Real power draw of processors ?

The following are TDP numbers but what are estimates of real power draw ?

"The average Core 2 Duo draws 25W or 35W, CULV models draw 10W, the dual core Atoms draw 8W, and the more popular single-core Atoms draw between 2W and 5W depending on the model"

 

Depends on how stressed the CPU is.

 

That's at full load I believe.

 

Let's say all at full load ..

 

Typically, increasing clock speed and cache, increases power consumption linearly while increasing voltage is exponential. Users can compile data by using RMClock to measure idle and full load power consumption to see the change in power consumption. Power consumption of the CPU itself is harder to isolate since everyone has different components with different power consumptions but we can at least get a rough range.

Not sure if in reality, stress testing just the CPU, really does that (I'm sure other components will be stressed such as memory, but I'm not sure of the implications or if it would be a significant difference). Ideally, someone would have a notebook with a few different CPUs and would be able to give us data to compare CPUs on the same platform, but even then there would be variances between those CPU samples and another user with an identical configuration.

I believe K-TRON did some testing with 25W and 35W C2Ds and didn't find much difference at load and pretty much no difference at idle.

 

Pretty much though, a P9700 is the same silicon as a P8400, just the different qualities of that silicon. The different multipliers and core voltages will vary, but there won't be too much difference in the power consumption of either, except maybe at full load. 25 watt is just the rating that tells people what kind of cooling system needs to be implemented to keep the processor under certain temps, while the processor probably won't consume that at full tilt, unless it's a high quality stepping, high multiplier chip, like the top-end C2D.