AMD's Phenom processor has been power hungry since it's release but that was stepped up even more when the Phenom 9950 was released with a 140W TDP, higher than other desktop CPUs on the market. This sent something of a stir into the enthusiast crowd whether justified or not for a processor with such a high power rating. Recently, however, AMD released a 125W version of the Phenom 9950 after improving the manufacturing process to replace the previous 140W version. Both are still on the market now and we thought we'd take a look at this new Phenom 9950 125W and compare it to the original 140W processor.

Let's start off with the official specs and information from AMD.

The product code differs to "X" from "F" from the Phenom 9950 BE 125W to the Phenom 9950 BE 140W.

As you see the spec voltage range from AMD is exactly the same with the 140W and 125W. The main difference in the official specs is a slight difference in temperature.

We did some quick performance testing on the 125W version and there was no performance difference between the two processors as is to be expected.

Our test OS was Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 with ATI Catalyst version 8.9. Power consumption was tested with an Extech Power Analyzer measuring system wattage.

Our idle power measurement was taken 5 minutes into Windows Vista desktop idling the computer. Load was with all four cores at 100% in task manager using Valve's map creator benchmark to stress the CPU fully. C'nQ recognizes Cool 'n Quiet enabled. We tested these processors multiple times and found at least in our specific CPUs basically no difference between our 140W Phenom 9950 BE and our 125W Phenom 9950 BE in regards to power consumption. We weren't expecting a large difference given the only 15W maximum difference in rating between the two processors but we basically saw none in all instances of testing. One thing we do see is Cool 'n Quiet save about 25W at idle.

We spoke with Damon Muzny at AMD about this and he told us that there will be variation in processors in power consumption between processors even of the same model which if graphed would create a bell curve. Looking at just these two this might have been a 140W Phenom 9950 that was towards the lower-end of power consumption and a 9950BE 125W which was towards the higher-end. Somewhat similar to how no two processors will overclock the same there will be some variance in power consumption between two processors. So looking at only two might show nothing but if you took 100 of each and tested them you should see a bell curve appear with more variation between the processors. Additionally AMD might have been cautious in their rating for the Phenom 9950BE 140W.