Intel Core i9 (Gulftown) - 6 cores, 32 nm: hands-on review 

Power consumption

We measured the power consumption of the entire test rig. Keep in mind that it is different from the one used in the recent processor reviews and the results are not comparable with the older ones. The processor, the main character of this article, is not the final product – it is an early engineering copy running on a board that provides unofficial support. The Power consumption may not represent the Gulftown processors we will see appearing in stores in a couple of months.

Our engineering copy was powered with 1.11 V under load and 0.95 V at rest.

Gulftown has about half more cores and half more cache than Core i7, and under load it draws ... about 24 watts less. As you can see, the 32 nm process technology has perfect effects on the power efficiency of processors, if you can pack 50% more transistors into a much smaller energy budget.

Operating temperature

We also measured the processors’ operating temperature. The temperature was measured using a digital thermometer with a K-type probe located on the side of the IHS.

Gulftown is one of the coolest processors we have tested so far. The temperature under load is comparable to processors that have two or three times less cores.