Game Console Energy Usage Comparison 364
Broadband writes "Modern gaming consoles consume more and more power, dissipate more and more heat and cause a lot more noise with their cooling systems compared to their brethren a decade ago.
While it's obvious that an Xbox 360 would have higher energy demands then a Playstation 1, the curious question is by how much? Even more importantly is the question of whether your console might be costing you money while you sleep. Preposterous you say? Actually quite the opposite!
We put every console in our lab through rigorous testing to find the answers to these questions and see who the energy hogs really are. "
Nostradamus Impression (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Nostradamus Impression (Score:5, Funny)
No, then he'd have to start spouting ambient-temperature air instead.
Re:Nostradamus Impression (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Nostradamus Impression (Score:2, Funny)
Odd... (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, it's a pretty interesting article. I'm impressed.
Re:Odd... (Score:5, Funny)
That's why Google Ads are so effective.
Re:Odd... (Score:2)
Now when I search, pages and pages of those.
Someone PLEASE start a new search engine that's spam free.
Re:Odd... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Odd... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Odd... (Score:5, Insightful)
Standby leak is not important (Score:3, Insightful)
Instead of worrying about 2W, manufacturers could be encouraged to reduce the average power usage of a system in a working (ie not standby state). A saving of 10% on all appliances would be far more significant.
Of course if you argue we, not companies should be responsible, then I point out that using energy saving lightbulbs would have a far, far greater effect on your household energy consumption than switching off devices on standby.
Don't get
Re:Odd... (Score:5, Insightful)
The interesting part is the massive growth in the consumption of energy. Take to any power distrubition person and they will tell you that meeting that demand, 24X7, is no small task, and conservation would greatly increase the reliability of the power grid, and therefore the quality of life and national security.
Re:Odd... (Score:4, Informative)
Errrrum (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably true, but not obvious.
Re:Errrrum (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Errrrum (Score:5, Informative)
When the PS1 was first released, it probably used a lot more power than when they re-released it several years later. If they were to build a PSone today using the very latest technology, it would probably consume less than a Watt at full tilt.
Re:Errrrum (Score:2)
In News Today: (Score:5, Funny)
In other news Microsoft have responded to allegations that the Xbox360 in fact runs on the imprisoned souls of ritually sacrificed children in a press conferance today saying that 'Microsoft at no time has employed the dark-arts to create it's products and that any negotiations with the Dark Prince of the Underworld have been of a purely strategic nature and that Microsoft does not endorce the ritual sacrifice of children or other persons, animals or otherwise'. Industry insiders have their doubts sighting the recent lack of sightings of Bill Gates first born, whome he and his wife named Damien, born on 6 June 1999, as possible evidence of dealings with demonic forces, this reporter will wait for more solid facts before making a judgement... More news at 11.
Re:Errrrum (Score:2, Funny)
Damn Terrorists (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Damn Terrorists (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Damn Terrorists (Score:2, Insightful)
Did anyone else read this and think 'Gee, go figure. A more powerful system needs more electricity.' Sounds like non-news to me.
Re:Damn Terrorists (Score:3, Informative)
> off the East and West Coast as well as in Alaska.
Funny, the US gets more of its oil from Canada than Saudi Arabia, and the trend is only increasing:
http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/can-am/washington/tra de_and_investment/energyrel050328-en.asp [dfait-maeci.gc.ca]
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/canada.html [doe.gov]
Re:Damn Terrorists (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Damn Terrorists (Score:2)
Re:Damn Terrorists (Score:2)
Re:Damn Terrorists (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, there have been at least three publicized core events: the Idaho Falls failure, TMI, and Chernobyl. Of the three, only Chernobyl proceded from full core failure to melt-through. That was due to the poor engineering behind the Russian plant, not to the intrinsic danger of a core event.
For a sense of what is possible, the French SuperPhoenix and Canadian CanDu reactors have combined for millenia of event-free operation. France, by the way, depends on nuclear power for 80% of its electrical needs -- the French are chuckling over the current energy price crunch...all the way to the bank.
Furthermore, the exclusion zone around Chernobyl is by no means "uninhabitable" when you get more than about 200m from the sarcophagus itself. Ukraine has taken a very reasonable precaution of maintaining the evacuation, but the area is completely habitable, as demonstrated by the variety of animal and plant life which has taken up residence there.
I'm still worried about the viability of Yucca Mountain, and feel strongly that we need a non-proliferative reprocessing technology before the US adopts nuclear power completely -- but don't deceive yourself about the its problems. They're nowhere nearly as bad as you think, and the mass poisoning coal inflicts on children, in particular, is far worse than you imagine.
Re:Damn Terrorists (Score:2)
I wouldn't be surprised if this article was inspired by something Nintendo said at E3 '05. They mentioned it was really efficient with power. I can imagine somebody taking that little blurb and writing a story about it. (They didn't mention the Wii so I'm probably just talking out of my rear.)
In any event, the interesting part of this article is towards the end when they comp
Re:Damn Terrorists (Score:4, Insightful)
No. Because its not obvious at all.
In fact, it could be argued that in computers that the opposite is more likely. After all a solar powered calculator the size of a credit card can run off the light of a candle and is a more powerful system than a 1960's computer that needed a warehouse and an industrial power supply. We're pretty accusomted to seeing computers deliver more on less.
And I bet if the article had discovered that modern consoles were 10x as powerful, and used less electricity than their previous generations, you would probably have yawned and said:
Did anyone else read this and think 'Gee, go figure. A more powerful system needing less electricity.' Sounds like non-news to me.
Two conflicting statements, both so perfectly reasonable that we would question neither. I think it IS worth reporting which one turned out to be true.
Don't you?
Re:Damn Terrorists (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, I realize you claim to have gotten the joke. I just find your response inane.
Thanks for debunking that (Score:2)
PSone PStwo ? (Score:3, Informative)
Playstation 1 4W
Playstation 2 23W
Xbox 61W
Xbox 360 145W
Gamecube 20W
Dreamcast 17W
"Last Updated: 6/18/2006" and no PSone and PStwo figures ? hmmm...
Re:PSone PStwo ? (Score:3, Informative)
Embodied Energy (Score:5, Interesting)
From the thanks-captain-obvious! dept... (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't see the merit of comparing consoles from different generations for their power comsumption. Of course they need more juice... but they're doing a lot more with it. This article would have been interesting if the PS3 and Wii had been out, but with only the 360 available to examine, we don't really know too much about the true power usage of the next-gen systems. The 360 might be the most energy efficient... I'd certainly bet that the PS3's Cell processor and BD-ROM drive will use more electricity.
Also, they labour the point about the idle power consumption a bit much. If I had paid $500 for a 360 and games, I really wouldn't mind paying $2.63 a year for the convenience of using a wireless device (remote or controller) to turn the console on, and $20 per year is probably much less than my PC uses to run, never mind my kettle.
But above all, I especially love this bit:
Ummm, yes. They forgot that the $20 per year saves the moaning caused by the two consoles and associated controllers cluttering up the TV unit!
Re:From the thanks-captain-obvious! dept... (Score:5, Informative)
??? I can get you an ARM board that'll be three times as fast as a Pentium 90, but use barely a fraction of the power.
Believe it or not, computer equipment *is* getting more efficient. The problem is that massive amounts of power are being dumped into them for "maximum performance". Shades of Alpha?
Re:From the thanks-captain-obvious! dept... (Score:2)
Yeah because the PS2, Xbox and GameCube are obviously not from the same gen...
wait...
Re:From the thanks-captain-obvious! dept... (Score:2)
Considering that the Wii will have a relatively simple and weak one-core processor, it's a safe bet that its power consumption will be the lowest, probably by a large margin. As for how power-efficient the Cell will be relative to the 360, that remains to be seen
Nintendo 64? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Nintendo 64? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nintendo 64? (Score:2)
grouping the dreamcast with the N64 and PS1 is like grouping the XBox360 with the PS2 and GameCube. the DC was a 6th generation console, just like the PS2, GameCube and XBox, it only shipped a bit sooner than the other systems... hey, isn't that the same path that the XBox360 is taking?!
you do have a point though, it is a bit odd that they tested the PS1 and not the N64 or Sega Saturn (both of which shi
Re:Nintendo 64? (Score:2)
Math (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Math (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.google.ca/search?hs=IDf&hl=en&safe=off
Standby Energy Usage (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA:
Let's take a look at how much power video game consoles require while in standby/off mode.
Console Energy Leakage kWh Wasted Each Year Annual Cost
Playstation 1 0.1W 1.752 kWh $0.26
Playstation 2 2W 17.52 kWh $2.63
Xbox 0.2W 3.50 kWh $0.53
Xbox 360 2W 17.52 kWh $2.63
Gamecube 0.2W 3.50 kWh $0.53
Dreamcast 0.2W 3.50 kWh $0.53
USD 2.63 per year for something that cost over USD 300! Oh the humanity!
Re:Standby Energy Usage (Score:5, Insightful)
At the moment (according to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]) 103 million PS2s have been sold worldwide. That's an annual leak of 1.8 terawatts. And what's the impact on the environment of generating that energy?
Re:Standby Energy Usage (Score:2)
Yes, there could be a possible issue, but you're also assuming that all 103 million of those PS2's are still plugged in and used on a daily basis, which I think is rather unrealistic.
Re:Standby Energy Usage (Score:2)
Correct math (Score:2)
A device leaking 2W consumes 17.532 kWh per year. (2 * 24 * 365.25)
Multiply by 103 million: 1.8 TWh (terawatt-hours) total annually. At any given time, the rate of consumption is 103 million * 2W = 2.06 MW.
1.8 TWh represents 6.5 petajoules (10^15 joules) of energy. One gallon of gas contains 132 megajoules of energy, so worldwide that's about 50 million gallons of gas a year. That sounds like a lot, but consider: if everyone in the US (just the US, mi
Re:Standby Energy Usage (Score:3, Interesting)
From a Houston Chronicle aritcle, http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2006/06/coa l_affordable_1.html [chron.com], an 1000MW coal plant spews 6 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere per year.
So, a 100MW coal plant would spew 600,000 tons of CO2 per year [544,310,844 kg]
That's the impact. But, this is only for 2W standby power for one product.
Also
Re:Standby Energy Usage (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't care much for your cherry-picked comparison to "Hollywood fatcats". I'm sure there are probably many MORE conservative/Republican/oil-wealthy/corporate "fatcats" out there as well (you were trying to make a selective attack on "liberals" right?).
As for the people in third world countries, I'm embarrassed than an obviously educated person such as yourself would compare energy leaks in rich-people's houses to family size in third world countries. That is blatantly racist, elitist, and pretty much wrong. I came from a 3rd world country, one of two children. We were fortunate, as are you and most Western families. It has been shown over and over again, that family size often does not follow "rational" patters that should in theory correlate with wealth. In fact, more often it correlates with religion, need for able-bodied workers, and lack of family planning assistance (at this point, the US only offers family assistance in 3rd world countries through abstinance-only programs, rather than the far more effective total approach including contraception). For a more eloquent and clear explanation on birth rate and the factors that effect it, see this wiki article [wikipedia.org].
In short, people in 3rd world countries will do what they feel is right, or necessary, to survive and live as enriched lives as they can. Your 12 children case is highly exaggerated, as the highest average rate in the world [wikipedia.org] is Niger, with 7.6 children/woman. Now you honestly think we're going to see exponential growth of these families in Niger? How many of those children are going to go on to reproduce, let alone survive their first year? In fact the majority of the top-50 countries in the world for birth rate are in Africa. You think we're seeing exponential growth in population there? In reality, most of the continent is devastated in terms of the death rate.
Anyway, to get back to the point of this thread (which you usurped to make your racist view points public), the grandparent post was attempting to state that on a global scale, energy leaks may make a totally unnecessary (albeit small, and calculable) impact on the environment. I challenge you try and compare children of 3rd world countries as equally unnecessary impacts on the world.
Re:Standby Energy Usage (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, per person it is not.
On, the other hand, I believe the 360 has at this point sold ~3.5 million units.
That's 1.75 million gallons of gas a year. That is a lot of gas, no matter how you look at it.
Now, fast forward a year after the PS3 has come out. Say, 15 million units sold between them. 7.5 million gallons of gas is worth noticing.
Logic errors abound, same tired arguments (Score:2)
Re:Standby Energy Usage (Score:3, Insightful)
It's easy to take the
Wii (Score:5, Funny)
From TFA:
Of course, everyone knows that the Wii will be powered by fun!
Re:Wii (Score:5, Funny)
Oblig (Score:2)
Wii power YOU!
Dreamcast (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Dreamcast (Score:2)
Re:Dreamcast (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong... (Score:2)
Re:Dreamcast (Score:3, Informative)
Chaos Tide Flowing (Score:3, Insightful)
When Atari invented the console market in the late 1970s, power costs were an issue only because of the recent energy crisis, heat mattered only if you left your cold beverage on the console, and there was no noise. Now that those problems are all cranked up in a more crowded, less plentiful, overbuilt world, we really have to worry about the power and heat. And now we can see the next crisis: overwhelming noise from all these home machines will first drive us completely mad, then churn up the atmosphere into tiny cyclones, combining with the larger ones to scour our homes into livingroom Grand Canyons.
power costs (Score:4, Insightful)
But wait! Let's assume that it takes me 30 seconds to get off my lazy ass and move to the entertainment center, move the entertainment center, unplug the PS2 from the power strip, and move the entertainment center back into place so my roommate can still watch TV. I play videogames almost every day, sometimes in two or three seperate sessions. Just for argument's sake, we'll figure I do this 360 times a year. That works out to 10 800 seconds, or 180 minutes, or three hours.
Given that the federal minimum wage is $5.15 an hour, that means that if I spend the time unplugging the PS2, then I'll be losing money! (3*5.15 = 15.45, if my redneck math is right, which I think is more than $2.63)
Re:power costs (Score:2)
You get paid to stay sitting on your couch?
Wow! Where can I get that job?
Re:power costs (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:power costs (Score:2)
Ah, but most Americans have too much stored energy in their bodies.
Don't tell me that 3 hours of low-intensity movement will cost you that much energy. If you insist on that, you're just plainly lazy.
One fitness-session would cost you more in energy and in subscription fees.
Why don't you grab to your bag of chips to refuel for typing that message there, checking that "annonymous" box alone must've at leas
Apply the figures to people playing at once (Score:5, Interesting)
turbines = unit usage * 500 000 / 100 000
so at the highest end with xbox 360 (145W) we have 725 turbines and the lowest end the Playstation 1 (4W) we have 20 turbines. That is a huge difference in infrastructure needed to satisfy out gaming needs. I'll let you do the math for others.
I am not sure the amount of energy produced by an average nuclear power station or hydro dam, so if anyone can advise me on them I would appreciate it.
Re:Apply the figures to people playing at once (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Apply the figures to people playing at once (Score:3, Informative)
And the astute observer would note that I didn't add in the factor of 1000 for going from kilowatt to megawatt. So that's 1/50 of a Hoover Dam for xbox 360 and 1/1000 for PS.
Meh, it's Sunday morning...
Re:Apply the figures to people playing at once (Score:2)
http://www.gepower.com/prod_serv/products/wind_tu
Well, at least if the power companies are serious about wind power. Smaller home grown wind turbines might require that many of them.
Re:Apply the figures to people playing at once (Score:2)
I don't get how it's relevant how many wind turbines are needed to power 50,000 people's Xboxes.
Re:Apply the figures to people playing at once (Score:2)
Giving electrical consumption as the number of wind generators required to produce the power is a novel, and I believe effective, way to show a given amount of electrical power using a human understandable scale.. Instead of showing the impact is some huge number of some electical units, it shows how many of a particular piece of power generation equipment
Re:Apply the figures to people playing at once (Score:2)
Yup, this is exactly the problem that we all face. Under the most optimistic light it seems renewable or alternative energy could provide humanity with around 20-25% of the total energy requirement. The rest has to come from nuclear or fossil fuels. Both of these will ultimately decline (oil peaking around now, gas peaking 2008-2012, uranium peaking within a few decades) and we're going to be up the creek without the p
Power strips baby! (Score:5, Interesting)
It may not save much electricity, but it is a habit I got into back in college when I lived in the dorms and I could hear everything humming in standby mode when I tried to go to sleep.
As much as vacuum-tube devices used! (Score:2)
Now, before everyone piles on me, I fully understand a five-tube radio didn't have exactly the same computing power as a modern chip... and that to match the number of switching elements you would need [insert 1 followed by about ten zeroes here] vacuum-tube radios, which would consume the total output of [choose one: Niagara Falls, Three Mile Island, the total world output of cow flatulence methane].
It's still shoc
Re:As much as vacuum-tube devices used! (Score:2)
Which, of course, were also going to be completely free from failures...
So uh, when was the last time you had a failure of a solid state device that wasn't caused by overheating or static electricity?
And the power saving thing shouldn't surprise anybody. It's the power requirements and thermal profile of the device that limits it's marketability and cost basis. As soon as they could transition from tubes to solid state manufacturers produced devices that consumed just as much power, with much higher levels
Many holes in this "research"!: (Score:5, Insightful)
So guys, why do such a half-arsed job of it? Why not be the best?
Re:Many holes in this "research"!: (Score:2, Informative)
damn... (Score:2)
A couple of watts when off... (Score:5, Informative)
The catch is this--the "off button" doesn't really turn the cable box off, because it wants to keep processing the program information data ("Friends is on channel 7 at 7:30) that's being trickled down the cable, that requires the tuners and microprocessor and such to be on, leaving little difference in power use for the cable box between "on" and "off". This means that, when I turn the TV on, it can be 10-20 minutes before I have a fully populated program grid.
Maybe I'm Just Cranky This Morning (Score:2)
Forget the methodology -- the question is, "So what?"
It's gaming. This is like evaluating the nutritional differences between chocolate ice cream and cheesecake. It's a fucking desert. Who cares?
Want to talk about wasted energy? How about all the energy that they wasted writing this article?
Where's the comparison with turning this consoles off and going out and throwing a baseball around or kicking a soc
PSone calculation? (Score:2, Insightful)
Playstation 1: 0.1Watt * 24h/day * 365days/year = 876Wh = 0.876kWh != 1.752kWh
=> that gives $0.1314
Xbox, Gamecube, Dreamcast use 1.752kWh and cost you $0.2628 per console ;-)
PC energy usage ... consoles are looking efficient (Score:5, Insightful)
The best advice for now: 1) If you must run your peer-to-peer, do it on a laptop with the screen turned off -- not your ultra-gamer with the 300W video card 2) turn off your desktop when you aren't gaming.
Re:PC energy usage ... consoles are looking effici (Score:3, Insightful)
That is one ridiculous and unfounded rumor. Most PC's these days come with 300-350W power supplies. While it is obvious that power requirements have been risen over the years, the growth isn't anywhere near what you are implying it to be. It took us many years to go
Re:PC energy usage ... consoles are looking effici (Score:3, Informative)
note: with the monitors off, everything pulls about 280 watts
Re:PC energy usage ... consoles are looking effici (Score:4, Informative)
Those numbers are meaningless marketing. Power supply manufacturers keep increasing them to make their supplies sound more powerful, but the reality is that they're just finding new (unhelpful) ways to add up the numbers and get a larger figure.
Fundamentally, you cannot describe the power consumption of a PC PSU using a single number. There are too many variables. You *can* describe the drain of an assembled, running PC at a given point in time using a single number, but the only connection it has to the PSU 'rating' is that it will definitely be smaller. You'll find some more informative numbers printed on a sticker on the power supply, telling you the peak drain for each of the rails, but what really matters is the power consumption of all the devices in the computer.
In practice, these '800W' power supplies that you see today are just half a dozen rails (at varying voltages), each of which can supply a peak current of between 100W and 300W. Most of them cannot supply peak current to every rail simultaneously. People upgrade their power supplies to handle high-end video cards and think this means they need to consume 800W instead of 300W. It doesn't. It means that one of the rails supplying their video card needed to handle 200W instead of 150W, or something on that order. Overclockers rarely need a larger amount of power, they need a more expensive power supply that puts out smoother voltage when a noisy load (overclocked CPU) is applied. Etcetera.
So sure, we may soon be needing power supplies that say '1200W' on the box. But that doesn't mean they will consume 50% more power than one that says '800W'.
Peak oil (Score:3, Interesting)
1. computers will grow more expensive to build... Al the energie to produce chips, moving them around etc...!
2. powering computers will grow more expensive!
So the logical thing to do would be to make the computer less powerfull and so cheaper to produce and cheaper to run. Would market competetion lead us that way after peakoil?
Hmmm, it would be asta la VISTA for windows... And welkom Xubuntu?
Not Worthwhile to Unplug (Score:2)
Assume that it takes 10 seconds per day to plug and unplug the console:
10 seconds/day * 365 days/year / 60 seconds/minute = 60 minutes per year spent playing with the plug
Even at minimum wage, spending 60 minutes per year to save 3 bucks is not worthwhile.
Darn (Score:2)
How about a PC? (Score:3, Informative)
source: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=271
California Electric highest in the western world? (Score:3, Informative)
WOW!
That's just under $3 per watt per year.
A 200watt fileserver for instance is $600 a year to keep running.
A 120watt torrent machine is $360 a year to keep online (plus cost of cable/dsl modem).
Most network routers and switches cost more in a couple years of electric use than their purchase price.
PC and Mac Energy Consumption (Score:4, Interesting)
The difference: many leave our PCs on 24 hours a day... leading to significant costs.
The article is not very clear on models (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
The point is that when people do turn the damn thing off, it still draws power and the only way to avoid that is physical disconnection from the electrical supply.
Worryingly, this not only applies to consoles, but PCs and monitors too.
I measured the power some PCs were drawing in their "off" state - not hibernation, or suspend-to-RAM, or what-have-you, but "off". A recent Athlon 64
Re:So let me get this straight... (Score:5, Insightful)
What logical connection do you see between the cost of acquisition and the cost of operation of an console? Would it make a difference to you if the console only cost $10? Why? A cost is a cost. It's all money out of your pocket and that $20 is a couple of pizzas you didn't get to eat.
Now add up the costs of all the other devices in your house that operate similarly. Your VCR. Your Cable box. Other computuing devices. At minimun wage you might end up working a week to have your stuff doing nothing. A week is a lot of time to invest in nothing.
Which brings us to the real point of interest in the figure, which isn't actually direct financial expense. Add up all the households in the country. You should be interested in the total fuel use of the nation to power devices doing nothing?
I think you should. At any right I am, but YMMV.
KFG
Re:TFA OTT (Score:3, Insightful)
I wo
Re:TFA OTT (Score:2)
I just don't see what the point of this article is.
Let's see, you read the article, took the information from it, and determined that a video game system in standby is not a significant waste of energy compared to other factors. Seems like the article served it's purpose well - to determine what the costs are and pass that information on to others. News doesn't have to be life-shattering and hard-hitting to be useful - just informati