In recent years, AMD and Intel have begun to greatly focus on improving the energy efficiency of their products. Energy efficiency is a matter of remarkable importance for CPU manufacturers. A number of reasons make it a key factor for the success of a product.

Although in home environments the power consumption of a PC might at times be negligible, it cannot be overlooked in a work environment where there can be hundreds of PCs running at the same time. Costs because of power inefficiency can easily become a problem for large companies that use thousands of PCs at the same time, especially companies that have server systems. Therefore, it is natural for companies to want components in their PCs that are power efficient, and where better to start than the CPU?

As Intel demonstrated at IDF, a 9 Megawatt Datacenter could amount to costs of $14.6 Million a year. The thing to remember when considering the costs of running a PC is that it all adds up. For companies with a large amount of PCs, electrical costs could easily shoot upwards if each system’s CPU is inefficient in its power use. For this reason, in order to please a more corporate crowd, although it also helps people who are trying to keep their electric bill low, Intel and AMD have made more strides in the direction of power efficiency by placing a large amount of effort into decreasing power consumption.