Intel Challenges ARM On Power Consumption... And Ties

GhostX9 writes "Tom's Hardware just published a detailed look at the Intel Atom Z2760 in the Acer Iconia W510 and compared it to the NVIDIA Tegra 3 in the Microsoft Surface. They break it down and demonstrate how the full Windows 8 tablet outperforms the Windows RT machine in power consumption. They break down power consumption to include the role of the CPU, GPU, memory controller and display. Anandtech is also reporting similar findings, but only reports CPU and GPU utilization." Despite repeated claims that x86 is beating ARM here, they look neck and neck. Assuming you can make a meaningful comparison.

Comments

technology node

[blackC0pter]

The only issue here is that this is not an apples for apples comparison. 40nm vs. 32nm should give a huge benefit to the 32nm Atom. We need to compare the same technology node for this to make any sense. Also, looking at the idle cpu power consumption from the anandtech article, the Atom SOC used 10x more power.
So the real question is what do most tablets spend the majority of their time doing? Running a benchmark at full /half speed or with the SOC sitting idle?

Re:Neck and Neck is advantage Intel

[JimCanuck]

No, it doesn't.

Why doesn't it mean x86 is ahead? Because x86 has had years of development ahead of ARM. Also because x86 uses proprietary microcode.

So having them equal means ARM is a significant benefit.

The original x86 was introduced in 1978.

The original ARM was introduced in 1985.

That is just 7 years more over the ARM with 27 years of development since the first implementation. Plus all of the /. crowd and other self described "experts" have been saying for years that a neck and neck tie between them for power consumption would never happen. And well it did, so obviously this is a win for the x86.