Power Consumption of the Xbox 360 and other Consoles

[Acert93]

http://www.dxgaming.com/?p=6

Very interesting article, at least the statistics part (I only skimmed the article... caught a few ******ish comments like, "If MS is telling the truth about three cores" type stuff). Anyhow, the Xbox 360 clearly uses a lot more power than previous consoles, easily consuming 2x the electricity of the Xbox and 8x the GCN. But it did quite good in regards to Watt/MHz, coming out on top by a very large margin (although the GCN leaves past consoles in the dust).

It will be pretty neat when they add Wii and the PS3. Needless to say, with the Xbox 360 you need to budget in ~$20 per year for electricity costs.

 

[LunchBox]

Interesting read!!!Thanks for sharing!

 

[liolio]

it should be interesting to have comparison between diffeent ps2 version, before and after shrinking process.

 

[Crossbar]

I find the Wattage figures for the 360 a bit strange, there is only 20 W difference between idle dashboard use and full throttle game use and that including the 25-30% loss in the power unit.

Graphic boards commonly have a Wattage delta of 20-30 W between idle and in game use and that excluding the losses in the power unit.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/powercolor-x1800gto_6.html

EDIT:I might add that these are mid-range boards, high-end boards have significantly higher power consumptions.

 

[AlNom]

Yeah, that struck me as odd too. Perhaps MS needs another update for more aggressive power saving.

 

[Dave Baumann]

I'd check those figures for graphics boards under Vista when numbers are available...

What you'll find is that current PC graphics under XP are using just the VGA engine for 2D display, largely leaving the 3D pipeline alone. With a "legacy free" environment to design for you might find that there is no VGA engine in Xenos and even the dashboard is being rendered through the 3D pipeline.

 

[Crossbar]

What you'll find is that current PC graphics under XP are using just the VGA engine for 2D display, largely leaving the 3D pipeline alone. With a "legacy free" environment to design for you might find that there is no VGA engine in Xenos and even the dashboard is being rendered through the 3D pipeline.

That might explain part of it, but we also have the CPU of the 360, displaying the dashboard should hardly require a lot of CPU work. Could it be that the first gen games do not stress the Xenon to any extent yet?

 

[Dave Baumann]

You might find that the simply haven't put much clock gating and the like in the CPU because its just an extra cost when its not really in a market that needs it. With the original XBOX MS were just picking up an off the shelf CPU which already had been designed for different markets prior to being used in the XBOX.

 

[Zaphod]

You might find that the simply haven't put much clock gating and the like in the CPU because its just an extra cost when its not really in a market that needs it.

Exactly. Considering you can buy a laptop with a 120GB HD, a 2.13GHz Core Duo, BT, WLAN, and a X1600 that will use less than 65W full throttle, and that has to power a LCD screen to boot, it's obviously about cost.

They could make a more power conscious console, but I doubt anyone would be willing to pay the premium for it.

 

[Fafalada]

But it did quite good in regards to Watt/MHz, coming out on top by a very large margin

If they were consistent in how they measured Mhz maybe - but they only applied the (rather questionable) methodology to 360.
Following their method, PS2 should be ~1000Mhz (294 * 3 + 147 + 37) which would make it 35cycles/Watt.

Statistics nonsense aside, I would really like to know which PS2/PS1 models were used to measure this though - and how do the other models that they didn't use compare.

 

[Acert93]

If they were consistent in how they measured Mhz maybe - but they only applied the (rather questionable) methodology to 360.
Following their method, PS2 should be ~1000Mhz (294 * 3 + 147 + 37) which would make it 35cycles/Watt.

It is a silly benchmark in many ways. But even counting it as a chip it still is #2 (behind GCN and ahead of everything else by a 50% margin). Of course there are so many different factors (how big are the dies, how many transistors, performance per watt/area/transistor, etc) that this is nothing really more than interesting. I think they were trying to find a "bright" spot for the 360 (other than the mini-nuclear engine inside the case) so they played with the numbers some hehe

 

[sonyps35]

The problem is even a device leaking 1 watt will eventually add up to 8.76kWh over the course of a year. Multiply that by several devices and soon you’re wasting and paying for hundreds of kilowatts a year

If by several devices you mean..40?

And what's a few hundred KW hours for your 40-60 imaginary devices (more like 3 in real life) left on? $2?

I dont care.

Also, my electric bill is $160 a month. So, on average the 360 is costing less than $2 a month. In context, it's just not a big deal, I'd have to cut my electric bill a ton for the Xbox to be any factor. Another thing is, 2 hours a day is LOT. Who has two hours a day to play? That's like, 7-9 PM every single day. Then if you miss a day, or two or three, you have to play two extra hours another day to make up. So miss one day you have to play 4 hours another day. One day a week. I can see heavy bursts of use causing more playing than this, or MMO players which dont exist on a console yet, but overall for me and the vast majority of people, 2 hours a day is way more than we actually average out too.

It does point out the exploding power issues though. Computers are getting ten times worse in that regard..An SLI rig or something like that will dwarf the 360.

 

[OtakingGX]

If by several devices you mean..40?

And what's a few hundred KW hours for your 40-60 imaginary devices (more like 3 in real life) left on? $2?

I dont care.

Also, my electric bill is $160 a month. So, on average the 360 is costing less than $2 a month. In context, it's just not a big deal, I'd have to cut my electric bill a ton for the Xbox to be any factor.

It's this attitude that brings about energy crises... Unless you live in France or Japan, most likely the electricity you're using comes from petroleum or coal, which one it has been used, is gone (and now is part of the atmosphere as CO2). That 8.76 kWh of power that cost you less than $1 also contributed 13.6 lbs of CO2 to the atmosphere.

Cost-wise, it might not be a big deal. That's why we Americans drive everywhere instead of having useful mass-transit, because gas has been so cheap. Energy prices are rising, though, and I think that bubble is about to burst.

 

[Acert93]

Cost-wise, it might not be a big deal. That's why we Americans drive everywhere instead of having useful mass-transit, because gas has been so cheap. Energy prices are rising, though, and I think that bubble is about to burst.

OT: No, American's don't have useful mass transist because unlike Japan or Europe we are much more spread out. Population density is a significant hurdle to any mass transit system and is an area American's are at a significant disadvantage. It is cheaper to develop fuel cells or another power source, and much more compatible with our landscape, than to try to force American's into a mass transit system that will be broke and insufficient before it is ever built. As for power, where I grew up in the US we got most of our electricity from hydro-electric, and where I live now it is Nuclear. Obviously there is a lot of coal burning going on, but this varies region to region.

As for the Xbox 360, it is pretty negligable when you consider it is not on all day every day. Compare it to a high end PC (or a couple of them) in a home and you are going to save energy by playing on an Xbox over most gaming PCs. The jump the 360 makes is not really a console specific issue IMO, but more the issue processors have now. We now have 2 large, power hungry chips and due to the frequency wall and leakage the chips are using more power than ever. This is pretty much true of any high performance processors.

 

[Fafalada]

I think they were trying to find a "bright" spot for the 360 (other than the mini-nuclear engine inside the case) so they played with the numbers some

Well they were alluding to the fact that computations/watt are increasing, which of course has always been obvious effect of silicon integration.

But Mhz is likely the worst measure they could have chosen.
To add a meaningless 2c of my own - if we counted programmable MADDs (FLOPs can't be used on PSX era consoles) we get increase that is slightly less then order of magnitude between generations based on their Watt numbers.

PS1 - 70 / 6 = 11.7 Milion Madds/Watt.
PS2 - 2700 / 30 = 90
360 - 134400/165 = 814

Note I'm cheating here by ommiting XBox numbers because they screw with the otherwise nice curve (3330 / 70 = 47.6)

 

[Jabjabs]

My problem with the test is that they choose to Burnout Revenge for the 360 as the title to push the system to it's limits. A part from being HD there was very little diffrence between it and the Ps2 version. It probably wouldn't of made much diffrence but it would be nice if they choose something that was definetly pushing the hardware more.

 

[Guden Oden]

With a "legacy free" environment to design for you might find that there is no VGA engine in Xenos and even the dashboard is being rendered through the 3D pipeline.

There's very little going on in the dashboard, and what gfx that does change hardly warrants the console sucking roughly 110W of power constantly, EVEN IN SCREEN SAVER MODE...

This is one area where the 360 really isn't doing too well. When it can rev down the fans and power useage in DVD mode, why can't it do the same when in the dashboard? Silly MS.

 

[thenefariousone]

It's not like it matters too much at the end of the day, when you consider we have yet to factor in the power required for the tv, and or stereo.

There's very little going on in the dashboard, and what gfx that does change hardly warrants the console sucking roughly 110W of power constantly, EVEN IN SCREEN SAVER MODE...

This is one area where the 360 really isn't doing too well. When it can rev down the fans and power useage in DVD mode, why can't it do the same when in the dashboard? Silly MS.

 

[randycat99]

Environmental responsibility probably comes to bear at some point if you take 110 W x the entire projected userbase...10/20/40 million users. That adds up to a lot of power that could have been saved. It's not that different than rationalizing that if one person dumps 5 qts of used motor oil down the sewer because it's the easiest way to dispose of the waste, the world isn't going to crash to a halt...but if everybody is doing this as a matter of habit, that is definitely a big deal.