Power consumption PowerEdge 6300 vs. 2900 (2950)

Hi all,

in the company we run about 20 Dell PowerEdge 6300 machines. They still look absolutely great, a pleasure for the eyes, even though they look like a small dinos :) However, with energy costs racketing high through the roof in the Europe we have been contemplating with a thought that maybe an upgrade to 2900 model would save us some finances annually spent on the run of these machines. That would be the only reason why we would consider a change, since all of them run max. specs 4x Intel Xeon III 550 MHz, 4 GB RAM and 8x SCSI 15000 rpm harddrives using 3x redundant power supplies.

Now, the question that Id like to ask all of you, who have more experiences regarding this subject is, if you put aside the performance issues and focus solely on power consumption, what solution you would vote for. We used digital meter to analyze a normal/average power consumption while all three power supplies are plugged in - it said 360-380 W (altogether for all three).

Existing PowerEdge 6300 specs:
4x Intel Xeon III 550 MHz
4 GB RAM
3x redundant power supplies
8x SCSI 80pin hot plug 15.000 rpm drives (size varies from 18-73 GB)
SCSI CD-ROM and IDE FDD drive

Considered new PowerEdge 2950 specs
1x Intel Quad Core Xeon CPU (probably 2.5 GHZ)
4 GB RAM
2x redundant power supplies
3x 146 GB SAS 15000 rpm drives
DVD-ROM and FDD drive

All I can find regarding power consumption for Dell PowerEdge 29xx series deals only with energy smart solution and ALWAYS only 2950 rack models are mentioned. Does that mean that 2900 is not energy smart?

Thanks for all contributions, Paul