Intel Core i7-4960X Ivy Bridge-E Processor Review

Total System Power Consumption

Since power consumption is a big deal these days, we ran some simple power consumption tests on our test beds. The systems ran with identical power supplies, Solid-Sate Drives, Memory kits and motherboards from the same company. To measure idle usage, we ran the system at idle for one hour on the desktop with no screen saver and took the measurement. For load measurements, Prime95’s in-place large FFT’s were run on all cores to make sure each and every processor was at 100% load for maximum power consumption and heat.

Benchmark Results: Power consumption measurements show that Intel has done a great job with Ivy Bridge-E as it consumed less power than Sandy Bridge-E at both idle and in our two load scenarios. At idle it is just a few Watts lower, but at dull power it was 36W lower in 3DMark Firestrike Extreme Game Test 1 and it used 44 Watts less in Prime 95! This is a 14% power drop in Prime 95 and a 5% power drop in 3DMark. The Intel ‘Haswell’ processors that we also have in the chart use half the power at idle and in Prime 95, so building an LGA1150 platform will certainly be more efficient than an LGA2011 platform. Each platform is aimed at a different user though, so just something to keep in mind when you are planning out your next system build. It should be noted that all the low power states were enabled on the Haswell platform.