What is the Idle power consumption difference between different TDP processors?

[FreshJR]

I know intel dynamically underclocks when not in use, but does anyonoe have an estmate on the power consumption difference between idling a 77w TDP processor vs 35w TDP processor?

Currently my ivy bridge ultrabook draws some ridiculously low ammount of power when idle, yet my e6600 rig draws 80w idle and 300w load.

At~$7 month of juice for this junk, I might just throw the damn thing out since its not efficient at all anymore. I will be upgrading to a new desktop, but I want it to be completely silent at idle. I'm thinking a large passive cooler on the CPU, and dynamically shutting off my 7970 in desktop mode by switching the rendering over to the IGP.

 

[ShintaiDK]

TDP and idle consumption got nothing to do with one another. Your e6600 draws alot of power because it cant gate idle parts and due to the chipset and platform.

 

[Fjodor2001]

See this thread for a discussion on that subject (for SB, but is valid for IB too):

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2146290

Short version: Idle power consumption does not correlate with TDP.

 

[coffeejunkee]

So yeah, practically no difference between desktop cpu's when not in use, be it a 35W or 95W TDP chip.

But I'm afraid you won't be seeing a very big difference in idle power between your current rig and a new system, mainly due to the 7970 which needs quite a lot by itself. I have 3570K + 5850 and it idles around 70-75W (while using the igp it's around 40-45W).

Also, Virtu turning off vidcard when not in use doesn't work at all, in fact idle power goes up because the vidcard doesn't even clock down to 2D clocks anymore.

You can't really compare with laptops either, all their parts are more energy efficient (hdd's, motherboard, ram) and they also use a more efficient power brick.

 

[Lonyo]

Depends on his current GPU.
The 7970 idle power with a single monitor uses almost no power. 5850 also uses more idle power than 7970.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5699/nvidia-geforce-gtx-680-review/19

Both AMD and NV have heavily cut idle power in newer GPUs.
If you use two monitors on the card it won't downclock fully though and you will lose out on power savings (but you can use the IGP for any extra monitors instead).

 

[coffeejunkee]

Ok, 7970 actually uses 10W less than 5870 (which I guess is about the same as 5850). So you might get 65W.

Still 20W more than if we had something like Nvidia Optimus for the desktop.

 

[ShintaiDK]

IB and SB is about the same as Lynnfield. Its a relatively big leap from e6600.

My system in my signature idles at around 50-60W.