by Angela Miller
Infoworld’s Ted Samson published a story this week about the results of a comprehensive study comparing AMD and Intel on energy efficiency. This of course resulted in a significant number of complaints about study methodology – many of which were indeed valid. At least there are some studies available to benchmark the energy efficiency of components. This highlights to me an area where more information would be needed in order to make a valid comparison – like EPA gas mileage on a vehicle or an energy star efficiency rating on a white good. Unfortunately, in the information technology arena decision makers often rely on marketing collateral, specifications, and white papers from vendors.

So I was excited to see this story and to find links to other analysis performed by Tom’s Hardware and Anandtech. The conclusion of all three: AMD beats Intel on a strict energy efficiency metric. Add heat generation into the mix and the numbers shift more impressively in AMD’s favor.

What is of greater interest to me is how an IT Manager might use this analysis in making the decision on what to purchase if they were concerned about greening their IT department. As a former IT Manager I would find it difficult to make a business case one way or another based on these studies. While the new AMD chips could save you an estimated $90/yr per server, most organizations would not make an investment choice based on this one number.

The Tom’s Hardware study makes a good point:

The CPU is not the only component that makes a PC energy efficient. Choose the wrong motherboard or power supply and the most energy efficient processor in the world won’t do a bit of good.

Dig deeper on the issues:

I relied on the following sites for analysis in support of this post:

Ted Samson’s Infoworld Sustainable IT Blog
Tom’s Hardware
Anandtech