, the Gigabyte X38-DQ6 had the second lowest power consumption while idling, only to surge to the head of the pack while under load. We suspect the X38-DQ6's power characteristics are a reflection of its relatively large number of integrated peripherals and not simply the result of the X38 consuming more power then the P35. In fact, looking at the P5E3 Deluxe vs. P35-DDR3 comparison, we'd say the X38, despite having more features and PCI Express lanes actually consumes about the same amount of power as the P35.