Originally Posted by MrBean
With badly designed circuits I would agree, you will have quite low efficiency due to heatlosses.
In the world of electronics, especially regulators, it is better to use more smaller vregs than one larger unit.
6 phases will not be as efficient as 12 phases, provided they are both designed to supply say, 20% headroom on a particular board, with a max rating cpu.
Now, with Conroe, and lesser power requirements in terms of total current needed, actually you will find a 4 or 6 phase vreg may be as efficient as you would want, and that a 12-phase design, won't harm anything, but may not neccessarily improve matters either - like the point of diminishing returns.
Conroe requires less, but higher resolution in current delivery than predecessors, so smaller ramps involtage is a requirement. So yes, in a well designed 4,5 or 6 phase design, you will find it loose approx as much heat as a 8 or 12 phase design, cause you are not pushing the limits with Conroe and a 4 phase or whatever the case is.
Even at 3.6 gig the 4-5 phase would be very adequate. Where we will see an advantage will be with Kentsfield, where a 8 or 12 phase design will proof more efficient, with the resulting lower ripple on the cpu supply lines.
