Question Is power consumption of a CPU (or clusters of, in MP systems) an important decision factor when upgrading servers?

[palladium]

I recently came across a thread over at Hexus' FB page. There was a comment in the TR 3990X review post that reads " ...... People still think this field is packed full of people concerned with value, price to performance or power consumption." I'm not sure if s(he) is referring explicitly to those who are after the TR3990X (i.e workstation users), or Enterprise CPUs in general, but I thought in the server space at least power consumption is quite important as it ties directly with TCO. Does anyone here know the specifics of how an IT manager decides what (and when) to upgrade their servers to?

 

[coercitiv]

Here's some data for you.

This will be an eye opener for many of you and will help you understand how Server IT people think and operate in purchasing a Server.

This is from an AMD research done with a subject of 600 ITDMs from US, Germany and China (200 from each country).