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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. "
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?
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?
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.
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
Possibly both, but obvious things are not always true. The example I usually give is the Mpemba effect
If we assume that 50% of them are plugged in, that's an additional 100MW of generating capacity needed worldwide.a l_affordable_1.html, an 1000MW coal plant spews 6 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere per year. ... $2.63 * 50 million = $131.5 million. That's like 1000 houses for 1000 homeless families ... and that's in the United States ... that money could go further in other places.
From a Houston Chronicle aritcle, http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2006/06/co
So, a 100MW coal plant would spew 600,000 tons of CO2 per year [544,310,844 kg]
That's the impact. But, this is only for 2W standby power for one product.
Also
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?
I'm pretty sure Google would ignore its own ads. Not so sure about other search engines though.
No existe.
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.