Unfortunately, DF ignore suggestions about measuring power consumption. And for some reason they don't even answer why.
Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion [2021]
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Obviously in the pockets of big oil!
what are we trying to measure, i have a kill a watt meter and a xbox series x
Power consumption on ps5 and xsx in multiplatform games in the same scenes.
Or typical power consumption in multiplatform games and exclusives if you own only one of the consoles.
Forza Horizon 5 (perf and quality mod)
Gears 5
The Matrix Awakens
Metro Exodus Enhanced
Watch Dogs Legion/Control
AC Valhalla/CoD Vanguard/Cold War/Far Cry 6
Thanks in advance.
I remember the video DF made around the Series consoles launch and Gears 5 drawing the most power out of the games tested. Gears 5, at that point, you could argue, was the only game taking advantage of what the Series was bringing to the table. With Matrix Awakens making what appears to be full use of UE5, it would have been nice to get a glimpse into its power consumption compared to games like Gears 5, FH5, Flight Simulator, Doom Eternal...with Halo Infinite thrown in.
They could also look into the power consumption for games on the PS5, Ratchet and Clank, Demons Souls, Miles Morales, whatever the best-looking UE4 game on the PS5 is right now compared to the Matrix Awakens.
I was hoping that it would be part of the Matrix video, though. I'm not sure how interesting the content is on its own.
I'm curious why this is important. I mean, I get the academic side of it. But what information would we really learn by doing power consumption shootouts between the 2 consoles. Isn't what they output to the screen and speakers what really matters?
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Also, power consumption [game] testing isn't always reliable. A single piece of unoptimized code (even in the simplest of scenes) can drive up clocks, which of course affects wattage usage/consumption.
Maybe I misunderstood you (English is not my native language), but I am really interested in this topic and would be interested to know why DF does not want to review it.
Is it too hard to do? Do they just not have the time? Or does it make no sense at all?
This could give an insight into how heavily loaded consoles are in games coming out now.
If, for example, one of the consoles in one of the games consumes power on average significantly less than its maximum and noticeably less than the other console, then it was obvious that the game was simply poorly optimized for this console.
And understanding this would immediately stop many senseless disputes.
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The last time I looked into power consumption measurement devices, the options were severely lacking from a data collection standpoint. There were no readily available products which provided data logging. You were left with a single peak measurement reading. Or were stuck with having someone keep an eye on the meter the entire time to see how power fluctuates. That means two people required for all tests. Or you would have to record video of the meter readout the entire time and make some sort of placement comments as to where you are in the testing for later reviewing.
There was one device which you might luck out and find for reasonable prices on secondary markets like eBay but you would have to build your own data collection framework. I estimated it was easily a weeks worth of work to get it up, running, tested, and verified. It was more than a simple plug-n-play experience.
Some other devices costed more than scalper console prices and still uncertain if they offered genuine data logging functionality.
There was one device which you might luck out and find for reasonable prices on secondary markets like eBay but you would have to build your own data collection framework. I estimated it was easily a weeks worth of work to get it up, running, tested, and verified. It was more than a simple plug-n-play experience.
Some other devices costed more than scalper console prices and still uncertain if they offered genuine data logging functionality.
Kugai Calo
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That's the part where I noted you now require a second person on site to do your testing.
Maybe. But there are scenarios where particular software is unoptimized and instead of drawing more power, it causes stalls in the processing time that actually would cause lower power draw. While alternately, things could be coded in a way that are simply less efficient, and require more computational power to produce similar output on different hardware (or even the same hardware with different APIs). In the first case, the power draw would be lower but also the performance. In the second, the power draw would be higher but the performance lower. Power draw doesn't really tell you anything without knowing what the code is doing.
It seems to me that ideally it is necessary to record power consumption measurements on the camera and synchronize them with the video sequence of the game.
Yes, this is not an ideal method for all cases, but it can be quite interesting on average.
But they don't use a camera for game recording. They capture video directly and then create an overlay onto of the video after its analyzed by other tools. So if you want them to add an overlay for power consumption then it has to have data collected and synchronized. Which brings us back to the original issues I talked about, lack of a feasible means of collecting such data.
As @Dictator mentioned in previous DF Weekly, for most games they have well over 60 hours of footage and data to shift through. Trying to keep that aligned with any sort of manual data entry is simply not feasible. This circles back around to my earlier mentioning how you'd need to create your own framework for power consumption data logging.
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Weirdly - given the emphasis on environment impact these days - this seems fairly niche equipment. When I worked in areas where power usage was important, we used Fluke equipment and a quick Google search shows they are still around and do provide this equipment.
Which falls under the priced higher than scalper prices for consoles I mentioned.
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I assume the budget power logging market isn't big enough to warrant anybody developing a cheap solution. This type of equipment is aimed at people designing and selling equipment that needs to be power efficient, rather than people with a vague interest in testing the power consumption of devices.
This is why these devices are self-contained units with inbuilt computers that log the data and present the data, for later transfer as opposed to a devices that monitor usage and output the data to another device - requiring external software to interpret it.
That's likely the issue. It's not a complex problem but there is no market for it. The smaller the market, the bigger the price to develop the solution. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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I know there are APC/UPSs that track and keep historical data on how much power (per receptacle) is being used by a device. Whenever I'm rendering large film projects, I sometimes check out the UPS web-interface just to see how much power is being consumed.
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It's also not a massively complex problem for a pass-through power device to send realtime power draw to an app. My house is already full of smart plug adaptors that allow you to automatically turn on/off non-smart devices like the lava lamp. It wouldn't be massively complicated to monitor and transit the power draw as well as the status over Bluetooth instead of Zigbee.
An interesting project for somebody.
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