Study: Xbox One, PS4 consume ridiculous amounts of unnecessary power

[GotBored]

Study: Xbox One, PS4 consume ridiculous amounts of unnecessary power

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2156044/study-xbox-one-ps4-consume-ridiculous-amounts-of-unnecessary-power.html

 

Both Microsoft?s Xbox One and Sony?s PlayStation 4 consume between two to three times the power of their predecessors?mostly waiting around for something to do.

The report, issued Friday by the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council, found that the Xbox One?s power consumption was especially egregious, consuming a maximum of 289 kilowatt-hours per year, as opposed to the 70 kWh/year consumed by the last-generation Xbox 360. But the Nintendo Wii U went the opposite direction, actually consuming 37 kWh/y versus the 40 kWh/y consumed by the Wii.

 

 

 

 

?Nearly half of the Xbox One?s annual energy is consumed in connected standby, when the console continuously draws more than 15 watts while waiting for the user to say ?Xbox on,? even in the middle of the night or when no one is home,? Delforge wrote. ?If left unchanged and all Xbox 360 models are replaced by Xbox One consoles, this one feature will be responsible for $400 million in annual electricity bills and the equivalent annual output of a large, 750-megawatt power plant?and its associated pollution.?

 

All told, the energy consumed from all three modern consoles will cost U.S. consumers an estimated $1 billion in energy costs this year, consuming enough electricity to light all the homes in Houston, the fourth-largest city in the country, the NRDC estimated.

 

 

In any event, only the Wii U comes off favorably in the report, earning praise for improving graphics while cutting power. Unfortunately for Microsoft, the One has been criticized for taking its focus away from playing games, including charging for free entertainment apps. Apparently that will hit One users in the pocket with higher energy bills, too.

 

[The Evil Overlord]

That doesn't surprise me, considering they're meant to rival the low-mid end gaming pc's for hardware....

power requirements would have increased....

[compl3x]

^ it seems a lot of this power is used during idle/stand by modes.

 

Is there a way to completely shutdown these consoles or is the standby modes the only off option?

[GotBored]

^ it seems a lot of this power is used during idle/stand by modes.

 

Is there a way to completely shutdown these consoles or is the standby modes the only off option?

 

I'm not sure about the Xbox One but the PS4 has a Power Off mode, when you go to shutdown the system it has the option of Standby Mode or Power Off mode.

[The Evil Overlord]

^ it seems a lot of this power is used during idle/stand by modes.

 

Is there a way to completely shutdown these consoles or is the standby modes the only off option?

The 'Turn off PS4' option is the one I'm aware of, as I don't own an X1, but in regards to the ps4, my pc still powers usb ports when off, so I wasn't worried, push comes to shove, one could always unplug it

[IceBreakerG]

^ it seems a lot of this power is used during idle/stand by modes.

 

Is there a way to completely shutdown these consoles or is the standby modes the only off option?

I'm not sure about the ps4 as I don't have one, but the Xbox One can be completely turned off (saying "Xbox On" won't work).  The downside to that is that it takes a ridiculously long time for it to boot up (several minutes).

[compl3x]

So there are way, they just remove convenience.

 

Future hardware revisions should reduce power consumption.

[Torolol]

i guess the power were originally meant to be used when downloading/uploading while 'standby'

i wonder how much of that 44% power usages during standby are used to power the now unbundled kinect?

[compl3x]

Do we know if this is comparing this gens hardware and the latest hardware versions of last-gen consoles or the original versions?

 

More simply: are they comparing a PS4 with the original "phat" PS3 or the latest slim version?

[DeltaXray]

They most certainly use too much power.  Sony for example have not got power gating working correctly. Things like watching Netflx for example should be able to be done with one/two cores and no GPU but as it stands the machine is going pretty much full tilt whilst streaming.

 

They also have not been able to get the machine to just use its ARM cpu whilst in standby mode so anytime it needs to do anything it has to fully engage the Jaguar cpu using up way too much power.

 

The power gating they should be able to solve but i'm not sure about getting it to just use the ARM chip in standby. Perhaps they have simply used one that is just not powerful enough to handle it.

[ShadowMajestic]

The 'Turn off PS4' option is the one I'm aware of, as I don't own an X1, but in regards to the ps4, my pc still powers usb ports when off, so I wasn't worried, push comes to shove, one could always unplug it

That's just a few watts. And its part of the USB specs.

They most certainly use too much power.  Sony for example have not got power gating working correctly. Things like watching Netflx for example should be able to be done with one/two cores and no GPU but as it stands the machine is going pretty much full tilt whilst streaming.

 

They also have not been able to get the machine to just use its ARM cpu whilst in standby mode so anytime it needs to do anything it has to fully engage the Jaguar cpu using up way too much power.

 

The power gating they should be able to solve but i'm not sure about getting it to just use the ARM chip in standby. Perhaps they have simply used one that is just not powerful enough to handle it.

I rather have Netflix shuffed down the GPU, its much less power consuming. It barely eats up anything and is a lot more efficient then software 'acceleration'.

[Thief000]

I'm not sure about the ps4 as I don't have one, but the Xbox One can be completely turned off (saying "Xbox On" won't work).  The downside to that is that it takes a ridiculously long time for it to boot up (several minutes).

 

Wow, that's long. Mine only takes about half a minute to cold boot.

[DeltaXray]

I rather have Netflix shuffed down the GPU, its much less power consuming. It barely eats up anything and is a lot more efficient then software 'acceleration'.

 

That's not correct at all... if streaming video like netflix was processed solely using the CPU and not engaging the GPU at all then it would be far less power used. 

[n_K]

Well, they did pick amd... And back when I last used AMD chips in the 90s, they were a LOT more powerful than pentium 2's but put out a lot more heat... So maybe that's the drawback?

You should always turn things off at the mains when they're not in use anyway, otherwise they eat some power, get hot and the risk of a fire increases.

[Xerxes]

I'm guessing Kinect is partly responsible for the X1's increased power needs over the PS4. Will be interesting to see the differences (if any) between an X1 with and without Kinect connected.

[trooper11]

I'm not really shocked that the ps4 and X1 consumer more power than the WiiU. They just do more while in standby than it does.

I do think they will improve power consumption over time though. There is room to improve it on the software side as well as in hardware revisions like we saw last gen.

In any event, only the Wii U comes off favorably in the report, earning praise for improving graphics while cutting power. Unfortunately for Microsoft, the One has been criticized for taking its focus away from playing games, including charging for free entertainment apps. Apparently that will hit One users in the pocket with higher energy bills, too.

Not sure why they had to take this little jab, especially considering part of that is now incorrect, but it made me laugh.

[jakem1]

I'm not sure about the ps4 as I don't have one, but the Xbox One can be completely turned off (saying "Xbox On" won't work).  The downside to that is that it takes a ridiculously long time for it to boot up (several minutes).

 

I've never bothered to time it but my Xbox One takes between 30 seconds and a minute to cold boot.  It's obviously slower than starting from stand-by but nothing close to several minutes.

Not sure why they had to take this little jab, especially considering part of that is now incorrect, but it made me laugh.

 

Haven't you heard that it's cool to hate Microsoft?

[IceBreakerG]

I've never bothered to time it but my Xbox One takes between 30 seconds and a minute to cold boot.  It's obviously slower than starting from stand-by but nothing close to several minutes.

I haven't timed it either, but it definitely feels like a really long time.  The initial black screen takes a while, then the green screen takes a while too.  Either way, a minute and a half is still too long to boot up for what's basically a low-mid end pc.

[jakem1]

I haven't timed it either, but it definitely feels like a really long time.  The initial black screen takes a while, then the green screen takes a while too.  Either way, a minute and a half is still too long to boot up for what's basically a low-mid end pc.

 

Well with any luck Microsoft will either optimise the boot process or reduce the power consumption in stand-by mode.  I'd be willing to bet that they'll focus on stand-by mode first though as that's clearly the way they expect you to use the Xbox. 

 

Microsoft have done a lot of work over the years to make Windows and Windows Phone use less power so hopefully they'll do the same thing with the Xbox.  The power levels referred to in the OP are concerning.

[gohpep]

Study: Next gen GPUs use more power than older GPUs

[n_K]

Study: Next gen GPUs use more power than older GPUs

Not necessarily. You can still get passively cooled NVIDIA GPUs which give much greater performance and use less power than cards from 10 years ago

[greenwizard88]

Study: Next gen GPUs use more power than older GPUs

But these are mid-range GPU's that are mid-life. That's generally the time that they're power optimized. Considering that newer tech generally uses less power than older tech (think the power delta between the P4 and Core i7) these GPU's should be using about the same amount of power as the 360 and PS3's were at launch.

 

 

The power gating they should be able to solve but i'm not sure about getting it to just use the ARM chip in standby. Perhaps they have simply used one that is just not powerful enough to handle it.

The ARM chip in my cellphone from 2004 could handle a data connection robust enough to tether to my PC via bluetooth to play WoW. There's no way in hell that a chip 10 years newer can't do the same [download data].

[gohpep]

Not necessarily. You can still get passively cooled NVIDIA GPUs which give much greater performance and use less power than cards from 10 years ago

Typically, newer, more powerful machines with higher clocks use more power, but companies combat that over time, and optimize the power usage with each tick.

[n_K]

Typically, newer, more powerful machines with higher clocks use more power, but companies combat that over time, and optimize the power usage with each tick.

Actually the counter it by using lower voltages, the old standard was 12v, then it went to 5v, then 3.3v, etc. and some ARM CPUs will run at 1.2v now, meaning they vastly out-perform older hardware at a fraction of the power usage

[gohpep]

Actually the counter it by using lower voltages, the old standard was 12v, then it went to 5v, then 3.3v, etc. and some ARM CPUs will run at 1.2v now, meaning they vastly out-perform older hardware at a fraction of the power usage

You're right, computers do have better power usage now, except for the more high end builds (exaggerating, but with 4 Titans, Xeon CPU, etc)