Intel Xeon G-stepping significantly reduces idle power consumption

Posted on Monday, August 13 2007 @ 21:36 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck

The Tech Report found out that Intel's new Xeon processors with the new G stepping use much less power at idle. Power consumption at idle drops by as much as 25W on some models with this new stepping!

The bigger news that you may hear less about is the advent of the new G stepping of chips across the Xeon lineup. These chips are still manufactured using a 65nm fabrication process, but a combination of changes—including the ability to reach lower CPU multipliers and thus lower clock speeds—leads to much lower power consumption at idle for many Xeon models. Here are the numbers Intel presented to us on the reduction in idle power use for its quad-core Xeons.

	Clock speed	Front-side bus	TDP	Old idle power	New idle power
Xeon X5365	3.00GHz	1333 MHz	120W	50W	25W
Xeon X5355	2.66GHz	1333 MHz	120W	50W	25W
Xeon E5340	2.33GHz	1333 MHz	80W	30W	25W
Xeon E5330	2.00GHz	1333 MHz	80W	34W	34W
Xeon E5320	1.86GHz	1066 MHz	80W	30W	30W
Xeon E5310	1.60GHz	1066 MHz	80W	34W	34W
Xeon L5335	2.00GHz	1333 MHz	50W	N/A	24W
Xeon L5320	1.86GHz	1066 MHz	50W	24W	24W
Xeon L5310	1.60GHz	1066 MHz	50W	24W	24W

And for the dual-core Xeons:

	Clock speed	Front-side bus	TDP	Old idle power	New idle power
Xeon 5160	3.00GHz	1333 MHz	65W	N/A	8W
Xeon 5150	2.66GHz	1333 MHz	65W	24W	8W
Xeon 5140	2.33GHz	1333 MHz	65W	24W	8W
Xeon 5130	2.00GHz	1333 MHz	65W	27W	27W
Xeon 5120	1.86GHz	1066 MHz	65W	24W	12W
Xeon 5110	1.60GHz	1066 MHz	65W	15W	6W

Intel Xeon G-stepping significantly reduces idle power consumption

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