Power Consumption
This is where the Phenom II X4 965 loses out when compared to the Core i5 750. Under load we see that the Phenom II X4 965 consumed 23% more power than the Core i5 750 while it also required a staggering 52% more power at idle. Some good news from AMD is that the 890GX chipset used ~9% less power than the previous generation 785G when under load, though this could likely be attributed to the motherboard design.
For this next batch of power results we have removed the Radeon HD 5870 and are using instead the integrated graphics. We have also downgraded the processors to models that are more HTPC friendly. As you can see Intel still has an advantage and while the idle results are not bad, under load the results are quite terrible.
Keep in mind the Athlon II X4 features 4 cores whereas the Core i3 has just 2. Then again we used the Athlon II X4 635 to show off the IGP performance as it is in the same price range of the Core i3 530, and therefore it felt fair to mirror that setup for the power consumption testing as well.