Comment Re:nothing new (Score 1) 362
I highly doubt anyone is comparing parts with such a large difference in TDP. When shopping for a processor, the first thing you determine is what performance level you need, and then you look at what you can get to meet that performance level. Do this with AMD and Intel processors will not give such a large TDP gap.
But even with that said, it is perfectly possible for a 115W TDP part to use less power than a 65W TDP part, for a given task. As an extreme example, take a 65W part from five years ago and a 115W part from today, and set them to perform the same video encoding job. The likely result is that the modern 115W part will be done in a fraction of the time, thereby spending most of its time in an idle state and using much less power than the 65W part. The same situation does occur when comparing modern processors - Intel has a large IPC advantage, so their processors will do more work per watt, all else being equal.