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Game Console Energy Usage Comparison
Broadband writes "Modern gaming consoles consume more and more power, dissipate more and more heat and cause a lot more noise with their cooling systems compared to their brethren a decade ago.
While it's obvious that an Xbox 360 would have higher energy demands then a Playstation 1, the curious question is by how much? Even more importantly is the question of whether your console might be costing you money while you sleep. Preposterous you say? Actually quite the opposite!
We put every console in our lab through rigorous testing to find the answers to these questions and see who the energy hogs really are. "
I predict Jack Thompson becoming a huge proponent of energy conversation in the near future.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
Actually, it's a pretty interesting article. I'm impressed.
Earn a % of cash back from Newegg, Tiger Direct, Walmart.com, and more: http://www.mrrebates.com?refid=458505
While it's obvious that an Xbox 360 would have higher energy demands then a Playstation 1
Probably true, but not obvious.
Energy comes from oil. Oil comes from dirty Arabs. Dirty Arabs are terrorists. If you play the Xbox360 you are supporting terrorism /Fox News told me so
-Dipster
Console Dashboard Energy Use
Playstation 1 4W
Playstation 2 23W
Xbox 61W
Xbox 360 145W
Gamecube 20W
Dreamcast 17W
"Last Updated: 6/18/2006" and no PSone and PStwo figures ? hmmm...
I'll change my sig when I have the time...
A more interesting article would have covered how much energy it takes to actually produce each console (embodied energy).
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
I don't see the merit of comparing consoles from different generations for their power comsumption. Of course they need more juice... but they're doing a lot more with it. This article would have been interesting if the PS3 and Wii had been out, but with only the 360 available to examine, we don't really know too much about the true power usage of the next-gen systems. The 360 might be the most energy efficient... I'd certainly bet that the PS3's Cell processor and BD-ROM drive will use more electricity.
Also, they labour the point about the idle power consumption a bit much. If I had paid $500 for a 360 and games, I really wouldn't mind paying $2.63 a year for the convenience of using a wireless device (remote or controller) to turn the console on, and $20 per year is probably much less than my PC uses to run, never mind my kettle.
But above all, I especially love this bit:
Ummm, yes. They forgot that the $20 per year saves the moaning caused by the two consoles and associated controllers cluttering up the TV unit!
Why didn't they test the N64? They have the Playstation and Dreamcast, both of which are from that era. Especially given that the Gamecube's energy consumption is so much lower than that of the PS2 or XBox, one would expect that they would test the N64. I wonder: are all Nintendo consoles more energy efficient than their contemporaries?
I should be concerned over additional power expenses... for a console I paid around $300 for. In the case of the 360, $20 annually; roughly three hours of work on minimum wage. More powerful system with components that need to remain powered even in an "off" state using up much more power. What a concept!
And which version of the PS2 was tested? The slim one or a hard drive-less regular?
Am I missing something or when 0.2W ends up being 3.50kWh/year, shouldn't 2W end up being 35.0kWh/year and not 17.52kWh/year?
From the writeup: Even more importantly is the question of whether your console might be costing you money while you sleep. Preposterous you say? Actually quite the opposite!
From TFA:
Let's take a look at how much power video game consoles require while in standby/off mode.
Console Energy Leakage kWh Wasted Each Year Annual Cost
Playstation 1 0.1W 1.752 kWh $0.26
Playstation 2 2W 17.52 kWh $2.63
Xbox 0.2W 3.50 kWh $0.53
Xbox 360 2W 17.52 kWh $2.63
Gamecube 0.2W 3.50 kWh $0.53
Dreamcast 0.2W 3.50 kWh $0.53
USD 2.63 per year for something that cost over USD 300! Oh the humanity!
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
From TFA:
Of course, everyone knows that the Wii will be powered by fun!
The third most important thing I have learned in life: Squeeze anything hard enough and it eventually makes a noise.
I was pleasently surprised to see they included the Dreamcast, it seems many people forget it was part of the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox generation. I'm happy to see how well the Dreamcast performed as well.
Demented But Determined.
Ever thought of turning the damm thing off? Geeze, I don't want to troll, but why don't people just turn the thing off? It's not like it is crunching folding@home or anything that could justify 24-7 usage.
"Sure there's porn and piracy on the Web but there's probably a downside too."
"Modern gaming consoles consume more and more power, dissipate more and more heat and cause a lot more noise"
When Atari invented the console market in the late 1970s, power costs were an issue only because of the recent energy crisis, heat mattered only if you left your cold beverage on the console, and there was no noise. Now that those problems are all cranked up in a more crowded, less plentiful, overbuilt world, we really have to worry about the power and heat. And now we can see the next crisis: overwhelming noise from all these home machines will first drive us completely mad, then churn up the atmosphere into tiny cyclones, combining with the larger ones to scour our homes into livingroom Grand Canyons.
--
make install -not war
Oh my GAWD! You mean I could lose almost $3.00 a year if I don't unplug my PS2?
But wait! Let's assume that it takes me 30 seconds to get off my lazy ass and move to the entertainment center, move the entertainment center, unplug the PS2 from the power strip, and move the entertainment center back into place so my roommate can still watch TV. I play videogames almost every day, sometimes in two or three seperate sessions. Just for argument's sake, we'll figure I do this 360 times a year. That works out to 10 800 seconds, or 180 minutes, or three hours.
Given that the federal minimum wage is $5.15 an hour, that means that if I spend the time unplugging the PS2, then I'll be losing money! (3*5.15 = 15.45, if my redneck math is right, which I think is more than $2.63)
I used to carry a bottle of whiskey for snake bite. And two snakes. -Nefarious Wheel
While the numbers apply to one console at a time, it is always worth seeing what these energy look like when you consider 500 000 people playing a time. The way I like to look at it is if a wind turbine provides 100KW of power, how many wind turbines do we need to satisfy the power demand. Taking the figures from the dashboard usage page. My math is:
turbines = unit usage * 500 000 / 100 000
so at the highest end with xbox 360 (145W) we have 725 turbines and the lowest end the Playstation 1 (4W) we have 20 turbines. That is a huge difference in infrastructure needed to satisfy out gaming needs. I'll let you do the math for others.
I am not sure the amount of energy produced by an average nuclear power station or hydro dam, so if anyone can advise me on them I would appreciate it.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
It's only an estimated $20.10 (FTA) a year to run the 360. I'd easily pay 20 bucks for my Xbox 1 to have anti-aliasing. I'd paid
So worst case scenario $2.68 per year to leave the console in standby? Not factoring in the discount for power use during off peak times?
When the difference in console prices can be hundreds of dollars and the average life of a console is 4-5 years, and there are much more effective ways to save on your electricity bill, I just don't see what the point of this article is.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
I have my entertainment system on two power strips that it turn off every night and it hasn't affected any of them. The two things i do leave plugged directly into the wall is my old (pre-remote) tv and the cable box since both of them take a long time to restart once the power has been off. Other than that all the rest of the stuff remembers my settings. My dvd recorder doesn't keep the time, but i never use it as a timer, so it doesn't matter to me.
It may not save much electricity, but it is a habit I got into back in college when I lived in the dorms and I could hear everything humming in standby mode when I tried to go to sleep.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
I think my 15" PAL TV is going to require less energy than a big HD TV set (but i could be wrong), so why not meter what you need to play at 480p or 720p?
145 watts? That's a lot more than your good old-fashioned five-tube radios of the 1950s used.
Now, before everyone piles on me, I fully understand a five-tube radio didn't have exactly the same computing power as a modern chip... and that to match the number of switching elements you would need [insert 1 followed by about ten zeroes here] vacuum-tube radios, which would consume the total output of [choose one: Niagara Falls, Three Mile Island, the total world output of cow flatulence methane].
It's still shocking to those who remember all the hype about the electric that was going to be saved by solid state electronics. Which, of course, were also going to be completely free from failures...
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
So guys, why do such a half-arsed job of it? Why not be the best?
That xbox 360 is a console equivalent of a hummer.
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
The catch is this--the "off button" doesn't really turn the cable box off, because it wants to keep processing the program information data ("Friends is on channel 7 at 7:30) that's being trickled down the cable, that requires the tuners and microprocessor and such to be on, leaving little difference in power use for the cable box between "on" and "off". This means that, when I turn the TV on, it can be 10-20 minutes before I have a fully populated program grid.
I'm a nature photographer.
Maybe I'm just cranky this morning but isn't this just the dumbest article that has been posted recently?
Forget the methodology -- the question is, "So what?"
It's gaming. This is like evaluating the nutritional differences between chocolate ice cream and cheesecake. It's a fucking desert. Who cares?
Want to talk about wasted energy? How about all the energy that they wasted writing this article?
Where's the comparison with turning this consoles off and going out and throwing a baseball around or kicking a soccer ball?
Perhaps a more interesting method would be to factor out the transformer loss, especially while the device is "off." It is possible that some of the manufacturers are using less efficient (and therefore, presumably cheaper) power bricks, especially if you wanna sell the device at a loss (XBox, XBox360, PS2). While that doesn't really affect the bottom line results (i.e., if I plug in this console and let it just sit there, it will consume $x), it could be more indicative of the quality of the core product and not the peripheral electronics.
http://www.streettech.com/archives_gadget/DCvsPS2
It depends on what we are talking... but the Dreamcast was part of the PS2 generation. You just don't remember it.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Playstation 1: 0.1Watt * 24h/day * 365days/year = 876Wh = 0.876kWh != 1.752kWh
=> that gives $0.1314
Xbox, Gamecube, Dreamcast use 1.752kWh and cost you $0.2628 per console ;-)
I'm less worried about the console than a new desktop PCs. Rumour has it that 1000W and 1200W powersupplies are soon to be standard fair (my spaceheater is only 800W) to support these pigs (and that doesn't include the monitor or peripherials. At the same time we can make pretty capable laptops that draw 30W, so it isn't like energy efficient technology doesn't exist. I can live with a computer that browns out the neighbourhood when I'm in the middle of the latest 3D gaming extravaganza, but I see no justification for a machine that consumes several times more power than maxed out laptop when it is sitting idle. This is a sign of twisted priorities due to weak legislation. PCs are now significantly contributing to stress on our environment, and an aweful lot of it is completely needless -- all PCs should have all low power modes that kick in for un-demanding tasks.
The best advice for now: 1) If you must run your peer-to-peer, do it on a laptop with the screen turned off -- not your ultra-gamer with the 300W video card 2) turn off your desktop when you aren't gaming.
A device leaking 2W consumes 17.532 kWh per year. (2 * 24 * 365.25)
Multiply by 103 million: 1.8 TWh (terawatt-hours) total annually. At any given time, the rate of consumption is 103 million * 2W = 2.06 MW.
1.8 TWh represents 6.5 petajoules (10^15 joules) of energy. One gallon of gas contains 132 megajoules of energy, so worldwide that's about 50 million gallons of gas a year. That sounds like a lot, but consider: if everyone in the US (just the US, mind) used one less gallon of gas a year (and that's just the people who have cars or use gas-powered public transit), it would make up for this "huge" amount of wasted energy with enough left over for all those PS/2 users to play a few extra games into the bargain.
In other words, if you want something to worry about, "all those PS/2's wasting energy" should be pretty far down on your list.
-- Old Man Kensey
I'm not sure how useful this is, common sense covers most of what the article says and the final numbers being quoted as the cost of electricity aren't actually scary. Yes, you could save some money and power by making sure they're turned off but I bet you could save more money by not turning on the bathroom light when you go to pee in the middle of the night.
A more interesting comparison would be to compare total cost of ownership. That is, purchase price, necessary accessories, games, power for console, the HD tv and surround sound system. Don't forget the pizza and cola consumed too. Then compare it to other household items, try the light on the microwave for a good laugh.
How much power will the Phantom console use?
When the difference in console prices can be hundreds of dollars and the average life of a console is 4-5 years, and there are much more effective ways to save on your electricity bill, I just don't see what the point of this article is.
Perhaps if you consider things in terms of percentages and not just dollars it might make more sense. When that happens we see the the transition from last year's most powerful console to this year's uses five times the energy in an age when we make war upon the world's energy suppliers, it might seem a little more pertinent.
In other words, there is an interesting and possibly disturbing trend going on here. Have we made a one-time leap in energy usage or will the PS4 leak 800w/year in the not-too-distant future?
As for the value of the article, how many of us would have been completely oblivious to the prospect without this effort? I know I would have been and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been alone. Perhaps this kind of coverage will prevent future generations of consoles from becoming the energy hogs they are trending towards.
the comparision table shows only one ps2 version but remember it has a new design now was this the one used or the old and big one?
I wonder how computers, gaming will be when we hit peakoil.
1. computers will grow more expensive to build... Al the energie to produce chips, moving them around etc...!
2. powering computers will grow more expensive!
So the logical thing to do would be to make the computer less powerfull and so cheaper to produce and cheaper to run. Would market competetion lead us that way after peakoil?
Hmmm, it would be asta la VISTA for windows... And welkom Xubuntu?
it looks like people will go to the older more efficeint systems to play. the psx surprises me with the 4-6 watt usage. also people might think the costs are minor now with 15 cents per kwh, but wait till it's 45 to 60 cents.
I was almost fooled.
Now, driving your CAR supports mideast oil barons.
n )
Which is kind of strange because 40% of the oil the US consumes is from own our territories and oil rigs. The other 60% is mostly Canada and Venuzela with a fraction going to the mideast. (US is the world's 3rd largest oil producer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_oil_consumptio
Now as to why the oil prices go up everytime there a crisis in the mideast... Well... You got me.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Why is it interesting how much it adds up to for the entire country? Determine how much energy it costs for you, and how much you would save spending it differently.
20$ a year for the Xbox360 not too bad, depending on how long you use the thing. You will still spend a lot more energy if you were to go drive somewhere instead of play.
Also a whole lot of other places then you gaming console are using energy for you, air conditioning (big bad one, take the heat plz), house heating(wear a sweater), the fridge, diskwasher, clothes washer and dryer, lights. Better to compare power consumption with these. For house heating, also isolation is important. Also think of all the energy used for products you use, services you use.
Saying the obvious thing above..
Also i think energy consumption doesn't matter if its cold enough outside anyway to need a heater to keep your house up to acceptable temperature, since the used energy of appliances just becomes heat anyway.
Ofcourse if you gas-heat your house its more efficient then the electricity your appliances use.
You have nothing to apologize for. Love lift us up where we belong.
The fat cats in Hollywood mostly produce money, which gets used to plan the next project, build houses, buy cars, buy food, and throw parties. Most of these activities consume some miniscule amount of electricity, but there's only a small number of "fat cats" which can sustain their lifestyle at any given time. So, from an electricity consumption viewpoint, the "fat cats" probably don't out-do the gaming console set. I'm not going to consider production of movie electricity consumption in this argument, because that consumption really does produce something, even if you don't care for the film it produced. Come to think of it, car production, house production, and food production all produce something, so it's not a fair comparison to console electricty leakage.
People in third world countries rarely produce twelve children, as they have limited ability to access modern medicine and birth puts the mother at some risk to her life. Desire for large families are the norm in third world countries, but so are high rates of infant mortality, death by treatable disease, and death by industrial / farming accidents. In the end, we haven't seen Africa outnumber China even though China has a governmental imposed limit on child birth and Africa does not impose such limits. Birth in a third world country doesn't require the use of electricity, and even if electricity is used for child birth, it would hardly be considered wasted electricity, unless you have become so detached from humanity that you consider 3rd world inhabitants such non-people that they should be tabulated like cattle or sheep.
Considering the environmental impact of generating energy that's not being used for any purpose other than to keep your console turned off is not the same as considering if there are other items that may generate more environmental impact, some of which may be putting the energy to some purposeful work. Adding a few red herrings, like "fat cats" and "3rd world overpopulation" hardly clarifies the point.
A better question is, is it worthwhile to unplug the console each time you play it to save 3 bucks per year.
Assume that it takes 10 seconds per day to plug and unplug the console:
10 seconds/day * 365 days/year / 60 seconds/minute = 60 minutes per year spent playing with the plug
Even at minimum wage, spending 60 minutes per year to save 3 bucks is not worthwhile.
Canada has the second largest proven oil reserves in the world -- a close second to the middle east. All that oil, and (dimissing a handful of poorly assimilated offspring of new Muslim immigrants) they aren't fanatically dedicated to killing every last American on the planet. They are actually ... well ... *nice*. Perhaps the cold weather offsets the apparent side effects of oil-fumes.
In Soviet Russia...
Wii power YOU!
I just wasted the amount of energy I could have saved unplugging my GC by reading this article! ;)
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
Oh well, as you say. Stove piped armchair EE. Just watt the world needs more of.
Heading our Luna Rover back towards Reality Base; it was just an informative, comparative look.
The boys measured what they needed given the context. It is after all, the power pulled from the wall socket that matters and things like conversion efficiency in the power supplies or radiation loss from the components is merely academic.
Meanwhile, did you know that a 10% reduction in line voltage corresponds to a modest reduction in lumen output from an incandescent bulb yet extends the life of said bulb by a factor of 5. That's enegry savings in addition to a 5X savings in light bulbs! Real money buddy!
Or to feed it to ya in more understandable terms; given the number of light bulbs in the average American household, that works out to an extra bag of weed every year!!!
And no need to rewire your house either. Just buy bulbs rated at 130VAC instead of 120VAC.
Or, put an appropriately sized diode in series with the bulb and up the wattage as desired. Don't worry, you can do the math. Just do that part before you bake.
At least we don't have to worry about our TV power consumptions, let alone our receiver/speakers/subwoofer power consumptions. Fortunately, I live in the dorms, where I don't have to worry about the electricity bill. Unfortunately, however, I am one of the *few* people here that can see that with n million of these consoles being sold and plugged in, along with all of the other equipment used to compliment them, that the environmental costs are much higher than what the article shows.
Well, the article says that the PS is more efficient. Look at the 145W consumption of the 360 and the 50W of the original XBOX.
Makes sense, for two reasons:
1) It's JAPAN the US is competing against. Remember their miniaturization isn't just out of coolness, but out of population density and lack of space. They are also more technologically advanced than the US in general, so the efficiency can be taken as a given while the internet gag "that's HUEG (sic) like XBOX" will only get worse.
2) MS says "so what?" and produces something that nobody cares how much power consumption is behind it. Remember, we're the geeks. THEY (users) aren't. Even so, I hadn't thought about costs and wastes on consoles in spite of being a geek.
MS would just be following the trend that we already see when we need a bigger GPU to play the newest games: The damn things now all have one or two fans! WTF! Fans are only needed for CPUs in my opinion. Guess what? The fans normally have a power intake that will use up one of your motherboard power strips --you may lose the chance to add something useful in today's cramped and limited "standard" (non-custom-built by the non-leet user who is a gamer nonetheless) cases.
If MS just wants to beat the competition, they'll draw the needed power to generate the needed results. Let the owners pay for their power.
It worries me, though, that our units are getting close to the actual power consumption of handheld hair blowers. 145W will soon double to near 300W in the nextgen console blowout. I recall having used 300W to dry my hair as a child, and that the other settings for hot and hottest were at 600W and 1200W.
Thermal stress
In recent news a startling Sony press release has indicated that the PS3 will not in fact utilise mains power but will instead ship with a dedicated 180kw 6 cylinder diesel generator which will give mileage of a whopping 12mpg (Minutes-Play-Time per Gallon). Analysts predict that the production of the PSG (PlayStationGenerator) will take a toll on Sony's profitability in the first half of fiscal 06-07 and will have downward pressure on share prices.
In other news Microsoft have responded to allegations that the Xbox360 in fact runs on the imprisoned souls of ritually sacrificed children in a press conferance today saying that 'Microsoft at no time has employed the dark-arts to create it's products and that any negotiations with the Dark Prince of the Underworld have been of a purely strategic nature and that Microsoft does not endorce the ritual sacrifice of children or other persons, animals or otherwise'. Industry insiders have their doubts sighting the recent lack of sightings of Bill Gates first born, whome he and his wife named Damien, born on 6 June 1999, as possible evidence of dealings with demonic forces, this reporter will wait for more solid facts before making a judgement... More news at 11.
"The stupider people think you are, the more surprised they will be when you kill them..."
Linkee no workee. "Console Energy Usage" under Featured Stories at side not working either.
I reserve the right to think for myself. Others' opinions are optional. Puppy on lap = typos...not illiteracy.
That is one ridiculous and unfounded rumor. Most PC's these days come with 300-350W power supplies. While it is obvious that power requirements have been risen over the years, the growth isn't anywhere near what you are implying it to be. It took us many years to go from 250W PSUs being standard to 350W PSUs and I don't expect 500W PSUs in off-the-shelf PC's for at least another 2 years. Let alone 1000W or 1200W.
All designs are a compromise of parameters such as cost, speed and power efficiency. Game console makers don't care about the power consumption because they don't pay for the power and it is not something that the customers measure.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
That's the much smaller half of these leaks. Many things on suspend, e.g. the average "Green" pc, or the television, video, dvd player, & sound systems on Standby will use a lot more power than these game consoles. Then there's the fact that people never power off their Wall Warts (little mains power supplies) for charging mobiles, etc.
I run 3 pcs, 2 19" CRTs, and a stack of add on stuff, and when all powered up, it pulls around 430watts. power supply ratings have nothing to do with power consumption.
note: with the monitors off, everything pulls about 280 watts
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
I read this too, but I think they meant high-end (SLI/Crossfire, dual-core) systems for the really big PSUs, and 450W - 550W are slipping in on the low/mid range end. The power consumption of the new graphics cards (especially the high-end ones) and multicore CPUs is driving the switch. A lot of advertised systems being sold right now as 'SLI' ready systems require you to either replace the PSU or buy a supplimental one that fits in a drive bay before you can actually put in two cards (caveat emptor!). A 300 Watt power supply already isn't sufficient for a single top end card and some dual core CPUs.
Will Cmdrtaco ever learn the difference between then and than?
They almost certainly used a device made for measuring this stuff. Like a Kill-A-Watt. It's cheap and effective. And it knows about the power factor. I'll even display Watts, Volt-Amps and of since it knows both of those, the power factor.
A Kill-A-Watt only reads out tenths of a Watt. Although since it can average over time, you can measure lower values by looking at the cumulative Watt-Hours later and dividing by time.
The heat may not always be waste, but it's still useless. If the system did the same with less power, and I needed the extra heat, I could turn on a heater (which, if it were gas powered would be more efficient too).
The power usage of the TV doesn't necessarily dwarf the console's power. My TV is a 55" rear projection LCD. It takes 160W (with the bulb on low, I measured it with a Kill-A-Watt). As you can see, the playing Xbox 360 doubles my electric bill. That's a long way from being dwarfed. And if I used a reasonably-sized TV instead of this one, the Xbox 360 power usage might actually dwarf my TV's usage.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
And what about the energy wasted by the webserver holding the articles webpage?
My PS/2 has no such switch (I just looked). I have the slim model that they have sold for the last couple of years.
"As you can see every single console is a victim of energy leakage to some extent. The losers here are the Xbox 360 and PS2, however the PS2 is the biggest loser of the group. There are a few points that need to be made. While both consoles need to power their internal clocks, they also need to keep their IR ports constants scanning for remote controls trying to power on the console explaining the added power requirements. The Xbox 360 also has to keep its internal wireless card active otherwise it wouldn't notice when a controller is sending a request for the machine to turn on. So while both machines require the most power, the Xbox 360 has the most components that need to remain powered in standby making the energy leakage a little more acceptable. The idea of spending $2.68 just to have a PS2 plugged in the wall is less then desirable."
Alright, so they state that the PS2 and the XBOX360 use the exact same amount of power when turned off (look at the chart in the article). They also say that the XBOX360 runs more crap than the PS2, but they say that the PS2 is "the biggest looser of the group". WTF?
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
It must count as one of the biggest wastes of energy in the home. When some is turned off, it should really be turned off. Talk that the Nintendo Wii is still active and downloading content while in standby is worrying since it means the thing is constantly consuming a ton of power even if its not used more than once a week.
A top-end PC uses about 155W idle and 320W max.
7 &p=4
source: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=271
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
Bullshit. You fail to comprehend.
A diode in series is a half wave recifier and will drop the voltage by half minus the diode drop. We can agree on that. So you double the wattage of the light bulb to achieve approximately equal brightness. The lifetime of the bulb is increased by an order of magnitude.
Now go read all the mumbo jumbo you wrote and realize it was all a grand waste of time because you failed to grasp the initial concept as simple as it was.
I never once mention multiple diodes in series to achieve a 10% voltage drop. For that I said obtain a bulb rated at a higher voltage. 130V bulbs are readily available if you know where to look.
I won't bother with your math since it is obvious your not as smart as you pretend and simply masturbate over points missed. Additionally I must be ever mindful to talk down the audience so they don't fry their little pea sized brains anymore than they already are.
Please consider retaking the class.
Atari didn't invent the console market, sorry. You might say they were the first to be highly successful, but they certainly weren't the first.Game consoles.
How about charging the manufacturer a per-unit tax equal to the market value, say 25 cents per kilowatt-hour, of the electricity used in standby mode over the unit's design life, say five years. That would be about $22 for using 2 W. That would be a hell of a motivation to use best practices.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Each console generation is using more and more power than the last. 25 years from now, will there be an article complaining about consoles that use 1.5KW?
Obviously there's a limit to how much you can draw on a US 120V socket, but I doubt many would be happy if their console used as much power as a space heater.
103 million PS2s have been sold worldwide...what's the impact on the environment of generating that energy?
So, by that rational, the Phantom game console, by virtue of never seeing the light of day or selling a single instance, is "THE SINGLE GREATEST THING FOR THE ENVIRONMENT, EVER!"?
Similarly, we should take the total number of lightbulbs sold in the world, their power consumption, look at how it dwarfs console standby levels, and establish humanity should really just go to sleep when it gets dark.
When assessing environmental impact, you need to assess it per unit. If you assess by multiplying the number of units in existence, all you're really saying is "Anything that uses power is worse the more popular it gets." True, overall, that does contribute more to humanity's power usage but does a lousy job of looking at how efficiently it does so.
The peak rate for Southern California Edison (anything a residence uses over about an average of 300kWh per month) is now about 33cents USD per kWh. (I just got first 2006 summer bill)
WOW!
That's just under $3 per watt per year.
A 200watt fileserver for instance is $600 a year to keep running.
A 120watt torrent machine is $360 a year to keep online (plus cost of cable/dsl modem).
Most network routers and switches cost more in a couple years of electric use than their purchase price.
For reference, I have a Dell Inspiron 6000, a 15-inch widescreen display laptop, running a recent Linux kernel with the power management set up correctly to slow the chip down when not in use, and speed it up when in use. (I leave that on all the time, even on battery mode, since I'm never really that far from power.) The processor is a 1.6GHz Pentium-M, and it has the integrated graphics (not the ATI graphics).
/proc/acpi/battery/BAT0 correctly. (For voltage it says "11898 mV" and present rate is "1339 mA".)
With my screen on its lowest setting and the processor basically idle, ACPI is reporting that I'm consuming 16 watts, if I'm reading my
With my screen at its highest brightness and the processor compiling Firefox, ACPI says I'm consuming 34 Watts.
I have no comment beyond that, although I'm curious if I can rely on my ACPI measurements. I just think it's interesting to compare the consoles with a real computer, especially one that was designed to be at least somewhat power efficient.
The cost of replacing your Xbox360 four times over the course of a year!!! Okay, go ahead and rate me troll! I care not.
With processors packing all those transistors in such a small space it was bound to heat up. My sister recently burned her hand on the exhaust from her new video card. I can't wait until we see reversible computing, then energy usage and heat will surely be more tolerable. I'm sick of the fans dying on my video cards and causing the processor to fail, hopefully one day we'll move to computers with no moving parts.
http://games.qxdh.com/
It's obvious if you've owned both devices, and noticed that one generates a lot more heat than the other. I don't recall my psx keeping the room quite so warm.
A device can't use more power without producing more heat, or vice versa. Conservation of energy and all that.
Jeebus, Out here in the Pacific Northwest, we have around 3.3 Cents per Kilowatt hour. An average 200 watt file server will cost $60 per year to run all the time. Federal subsidized energy can be a good thing.
I wonder how these numbers will look like when the cost of the tv, lights, and other stuff used when playing games are considered.
Atari invented Pong in 1972, as described in the page linked from the page to which you linked.
But so what? I said Atari invented the console market, not the console. They invented the market in the late 1970s with the 2600. Before that there was a tiny little niche market, then there was a complete market.
--
make install -not war
From the article:
The losers here are the Xbox 360 and PS2, however the PS2 is the biggest loser of the group.
I don't understand. Why is the PS2's 2 watts more energy used than the XBox360's 2 watts?
The idea of spending $2.68 just to have a PS2 plugged in the wall is less then desirable.
Again I'm confused. It's not spending $2.68 to plug up the PS2. It's spending $2.68 to plug up the PS2 and leave it plugged in 24/7 for 365 days. What you spend to plug it up is probably in the rough range of 0.0006 cents (assuming there's a burst where it uses 4 watts instead of 2 for initial powerup.)
In conclusion we would uncomfortably leave our 360 plugged in as the ability to power the console on wirelessly is worth the $2.63 a year cost.
I assume this is their so called reason why the PS2's 2 watts are more than the XBox360's 2 watts. Do you really need wireless control 24/7/365? Let's say you do for a moment. Does the extra (rounding up) 3 dollars hurt you that badly to leave the system in all year if you must leave it plugged up all year (don't know about you, but, mine is only plugged in when I actually have been using it recently. I rarely leave it in more than a week or so past that.) Finally, the PS2 can support a remote -- especially the PS2 slim which has it built in. I don't have one because I'm too cheap to buy it when you can use the controller for watching DVDs, but, I seem to recall the remote had a power button. Is there the possibility this can power on the PS2? Oh, and speaking of the PS2, which one did they test? The original probably worst made PS2, or the latest probably best made (and therefore possibly more efficient) PS2s? Are slims worse or better than the immediately previous models?
I might add that Dreamcast, PSX, XBox and I think Gamecube can't be powered on by remote.
All I can say is that I'm not particularly satisfied with this test at all. First of all, it actually would have been useful if they included really old consoles so we can see if things are truly getting worse (it strikes me that a SNES just might be more inefficient than the much more technological Playstation just to toss an example out there.) Not to mention the complete lack of testing of the various versions or even mention of which version they used. Everyone knows the different versions ARE differently made. I have even seen this first hand with several that I took apart to fix various parts on. I might add that the most recent time I saw this was with two that were only one version apart and I was amazed to find that among the really obvious things I could see with the naked eye the power supply had a slightly different layout and the laser had a few changes in the casing and cable. Not many people use clear cases (and it's not officially supported for anyone to) so I really doubt those internal changes were purely cosmetic with no effect on power usage.
Speaking of power leakage, has anyone ever done a study to see how much may be used by just the plugs themselves? Sometimes I wonder if leaving a plug for a device in the wall but the device not actually plugged into it is probably wasting a bit of electricity. Oh, it may be on the order of milliwatts, but, I find it hard to believe it could be nothing at all considering that the plugs themselves still get hot and everything. Or, perhaps a more important question would be, how much do higher end things use? For example, when a computer power supply goes off, it still can sometimes be emitting a tiny high pitched sound if you stick your ear next to it. Considering the lack of any speakers in your typical PSU, I'd imagine it may take a fair amount of power to cause such a noise. Also, let's not forget monitors. Many of us are still using CRTs either because we are too cheap to buy an expensive LCD, or because we don't want to deal with things like the (usually low quality) internal resizing when using a non-native resolution, or even a few feel that CRTs are just plain higher qua
I posted energy consumption data for PCs and Macs: http://lancej.blogspot.com/
The difference: many leave our PCs on 24 hours a day... leading to significant costs.
What kind of Playstation 1 were they using? The original PSX, or the newer, smaller PSOne? I assume different designs take different ammounts of power. The PS2 also has a slim version, but I'm assuming they're using an older model because they mention the switch on the back.
Most consoles have revisions and major revisions like the latest psone that was produced and the slimline ps2. Even my old genesis console had drastic changes. I'm assuming the much smaller systems with chipsize reductions and chipnumber reductions (like the ps2) have caused power consumption to decrease.
Hmmm... Pie...
What people don't realize is that which slight modifications in design the pentium 90 could have run @ 100 watts should they have wanted to shoot the voltage up in order to squeeze more mhz out of it.
The k8 by amd and the prescott can run at much lower voltages as shown with motherboards that support both overclocking and underclocking. I think that coming so close to the limits of silicon has caused cpu makers to go in a different direction. The beefier cpu's from intel and amd from the same processor line will often require better heatsinks. What some overclockers have noticed is that the lower end cpu's from the same line can be pushed as high as those with slight voltage increases (sometimes without). The difference between a athlon 3500+ and a 4200+ is often the heatsink and factory multiplier settings. While it's not always true and higher processors often come from a better yield but more often then not the opposite is being proven true.
There wasn't a major market for overclockers in the p90 era and i don't think any motherboard supported overvolting but there were people who managed to get over 200% overclocks with those guys which showed they had much more headroom then modern processors which are at the limits of sensible cooling design.
Hmmm... Pie...
Rumour has it that 1000W and 1200W powersupplies are soon to be standard
Those numbers are meaningless marketing. Power supply manufacturers keep increasing them to make their supplies sound more powerful, but the reality is that they're just finding new (unhelpful) ways to add up the numbers and get a larger figure.
Fundamentally, you cannot describe the power consumption of a PC PSU using a single number. There are too many variables. You *can* describe the drain of an assembled, running PC at a given point in time using a single number, but the only connection it has to the PSU 'rating' is that it will definitely be smaller. You'll find some more informative numbers printed on a sticker on the power supply, telling you the peak drain for each of the rails, but what really matters is the power consumption of all the devices in the computer.
In practice, these '800W' power supplies that you see today are just half a dozen rails (at varying voltages), each of which can supply a peak current of between 100W and 300W. Most of them cannot supply peak current to every rail simultaneously. People upgrade their power supplies to handle high-end video cards and think this means they need to consume 800W instead of 300W. It doesn't. It means that one of the rails supplying their video card needed to handle 200W instead of 150W, or something on that order. Overclockers rarely need a larger amount of power, they need a more expensive power supply that puts out smoother voltage when a noisy load (overclocked CPU) is applied. Etcetera.
So sure, we may soon be needing power supplies that say '1200W' on the box. But that doesn't mean they will consume 50% more power than one that says '800W'.
Do you people seriously pay that much for electricity?
In Springfield, OR where I live, it's 4.6 cents per kwh
... "In my time, we had plugs without protection against children, so we could play with our scissors and knives a galore without being stopped in the act. .. we could plug in stuff under 1 second because the protection is not bending the plugs"...
i guess lack of alcohol does this to someone like me ;)
In my time
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
You see its not just the cold weather, eh, its the hockey they play that lets them take out their anger. The arabs cant get an ice hockey arena to keep from melting, so they get really angry and take their anger out on the americans, eh.
Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling a pig in mud. Soon, you realize the pig is dirty, and he likes it.
This meme is propagated a lot, but it's not really insightful.
Instead of worrying about 2W, manufacturers could be encouraged to reduce the average power usage of a system in a working (ie not standby state). A saving of 10% on all appliances would be far more significant.
Of course if you argue we, not companies should be responsible, then I point out that using energy saving lightbulbs would have a far, far greater effect on your household energy consumption than switching off devices on standby.
Don't get me wrong, I am a huge proponent of saving oil* and reducing global carbon emissions. But I feel persuading people en-mass to change their behaviour should be directed at something that has a significant effect. This meme is aimed at the wrong factor of ten.
* What will we make drugs and plastic out of once we have burnt away all the oil?
Maybe it's all too obvious, but nobody seems to be pointing out that energy is not wasted by any of these consoles. It's not possible to waste energy. Didn't you all learn about the First Law of Thermodynamics in high school? What are they teaching kids these days?
In reality, the XBox 360 isn't wasting more energy, it's just converting more energy into heat. If you live in a climate where the outside temperature is less than the inside temperature, then you aren't wasting any energy at all. You're just contributing to the heating of your home using your game console. Now, if you live in a tropical climate, or it's summer, then you are unnecessarily heating the outside, but the energy isn't being wasted. (For those of you who don't know how an air conditioner works, it doesn't "create" cool air, it just transports heat from the inside of your house to the outide of your house. If you have a heater and an A/C unit running against each other, you are, in actuality, just releasing the stored energy in fuel, then transporting it outside.)
Just a small point, but we tend to let these things slip in our educational system. Energy cannot be "wasted," only converted into a less desirable form.
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
Yes, consoles draw power. In fact, the XBox 360 uses a whopping 130 kWh yearly according to their estimates! However, let's look at facts:
- ~6 million XBox 360s are expected to be sold by June 2006 [Sales Estimate]
- Total power consumption yearly according to their estimates is 780 million kWh [6 million * 130 kWh]
- Modern nuclear reactors produce 600-1200 MWe [Nuclear Power]
- A 1,000 MWe reactor at 80% capacity generates roughly 7 billion kWh yearly [Nuclear Power Facts]
All the XBox 360s in the world can be powered for a year from just over 11% of the power generated in a year from one nuclear reactor.
Government's view of the economy: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving,regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it.
Power is the integral of instantaneous amps times instananeous volts. You can't use a $2.99 Harbor-Freight voltmeter and ammeter to do this.
I'm not sure what they used for their measurments, but since hooking up a multimeter to AC is inconvenient, and geeks are lazy, I'm willing to bet they used this little Kill-A-Watt gadget from ThinkGeek:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/7657
I got one from eBay (rather than ThinkGeek) and it's a very addicting gadget. It even does the power factor calculations that were mentioned in this thread (hey, thanks for telling me what the PF button on the unit does. It's embarrassing that I earned an EE degree and I did not know what the button did until now -- I regret doing the computer engineering track, since I learned so embarrasingly little about analog electronics along the way!)
-- Marcio
A/C needs far less than a Watt to move a Watt from inside the house to outside. A decent unit will move something like 15 Watts outside with a single Watt of power used.
I agree with the parent though, I encourage people to measure stuff like this, even if they can't do it completely scientifically. It's good for people to get used to measuring and moderating their power usage, especially wasted power like standby power.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Wow,
I thought people from Centralia, WA didn't have the internet.
I do know that there are huge lumps of coal all over the place down there. They constantly fall off of the trains. When I lived with a certain ex- of mine we went and picked up some coal to expirement with. It's rally neat stuff. Hard to start, but once it gets going....
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
This article's server has officially been PWNED by /.
Convert FLACs to a portable format with FlacSquisher
This is garbage. In other words:
"The 360 and the PS2 use a lot of power when they're not on. We guessed about the other consoles. Look, we have google ads, why don't you click on one?"
I have a ten year old fluke multimeter that I could probably get a hundred dollars for on eBay, and it would be more than adequate for this type of measurement. This article isn't slashworthy.
Specialization is for insects. -Heinlein
I don't expect 500W PSUs in off-the-shelf PC's for at least another 2 years.
Mine came with a 450W power supply... 2 years ago. It was quite unneccesary (it died and I replaced it with a 350W which works fine), but still. I wouldn't be suprised if high-end custom computers from your local geek store come with a 500W power supply now-a-days, though for all the computers I've built, 400W is more than sufficient.
Some home electronics are much worse. Some powered subwoofers draw 17W in "standby" mode! Because my reciever can only switch 200W, I run its switched outlet into a relay that can handle 10 amps, and then plug my subwoofers into the relay.
No, I will not work for your startup
It's always good to see a good Civ. joke here and there.
my space heater is only 430 watts, and by space heater i mean desktop computer that doubles as a space heater
Snowden and Manning are heroes.