Post: PS4, Xbox One power consumption analysis points to Sony advantage+ future efficiency
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12-19-2013, 11:08 AM
#1
xLew--
Former Staff
The long-term impact? ”Over five years, the Xbox One’s 250 kilowatt hours per year usage represents roughly $150 in electricity costs, enough to buy two or three new games!”
True. But the tone of the original blog piece is a bit overdramatic — particularly given that these are figures we could generate for virtually any non-critical appliance that runs on a daily basis.
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First, the NRDC does have a point: The Xbox One and PS4 You must login or register to view this content.than their predecessors. Data from various sources, including NRDC, suggests that power consumption is far higher than it ought to be, at 80W for Blu-ray playback for the Xbox One and 90W for the PS4. Blu-ray players from 2009 (Samsung’s BD-P3600) was You must login or register to view this content. and found to consume 22W against the PS3 Slim’s 81W. Not much improvement there.
The PS4 consumes more power than the Xbox One in every mode except Connected Standby, where the Xbox One chews threw 18W compared to Sony’s 8.8W. Since both consoles are expected to spend much of their time in this mode, the Xbox One ends up actually You must login or register to view this content. than Sony’s system. In other words, the PS4′s You must login or register to view this content. in gaming is more than offset.
You must login or register to view this content.
[h=3]Improving energy efficiency[/h]Where I think the NRDC goes wrong, however, is to assume that this generation’s console power consumption You must login or register to view this content.. The report also makes some rather questionable assertions about charging power on the PS4.
For starters, let’s talk about that 80-90W Blu-ray decode consumption on both consoles — that’s ridiculous. It made sense for the PS3 to draw that much power because Nvidia’s video decode block doesn’t appear to have been capable of full video offload, which meant the Cell processor was likely handling some of the task as well. AMD’s video decoder, in contrast, can handle the entire process with relatively little effort and for a fraction the power.
Here’s what this suggests: All of the optimization work that went into the Xbox One and PS4 went into making them run properly, with comparatively little tuning for low-power operation when playing video. If you think about it, this makes sense. Load balancing and figuring out which parts of the SoC can be deactivated without impacting the user experience takes a great deal of testing compared to flipping a switch and running full out. Future updates should be capable of improving this by more than the 25% the NRDC estimates. I’d hope for something more along the lines of 40-50W.
The report goes a bit off base when it suggests that Sony must improve battery charge efficiency, noting that “Sony’s PS4 uses 8 watts of power in connected standby when USB charging is enabled… laptops perform this function for only 1 watt.” Presumably this is when a device is actually plugged in and charging. Unless there’s an enormous low-level software issue, this has more to do with charge speed than charge time. You cannot draw 1W from the wall and charge a device as quickly as you can drawing 8W from the wall unless Sony deliberately used a charger with miserable efficiency. Even if it did, fixing it would take a hardware swap.
Finally, there’s the cost figure. The NRDC expects that running your Xbox for five years will cost $150. “Enough to buy two or three new games!” We are further told that consoles could use as much as 500MW of power, or the entire power consumption of Houston.
Total generating capacity of the United States? Approximately 1TW. What percentage of 1TW is 500MW? That’s just 0.05%.
You must login or register to view this content.
So, to put this in perspective, yes, consoles draw power, and yes, consumers should be aware of that. But while consumer use of resources is an important part of the US total, it’s only a modest amount. In 2011, residential use accounted for 22% of total power, compared to 28% for transportation, 31% industrial, and 19% commercial. Furthermore, since many console buyers will be previous owners of other consoles who will presumably retire those devices, the net impact on US energy consumption due to console production will be negligible.
We still want to see Sony and Microsoft improve the power consumption of their products, but don’t buy the fear-mongering. If you retire a PS3 or Xbox 360 and replace it with the modern version, the impact on your power bill is going to be a few dollars per month, at most.
You must login or register to view this content.
----
A little read up on the power consumption from both the new gen consoles, seems as if PS4 runs a lot lighter than its rival. It still has me thinking twice wherever to turn the console off or leave it in standby..
what about you, do you leave yours on when your not using it, Turn it off by standby or completely off?
12-19-2013, 12:48 PM
#2
iTruceFret
[move]From now on, call me DRAGON.[/move]
12-19-2013, 08:03 PM
#6
NelsonRodV
Hot Rod
Originally posted by xLew
A new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council put the PS4 and Xbox One under the power efficiency microscope and came back with less than glowing things to say about the new devices. According to the organization, both consoles draw more power than they should despite heavy investment in power-saving technologies.
The long-term impact? ”Over five years, the Xbox One’s 250 kilowatt hours per year usage represents roughly $150 in electricity costs, enough to buy two or three new games!”
True. But the tone of the original blog piece is a bit overdramatic — particularly given that these are figures we could generate for virtually any non-critical appliance that runs on a daily basis.
You must login or register to view this content.
First, the NRDC does have a point: The Xbox One and PS4 You must login or register to view this content.than their predecessors. Data from various sources, including NRDC, suggests that power consumption is far higher than it ought to be, at 80W for Blu-ray playback for the Xbox One and 90W for the PS4. Blu-ray players from 2009 (Samsung’s BD-P3600) was You must login or register to view this content. and found to consume 22W against the PS3 Slim’s 81W. Not much improvement there.
The PS4 consumes more power than the Xbox One in every mode except Connected Standby, where the Xbox One chews threw 18W compared to Sony’s 8.8W. Since both consoles are expected to spend much of their time in this mode, the Xbox One ends up actually You must login or register to view this content. than Sony’s system. In other words, the PS4′s You must login or register to view this content. in gaming is more than offset.
You must login or register to view this content.
[h=3]Improving energy efficiency[/h]Where I think the NRDC goes wrong, however, is to assume that this generation’s console power consumption You must login or register to view this content.. The report also makes some rather questionable assertions about charging power on the PS4.
For starters, let’s talk about that 80-90W Blu-ray decode consumption on both consoles — that’s ridiculous. It made sense for the PS3 to draw that much power because Nvidia’s video decode block doesn’t appear to have been capable of full video offload, which meant the Cell processor was likely handling some of the task as well. AMD’s video decoder, in contrast, can handle the entire process with relatively little effort and for a fraction the power.
Here’s what this suggests: All of the optimization work that went into the Xbox One and PS4 went into making them run properly, with comparatively little tuning for low-power operation when playing video. If you think about it, this makes sense. Load balancing and figuring out which parts of the SoC can be deactivated without impacting the user experience takes a great deal of testing compared to flipping a switch and running full out. Future updates should be capable of improving this by more than the 25% the NRDC estimates. I’d hope for something more along the lines of 40-50W.
The report goes a bit off base when it suggests that Sony must improve battery charge efficiency, noting that “Sony’s PS4 uses 8 watts of power in connected standby when USB charging is enabled… laptops perform this function for only 1 watt.” Presumably this is when a device is actually plugged in and charging. Unless there’s an enormous low-level software issue, this has more to do with charge speed than charge time. You cannot draw 1W from the wall and charge a device as quickly as you can drawing 8W from the wall unless Sony deliberately used a charger with miserable efficiency. Even if it did, fixing it would take a hardware swap.
Finally, there’s the cost figure. The NRDC expects that running your Xbox for five years will cost $150. “Enough to buy two or three new games!” We are further told that consoles could use as much as 500MW of power, or the entire power consumption of Houston.
Total generating capacity of the United States? Approximately 1TW. What percentage of 1TW is 500MW? That’s just 0.05%.
You must login or register to view this content.
So, to put this in perspective, yes, consoles draw power, and yes, consumers should be aware of that. But while consumer use of resources is an important part of the US total, it’s only a modest amount. In 2011, residential use accounted for 22% of total power, compared to 28% for transportation, 31% industrial, and 19% commercial. Furthermore, since many console buyers will be previous owners of other consoles who will presumably retire those devices, the net impact on US energy consumption due to console production will be negligible.
We still want to see Sony and Microsoft improve the power consumption of their products, but don’t buy the fear-mongering. If you retire a PS3 or Xbox 360 and replace it with the modern version, the impact on your power bill is going to be a few dollars per month, at most.
You must login or register to view this content.
----
A little read up on the power consumption from both the new gen consoles, seems as if PS4 runs a lot lighter than its rival. It still has me thinking twice wherever to turn the console off or leave it in standby..
what about you, do you leave yours on when your not using it, Turn it off by standby or completely off?
The long-term impact? ”Over five years, the Xbox One’s 250 kilowatt hours per year usage represents roughly $150 in electricity costs, enough to buy two or three new games!”
True. But the tone of the original blog piece is a bit overdramatic — particularly given that these are figures we could generate for virtually any non-critical appliance that runs on a daily basis.
You must login or register to view this content.
First, the NRDC does have a point: The Xbox One and PS4 You must login or register to view this content.than their predecessors. Data from various sources, including NRDC, suggests that power consumption is far higher than it ought to be, at 80W for Blu-ray playback for the Xbox One and 90W for the PS4. Blu-ray players from 2009 (Samsung’s BD-P3600) was You must login or register to view this content. and found to consume 22W against the PS3 Slim’s 81W. Not much improvement there.
The PS4 consumes more power than the Xbox One in every mode except Connected Standby, where the Xbox One chews threw 18W compared to Sony’s 8.8W. Since both consoles are expected to spend much of their time in this mode, the Xbox One ends up actually You must login or register to view this content. than Sony’s system. In other words, the PS4′s You must login or register to view this content. in gaming is more than offset.
You must login or register to view this content.
[h=3]Improving energy efficiency[/h]Where I think the NRDC goes wrong, however, is to assume that this generation’s console power consumption You must login or register to view this content.. The report also makes some rather questionable assertions about charging power on the PS4.
For starters, let’s talk about that 80-90W Blu-ray decode consumption on both consoles — that’s ridiculous. It made sense for the PS3 to draw that much power because Nvidia’s video decode block doesn’t appear to have been capable of full video offload, which meant the Cell processor was likely handling some of the task as well. AMD’s video decoder, in contrast, can handle the entire process with relatively little effort and for a fraction the power.
Here’s what this suggests: All of the optimization work that went into the Xbox One and PS4 went into making them run properly, with comparatively little tuning for low-power operation when playing video. If you think about it, this makes sense. Load balancing and figuring out which parts of the SoC can be deactivated without impacting the user experience takes a great deal of testing compared to flipping a switch and running full out. Future updates should be capable of improving this by more than the 25% the NRDC estimates. I’d hope for something more along the lines of 40-50W.
The report goes a bit off base when it suggests that Sony must improve battery charge efficiency, noting that “Sony’s PS4 uses 8 watts of power in connected standby when USB charging is enabled… laptops perform this function for only 1 watt.” Presumably this is when a device is actually plugged in and charging. Unless there’s an enormous low-level software issue, this has more to do with charge speed than charge time. You cannot draw 1W from the wall and charge a device as quickly as you can drawing 8W from the wall unless Sony deliberately used a charger with miserable efficiency. Even if it did, fixing it would take a hardware swap.
Finally, there’s the cost figure. The NRDC expects that running your Xbox for five years will cost $150. “Enough to buy two or three new games!” We are further told that consoles could use as much as 500MW of power, or the entire power consumption of Houston.
Total generating capacity of the United States? Approximately 1TW. What percentage of 1TW is 500MW? That’s just 0.05%.
You must login or register to view this content.
So, to put this in perspective, yes, consoles draw power, and yes, consumers should be aware of that. But while consumer use of resources is an important part of the US total, it’s only a modest amount. In 2011, residential use accounted for 22% of total power, compared to 28% for transportation, 31% industrial, and 19% commercial. Furthermore, since many console buyers will be previous owners of other consoles who will presumably retire those devices, the net impact on US energy consumption due to console production will be negligible.
We still want to see Sony and Microsoft improve the power consumption of their products, but don’t buy the fear-mongering. If you retire a PS3 or Xbox 360 and replace it with the modern version, the impact on your power bill is going to be a few dollars per month, at most.
You must login or register to view this content.
----
A little read up on the power consumption from both the new gen consoles, seems as if PS4 runs a lot lighter than its rival. It still has me thinking twice wherever to turn the console off or leave it in standby..
what about you, do you leave yours on when your not using it, Turn it off by standby or completely off?
Mine stays on standby almost everyday. I'm glad your still posting and keeping this community updated as usual, xLew
. Haven't see for a while now. I see you're a moderator now, congratulations on achieving that, and Merry Christmas! 
The following user thanked NelsonRodV for this useful post:
12-20-2013, 01:22 AM
#7
Porter_Justice
Cake is a lie
I keep mine on standby but like someone mentioned it still takes the exact same amount of time it seems to boot up whether in standby or off.?
My question is this though, does it automatically update things while in standby? I assumed that was the advantage of using standby and a selling point. So if there is a patch for a game it will automatically update while in standby?
My question is this though, does it automatically update things while in standby? I assumed that was the advantage of using standby and a selling point. So if there is a patch for a game it will automatically update while in standby?
12-23-2013, 02:22 AM
#9
ResistTheSun
In Flames Much?
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