Intel Core I7 950 3.06GHz Quad Core Processor Review

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 the power supplies, case fans, video cards and hard drives. 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 was run on all cores to make sure each and every processor was at 100% load for maximum power consumption and heat. All processors were tested on a system using the same hardware; the exception is the Intel system.

The Intel Core I7 950 does seem to be a bit on the power hungry side. Under a full load it was drawing 255 Watts at the wall, what caught me off guard was the difference between the Intel Core I7 950 and the hex-core Intel Core I7 970, the Intel Core I7 950 drew 22 Watts more under full load. Reasoning behind this is the technology each processor is built on. The Intel Core I7 970 is built using 32 Nm technology while the Intel Core I7 950 is based on 45 Nm technology which isn’t quite as power efficient.