When the first preliminary
report on next-generation console energy use came out in December, we
highlighted the fact that Sony and Microsoft might both be able to
substantially improve their performance in short order. Fast forward
five months, and the National Resources Defense Council has released an
updated version of its report with more historical information and a
full set of estimates for how much power each console consumes. Is
Microsoft still the power-hungry elephant in the room?
In a word,
yes. But there’s some very interesting additional information on why
that’s so — and some baffling issues with current console power
consumption. First, let’s look at the table for the PS4, Xbox One, and
Wii U:
This
chart shows the power consumption of all three consoles in their
various operating modes. The PS4 is obviously far head of the Xbox One
in all categories — so why is MS losing the annual power consumption
race? Two reasons: First, it draws almost 2x the power of the PS4 in
standby mode, which is where the consoles will spend the vast majority
of their time. Second, if operated in the MS-recommended TV mode, it
means you’re powering up the Xbox One console just to watch television.
In that mode, the console chews through 72W of power.
The
NRDC is, I think, right to point a finger at just how much power these
consoles use for simple tasks — but is it a function of AMD’s
engineering? Our tests suggest not. We’ve got an A4-5000 Kabini
whitebook on-hand from AMD — this is a system that runs a custom BIOS
and doesn’t appear to be particularly aggressively power-optimized. It
also includes a 1920×1080 screen, so our wall power measurements include
the cost of driving the display as well. Total power consumption for
the entire laptop while decoding H.264 1080p video? About 15W with the
display at maximum brightness and 11W with the display at half
brightness.
While the Xbox One and PS4 obviously contain a great
deal of custom logic and much larger GPUs, even the Wii U draws more
than 2x the power of our mobile Kabini. If we assume a headless A4-5000
could decode H.264 at 7-8W, the new consoles are drawing 4x – 10x as
much power to handle essentially the same task.
On the other hand,
there’s still reason to be optimistic. The chart below shows how game
console power consumption has tended to improve over each generation as
new console flavors are released.
Note
that both the PS4 and Xbox One come in well below the launch consoles
for the PS3 and Xbox 360. There’s room for improvement, but these
designs are more power-efficient than their predecessors were at a
similar stage of development.
Should you care how much power your console uses?
The
NRDC reports
always leave me of two minds. On the one hand, it’s never a bad idea to
look at the energy efficiency of the devices you purchase, particularly
if you’re a heavy TV watcher and want an Xbox One. There’s no
particular reason why an HDMI pass-through requires 72W of power.
Similarly, the PS4′s connected stand-by power is either 3W or 8.5W
depending on whether or not you enable USB charging —
regardless of whether a device is currently charging or not.
What’s
the value of that 5.5W? To a person with a PS4 on 24/7/365, about $8.67
a year at 18 cents per kWh. Of course, multiply that times a few
million PS4s over a few years, and you’ve got a fair amount of money.
The National Resources Defense Council tries at several points to
compare total power usage to major cities or multilple power plants, but
precious few Americans are going to be convinced that because millions
of consoles add up to significant power consumption over several years,
they should modify their behavior now.
But one thing that stands out is that it definitely
should
be possible to improve these positions — and for that reason alone,
it’s worth doing. Less power consumption means less system noise, and
less power spent cooling that heat. Thus far,
Sony and MS haven’t improved the situation – hopefully such updates are on the way later this year.
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