madmatt30 :
^ not disputing that an i5 is a great upgrade but wattage wise it pulls about the same as a 7870k without the igp in use (75w or so)
Your 3570 & a 7850 can pull a fair whack more than 150w at high load on both.
TDP is not necessarily reflective of real-world power consumption.
^ The 6500 will draw a fair bit less than the 6600K by virtue of being clocked lower. Admittedly, there's not a ton of difference between ~45w and ~75w, but motherboard/chipset power consumption is also higher on the AMD system, and it adds up.
Regarding my own chip, my testing shows that my total system power consumption at the stock 4-core turbo clock of 3.6ghz, when under Prime95 AVX torture testing, is 81.8w at the wall, measured with a Kill-A-Watt.
At the wall:
Total system power draw at idle: 37.5w
Video card power draw at idle: ~12w
The CPU + motherboard + fans + hard drives + other accessories together, minus the video card, draw about 25w at the wall. This is
after conversion losses, which are probably in the range of 40% at this low load.
My testing shows that running Furmark increases total system power consumption by very close to 100w, putting me at ~180w at the wall with Prime95 AVX + Furmark running. With a 90% efficient power supply, that comes out to ~162w power consumption of the entire system under the heaviest load I can place on it.
So, no, they don't pull a fair whack more than 150w when both are highly loaded. I appreciate your feedback, but these are actual, measured, real-world numbers.