Excess Power Consumption on teh i7-6500U

F5-572G-595M
F5-572G-595M Member Posts: 16 Troubleshooter

Hi,

 

Recently I purchased a new laptop,

Acer Aspire V Nitro VN7-572G-75AJ

Intel Core i7-6500U

Intel HD Graphics 520 and Nvidia GeFOrce 945M

8GB DDR4 1.2v RAM

Samsung 850 Pro SSD

 

My old computer:

Acer Aspire E15 E5-571PG-524H

Intel Core i5-4210U

Intel HD Graphics 4400 and Nvidia GeForce 840M

4GB DDR3 L 1.35v RAM

Samsung 850 Pro

 

With the new Skylake chip, power efficiency is amazing when doing work, e.g. browsing and gaming, but idle power consumption is another matter. The i5-6200U uses 1.4W on idle, whist the i5-4210U used only 0.6W. According to HWMonitorx64, here are the specs

I7-6500U

Package: 1.4xW (Fluctuates slightly, but always 1.6W)

IA Cores: 0.0xW (Normally below 0.05W)

GT: 0.01W

Uncore: 1.3-1.4W

DRAM 0.48-0.50W

 

I5-4210U

Package: 0.6xW

IA Cores: 0.0xW (Normally below 0.15W)

GT: 0.01W

Uncore: 0.50-0.55W

DRAM 0.48-0.50W

IT may not seem like much, but 1 Watt is a lot in terms of laptop idle power consumption. The power plan on both the computers are exactly the same, and both drivers/BIOS are updated.

 

The only differences may be:

1 MB more cache for the i7, but surely that 1 more megabyte can’t account for that ridiculous difference. Besides, DRAM is essentially cache, and both are just about the same…

DDR4 RAM for the new computer. I don’t know much about memory controllers, but that may be it.

The RAM power consumption is now INCLUDED in the Uncore power consumption in these Skylake chips. But no, not with my other Skylake laptop:

 

HOWEVER, there is one last comparison for this. My faulty last computer,

Acer Aspire F15 F5-572G-595M

Intel Core i5-6200U

Intel HD Graphics 520 and Nvidia GeForce 920M

8GB DDR3 L 1.35v RAM

Samsung 850 Pro

 

Power consumption was just about the same as the i5-4210U

 

Any ideas?

 

PS: Yes, I do love the Acer Aspire line of computers. They are budget-friendly Smiley Very Happy

All measurements from CPUID HWMonitorx64 correspond to OpenHardwareMonitor 0.8.1 Beta.

Package power consumption corresponds with ThrottleStop, as well as HWInfox64

The i7-6500U is undervolted by -90mV on the Cores and -90mV on the Cache (DRAM) as well as -20mV on the iGPU