Power efficiency

[pgoelz]

Just curious here. Cruising the net and checking Email, my old X61s (1.8GHz) runs slightly warm to the touch with the fan running on the very lowest setting. By contrast my new X1C3 with an i7 in it runs dead cold to the touch even playing HD videos and the fan is usually OFF. CPU usage rarely rises above 25% even playing a video.

Yes, the i7 has four cores and is about double the clock speed of the C2Duo in the X61s. But essentially the same amount of WORK is being done by both machines and I'm curious why that work generates so much less heat in the X1C3.

Paul

[w0qj]

Think in layman's terms, the modern Intel CPU are more power efficient than before.

ie: modern Intel CPU does more and draws less power, hence CPU runs much cooler, and battery lasts much longer

[brchan]

Also, modern applications (especially web), become more taxing for older and older systems, so cpu usage increases. This in turn ups the temps.

[pgoelz]

Thanks, I figured it was about like that. It also seems to be that having four cores means the system can multi-task more efficiently and maybe spends less CPU cycles switching tasks? At some point I want to compare video render times on my X61s, my 3GHz C2Duo desktop and the i7 X1C3 to see if the X1C is just a sprinter or whether it is in fact faster on sustained CPU intensive tasks. It definitely PLAYS video much more power efficiently.

Paul