Gigabyte goes "Green" with DES software

Test Results

We used four instances of Folding@Home to load each CPU core individually. The DES power savings column shows that savings of 7W per hour is possible if the CPU is loaded 100%. Around 20,000 users worldwide currently participate in the Stanford Folding@Home program, which is used to help protein related disease research. Many of the participants run quad-core processors at a 100% load, almost 365 days a year. Based upon current 1kWH unit pricing in the US, a DES setting of 3 would equate to an approximate $6.63 dollar saving over the course of one year - if the processor retains a 100% load throughout this time.

Okay, these numbers are not exactly substantial, but they are better than no savings at all. To an individual, the power savings shown here may seem miniscule. The broader picture is that the DES software will be available on most of Gigabyte recent boards. It's just a matter of how many people decide to put the software to use. As with most forms of power economy, it takes a global effort to instigate meaningful power consumption reductions. A further look into why the power savings are minimal with our setup is that Intel's QX9650 - and their 45nm processors in general - are very power economical by design, especially at stock settings. Again, the Hafnium based 45nm technology shows the virtues of incredibly low power leakage at stock speeds. That is why the difference in wall power draw is so small, even when reducing Vcore at stock speeds.

For word processing or web browsing, there is absolutely no harm in using DES level 3 with CPU throttling enabled. An approximate saving of almost 4W per hour is possible; again, this is not massive but every bit of savings is still worthwhile in the grand scheme of things.

In this test we decided to manipulate Vcore levels manually to DES levels without using DES. We also took this a step further (the bottom row in the table) and reduced Vcore to the lowest level that we could run our QX9650 at 3GHz stable. The 45nm process allows these processors to run incredibly low levels of Vcore at 3GHz. What has become clear at this point is that switching off some of the phases does not really benefit the user by reducing system power consumption from the wall. Further, as there is no user VCore control in DES, manual Vcore tuning to lower values than DES level 3 brings the prospect of increased overall power savings.

It is important to note that Gigabyte's Easy tune 5 software allows manual Vcore adjustment within the OS. Okay, so it's not quite as easy as the 1-click feature of DES, but Easy Tune 5 is almost as easy to use for manual Vcore adjustment (two clicks to be precise). The only rub here is that it does take a little bit of time running stability software to work out just how low you can take the Vcore whilst retaining system stability. Of course, the QX9650 is currently the best processor that money can buy and represents top speed binned silicon. The lower binned processors should still allow users to undervolt the Vcore quite effectively, obviously at the cost of a lower overall CPU speed.