Verified answer

Right now, Gaming is not a task that will take a Quad-Core to 100% max. Although, it would make an older Dual Core run at 100% max. You can bet that in the future games will make a Quad-Core run at 100%.

Today's games will only use 2-3 cores.

Computer parts in general consume minimal electricity when they're sitting idle. Computer parts are designed to consumes what's needed, so a processor won't consume maximum wattage at all times.

The TDP or wattage you see more or less represents how much heat is produced. A 95w TDP will consume much more than 95w at full load. The guy above named MarkN spelled it out for you, no need to copy what he said.

This wattage is where people get fooled between 6-core and 4-core processors. Despite the specs saying 125w TDP, a 125w TDP 6 core processor is going to consume more power than a 125w TDP 4-core.

If you're worried about power consumption and you truly want to save money on your electric bill, then look at shoring up your power supply. Cheap power supplies running at near full capacity will waste a lot of power. Far more than what the processor is going to use.

Go with an 80plus Gold power supply and give yourself a fair amount of overhead with buying a power supply that exceeds what you need. You don't need to go crazy and run an 80plus gold 1200w power supply on a system with quad-core and a 6870 graphics card. At this point an 80plus gold and a 650w power supply will do.

Processor Wattage

A 95 watt processor will draw 95 watts under full load, the 125 will consume 125. All other things equal, the 125 watt processor will be faster but will cost more to run. However, different manufacturing processes (65nm, 45nm, 32nm) and different architectures make comparing processor wattage useless to determine "observed processor speed".

Currently, the best general-use processors you can buy are 95 watt Intel i5 or i7.

Oh, and of course, all processors use something called 'stepping' to throttle them down and consume less power when idle or under light load.

The biggest difference you will see is the heat difference from the CPU itself. 95Watt processors idle in the high 20C range, 125W idle in the mid 30C and higher. You can get those heats down through multiple case fans and a better heatsink, but the 95W will always run cooler than a 125W processor. Unless you undervolt the 125W, then you most of the time will have to underclock the processor as well, to keep it stable, at lower voltages...

it is the maximum amount of power they can use. Which is better in your example is impossible to answer. That maximum amount of power is when _all_ cores are running 100%, and there aren't many games that actually do use as many cores as you have.

So the 125W cpu could have 6 cores, the 95W ould have 2 cores, and its anybodies guess how much power they would use when 1 core is running 100%, and the other ones are completely idle.

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If the limit was heat dissipation you could just use a better heat sink, but the limit is probably the maximum power the power supply or motherboard can provide.

have a look here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_design_power