Power-efficient CPU a non-issue ?

I find it interesting nowadays that CPU builders, and Intel in particular keep bragging about their power-efficient CPUs. It's like, this is getting more important than speed or number of cores.

My point is: who cares about that ? I want my CPU to be fast first, eventually have multiple cores and some fast way to talk with my memory. It would be nice to also consume little power, but that's a nice touch so to speak.

I assume 90% of the CPU buyers don't have server farms to worry about their electrical bill so why induce this trend ?

I think the solutions is clear: Intel / AMD cannot increase speed easily anymore. Therefore they are convincing consumers that this is what's important about a CPU: power consumption. The result: you see all kinds of uninformed users wondering how much the CPU consumes as if they would see the difference.

I don't want my CPU to consume less than my graphics card or my hard-drive. I'm buying it to work so I expect it to take some power. I would gladly take the power-hungry fast CPU than the low-consuming slow CPU.

As far as I know the operating system or any other software in this world isn't influenced by how much power the CPU takes, but it sure matters if the CPU is faster or has more cores (or some multi-threading per CPU).

So, congratulations to the marketing departments of Intel for convincing people that it's not speed or threads that matter (you know, the stuff people need) but power consumption.

Probably the PC already consumes less than my fridge, old TV or hair drier, but God-forbid it consumes more and gains some speed. No way, we have to be power efficient :-)