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PS3 8x More Power Hungry Than PS2
MonsieurCreosote writes "The Playstation 3 apparently demands eight times as much electricity as the Playstation 2, and more than twice as much as the Xbox 360. It also consumes much more power than a top-end PC gaming rig. It's not clear what's causing the massive drain, but Sony is now denying reports that the PS3 experienced overheating problems at the Tokyo Games Show last month. From the article: 'While an Intel Core 2 Duo PC with high-end graphics card chews politely on a 160 watt entré, the PlayStation 3 gorges itself on 380 watts... The extra power consumption of the PS3 over the PS2 suggests that we're not really getting much better at designing efficient systems, we're just pumping more 'fuel' into existing paradigms'. Are modern console hardware designers getting sloppy?"
Sony is obviously trying to extend from home electronics into the home heating business. Since most kids never move from their gaming consoles, these will remotely heat just the area immediatly around them, saving you tons on heading for kids who never use the rest of the house!
You never realize how much manually made unmanaged "linked" lists suck, till you have src.link.link.link.link...
Included in your $600 is a miniature power plant that runs on burning batteries.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
You see performance comparisons all the time, and websites dedicated to them, but how often do you get someone comparing the power drain? Or any sort of benchmark using consoles, for that matter.
We need more taxes on stuff that wastes this much power. There's no need for it - it's clearly a problem that's allowed to go untreated because there's no financial incentive to do so. If it were prohibitively expensive to produce such devices - ie if it cost the manufacturers and consumers a similar sort of damage that's being done to the environment - then we'd suddenly find solutions to these kinds of problems.
The Cell has about 20x the processing power as a Core Duo with a high-end graphics card combined. Add nVidia's RSX.. you're looking at a system which has stayed within the budget (even less) for systems of today.
:)
In the future they'll process reduce it, cost reduce it, the PS3 will end up using less power. However you can't get done what they want to do in 5 years, without forcing everyone to buy a new PS3 every year, without hammering the electricity grid now
C'mon guys. This is getting ridiculous. First off, this is just a game console. I don't understand how ANYBODY could feel that strongly one way or another about a game console. It's a plastic and metal box for playing GAMES. Secondly, the quality of Slashdot "reporting" is getting really, really, really, REALLY bad. The ONLY reason I still come here is to interact with other similar people. The articles (like the constant "PS3 suxors" stuff that this article is) are worse than 50% of the personal blogs out there right now.
I can see it already: PS4 to use personal nuclear power plant. Export to Iran doubtful.
She: Hey, are you a traitor? Me: No, I'm atheist.
Are modern console hardware designers getting sloppy?
I don't think consumers care much about power consumption. If I can design something cheaper and faster, but hotter, and the consumer doesn't care, why wouldn't I do it? Lower bottom line. Higher profits. Booyah! More Ferraris for my garage.
They have to make sure you keep paying for it after you buy it.
"Are modern console hardware designers getting sloppy?"
correction
Is this modern console hardware designer getting sloppy?
So PS4 will hit around 1.21 gigawatts?
It's called paying for the electricity.
...that trying to run 8 cores at once might be what's causing the power drain.
The real question is, of course, are any games going to actually make use of the eight cores? Video games aren't really known for being very parallel-friendly - you might make an excuse for five threads (logic, graphics, sound, controller I/O, and disk I/O), but generally they're fairly serial processes. While updating the game logic, you don't want to draw a frame using half-updated information.
Ultimately, you have to wonder if Sony's decision to go with the Cell and use Blu-Ray was really that intelligent - most of the cost and production problems can be traced to them, and they provide very little real benefit to the end-user.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Unlikely. The lasers are low power and don't run continuously. Otherwise they're pretty standard drives.
Trolling is a art,
you can cook your food on it too, or warm up a hotpocket hehe
There are two types of people in the world: those who divide people into two types and those who don't.
Now, more so than ever, I hope that the PS3 fails! It sickens me to think of wide spread proliferation of this console in home all across the world draining all that power :( Consumer electronics are one of the first things that need to become more energy efficient if we are going to taclke this little problem that we're getting ourselves into...
Max power rating of the PSU does not equal power used in normal operation
You've been trolled - most likely by someone paid by Microsoft
it's in my head
Care to provide any background evidence to suggest that as a possibility? Or are you just trolling for the free karma that gets handed out around here when somebody says something negative about BluRay?
Pointing out that the PS3, given what's inside, is more power hungry than a PS2 is like pointing out that the sun is hot.
> While an Intel Core 2 Duo PC with high-end
> graphics card chews politely on a 160 watt
> entré
Might wanna check your facts about "high-end" before posting.
If you dig down through the four layers of links to the original source, you will see that they came up with the 380 watt number by multiplying the amperage number with the wattage number on the power supply label. That gives you the peak draw that the power supply is capable of, and probably not even close to average consumption.
I have a 600 watt power supply in my PC, but even when I'm gaming it drinks in only 250 or so watts of power. The only time it gets even close to the 600 watt mark is for a fraction of a second after power up. I'll bet the PS3 only comes close to 380 watts for about the same amount of time right after powerup.
This may be the only console that when the drive kicks up, the lights in the house start dimming. 380 watts, that is a high end PC running. They should of just bough off the shelf parts... wait, nevermind.
Clever or not, I got nothing...
Quite simply, if they weren't extremely low power:
1) they would melt the discs
2) Sony wouldn't be allowed to ship them in consumer electronics (especially something targeted at kids)
It uses 380 watts, and that's "much more power than a top-end PC gaming rig"?? Ok then, I guess all top-end PC gaming rigs use 350watt PSUs or smaller? Someone seriously needs to re-work their math. Top-end gaming PCs (Core Duo machines included) can easily suck down 400 watts or more under load, and power supply sizes are fast heading for the 1KW mark. I'm not sure where they got their 160watt number from, but it sure wasn't from a top-end gaming rig.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
PCs are for sad geeks who have no life.
Game consoles are for those who want to entertain themselves.
I once tried using a PC - it was an absolute nightmare! (those who create these various versions don't exactly make them for the novice; they wrongly assume EVERYONE is a Geek) And using it was WORSE!!! Besides, I've ALWAYS used PS2, and it's too late to teach this old dog new tricks. And when PCs become as easy to use as PS2, games are as easy to load into PC as it is for PS2, and there's Gitaroo Man ported to PC (or better still, PS2 games are compatible with PC), THEN I'll use it And You PC-ers DARE to accuse Bill Gates of being the 'Antichrist'?! At least he makes his game consoles EASY to buy & use!!!
So, until then, I say:
GET THEE BEHIND ME, PC-SATAN!!!
Here's the link to the original source before it went through a 4-blog telephone game:
http://www.jp.playstation.com/support/qa-591.html
Only if you consider a console with more processing power than older Cray Supercomputers for a fraction of the energy cost to be "sloppy". Let me put that in context to explain what I mean.
One of the things that Digital pioneered with its Alpha chips was the matter of clocking CPUs at incredibly high speeds (for the time); easily breeching 200MHz. With the fabrication technology of the time, however, such high speeds were found to have major issues with problems like metastability. By upping the amount of power applied to the chip, they found that they could force the logic to switch faster and thus reduce these issues. This research was the basis for modern chip design. The more power you apply, the faster you can clock the CPU. (With various caveats freely sprinkled in.)
Now put yourself in Sony's place. You decide you want to build the most powerful game console EVER; with cost being no barrier. So you go and pick up this super-computer-on-a-chip technology from IBM. (The Cell) You then ask NVidia for their latest GPU technology to combine with that processor. You then take a look at the system, to decide how high you should clock it. You decide to max out the GPU for MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE. (Who wouldn't?) So you're now chewing upwards of 100 watts just on your GPU. Then you decide that a power friendly 1.5GHz isn't going to cut it in this competitive race. (Especially if you've got spies over at Microsoft, who are reporting back 3GHz chips.) So you look at it, and decide to ramp up for MAXIMUM CPU PERFORMANCE. Now you've got 3GHz, but your CPU is also using 100+ watts.
So it's really no surprise that the PS3 is consuming so much power. The real issue is whether the super-computer-on-a-chip idea was really the way to go. Some people seem to think so. Some even believe that it's a requirement to hit 1080p resolutions. Only time will prove them out, though. In the meantime, Sony is banking on the consumers being taken with an uber-powerful system. If they'll purchase Aibos and HDTVs, they'll purchase a $600 PS3, right?
Separate Note: Of course, Sony keeps shooting themselves in the foot. This strategy *might* have worked reasonably well if confidence in Sony was still high. But with people boycotting them over everything from rootkits to Lik-Sang, PLUS Sony's extremely poor E3 presentations, PLUS their general arrogance when handling the public, I seriously doubt that they're going far this generation.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
"Care to provide any background evidence to suggest that as a possibility?"
Care to provide any background evidence to suggest that it wouldn't be a possibility?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Is it a Republican? Thanks, ladies and gentlemen I'll be here all night. Try the shrimp and remember to tip your wait staff! ;)
:)
I'm sorry, I know better but I couldn't resist
- reports of people saying the PS3 is barely better than an Xbox 360, the Xbox 360 already being extremely noisy (at least with Final Fantasy XI)
- the Wii is 2-3 times more powerful than a Gamecube while at the same time requires half or a third of the power
- the Nintendo DS can play for hours and hours on a single charge, not really so with the PSP
More expensive = more heat, more power required, less battery life (if applicable)?
What good is HD graphics if you have to keep the same quality per pixel as the last gen? I'd rather stay in normal definition and get a better picture. We're still very, VERY far away from real-life visuals. Pushing pixels only makes crappy graphics look less pixelated.
Care to provide any additional evidence ON THE background evidence to suggest that there is ANY suggestion that it wouldn't be possible to be a possibility?
;)
Sorry... I'll get me coat.
So...I must be getting some crazy electric bill because my PSU is 1kwatt and I leave it on/sleep mode 24/7...no really...- by Anonymous cowards- because that's how much FUD it is.
- The GPU
- The Cell processor
- The highly clocked Rambus XDR DRAM
IO devices like the hard drive and the Blu Ray drive are peanuts compared to those.If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Maybe adding some laptop batteries could reduce the demand on the PSU...
Sure.
A BluRay Rewritable drive uses at most 30 watts. That's peak, and probably only used for a few seconds when spinning a CD-ROM up to 52x.
This entire story is pure FUD.
The PS3 has a 380 Watt PSU. There is no info here about what the actual power draw is likely to be at most times.
For comparison, my gaming PC has a 600 Watt PSU. IIRC, with my hardware, it should be peaking at about about 250 Watts while running games.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
"A BluRay Rewritable drive uses at most 30 watts. That's peak, and probably only used for a few seconds when spinning a CD-ROM up to 52x."
Very good. So why not just say that initially instead of pulling the karma-whore card? I wouldn't mind, but all this hostility surrounding Sony stories is fucking obnoxious.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Because my initial post was a hunch based on real life engineering experience. I hadn't gone to find actual evidence because I was just calling the guy for pulling a load of crap out of his ass.
You can decide to uncheck the "games" checkbox in yuor personal preferences if you're unhappy about slashdot reporting on FACTS.
My honest opinion on "OMG SLASHDOT IS SO ANTI SONY I HATES IT FOREVAR" posters?
I see roots, I see leaves, I see a plant.
We are all aware of the massive problem caused by excess carbon emissions resulting from mankind's inefficient use of energy, and you'd think that in the country which launched the Kyoto protocol companies would behave more responsibly. If the PS3 is as successful as its predecessor, that will equate to more than 100,000,000 consoles, and even if only 3% of those were in use at any one time, that's still over 1 Gigawatt per hour of power drained from the world's energy grids.
I remember reading an interview with Iwata of Nintendo, who said one of the focuses when developing the Wii was to make it smaller and more efficient. This is highly commendable, and perhaps has something to do with Nintendo being based in Kyoto. All I can say is that I have my Wii pre-order and have no intention of purchasing a PS3 until they release the slim-line power efficient version.
Dig down through the links to the source page: http://www.jp.playstation.com/support/qa-591.html Translate that with babelfish and you will see that the MAX consumption is 380 watts. With 8 cores all running at 100%, 380 watts seems very reasonable (48 watts/core peak). The average will be much lower.
Thats huge. So more than $50 of the $600 price is the power supply.
I dont think customers at higher lattitudes will complain, not in Canada and not in winter. But not all sockets and power bars will be able to handle that.
They should add a metal plate on top for metallic coffee mugs. If they use a water cooled system I could reroute the water to my water blanket and go camping with the PS3:
main()
{
for (int x=0;x<8;x++)
fork();
while(1);
}
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
I was gunna suggest maybe they rushed out the hardware...but we all know that's not the case :)
It's too bad the PS3 and Wii are launching in a few weeks and all these FUD stories will turn into bitter diatribes from Zonk about 'Sony fooling gamers with teh Hype' or some such rationalization in an attempt to deal with the failure of his year long anti-Sony/PS3 FUDfest.
Zonk's desperation to smear the PS3 has turned to a comical desperation recently. We are probably going to see some real crazy shit coming from Zonk over the next few weeks. Seeing someone just fucking lose it online is a rare and precious thing to see - like a total solar eclipse. And as millions of PS3 start flying off the shelves, I think we are going to be in for a doosey of a crackup from Zonk...
Too bad Zonk has pretty much driven away most of the people who use to turn to Slashdot for gaming news and discussion - gaming stories have turned into low traffic trainwrecks filled with the same handful of Sony haters and a few others who enjoy the daily anti-PS3 spectacle here.
"I hadn't gone to find actual evidence because I was just calling the guy for pulling a load of crap out of his ass."
Thing is, though, he was asking a question (admittedly his biases were showing), not making a statement.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Only if you consider a console with more processing power than older Cray Supercomputers for a fraction of the energy cost to be "sloppy". Let me put that in context to explain what I mean.
No, the question is if this is an efficient use of power today. Comparing the power usage of a PS3 to a Cray is totally irrelavent. If I designed a solar panel that was 5% efficient would I say "No, it's SUPER DUPER efficient compared to the solar panels of 30 years ago"? No, I'd compare its efficiency with todays solar panels, and today 5% efficiency sucks. That's why the power usage of the PS3 is compared to an Xbox360, or a modern gaming rig and not a Cray.
Personally I think the extremely parallel nature of the PS3 is going to not pan out well. Parallel processing is difficult except for specialized tasks. Everything I've read about video games points to them not being particularly parallel tasks.
This strategy *might* have worked reasonably well if confidence in Sony was still high. But with people boycotting them over everything from rootkits to Lik-Sang, PLUS Sony's extremely poor E3 presentations, PLUS their general arrogance when handling the public, I seriously doubt that they're going far this generation.
Eh, none of that really matters to the gaming world. Your average gamer doesn't sit around and read about the rootkit crap, Lik-Sang, or whatever. Even if they did, who cares as long as the games are cool? What I think will ultimately doom the PS3 is the damn things costs too much. Sony chose to put a Blu-Ray drive in the thing to try to prop-up the Blu-Ray market. That drove up the price by quite a bit, likely beyond what most people will pay for a new rig.
AccountKiller
Please learn something about computing and stop taking one unit of an entire system and assuming that's equal to overall performance. It's be like saying you're 10X smarter than someone else because you can complete those pattern matching puzzles 10X faster.
AccountKiller
Can't you just see all the kids getting up on Christmas morning, plugging in their brand new PS3's and browning out the USA?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
This coming from someone posting to
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
What do you mean gaming systems? There are graphic cards that draw 75W from the slot, and have two more 75W/ea additional power connectors on them. Do that math!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Tom, how could I have been so stupid?
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Do that math!
Ok.
75W + 2 * 75W = 225W
Leaving 175W for the rest of the gaming system to use, if we're talking a 400W budget.
(Not that I don't think 225W is a metric assload of draw for a video card, but you seem to be implying that just the video card eats up 400W...but your numbers clearly don't bear that out)
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
When I read this I dismissed it as more anti-Sony FUD, thinking the 360's power consumption was no better. I own a 360 and know it's power hungry and runs hot... but I discovered it only draws 160 watts. That's still a lot for a console relative to the first Xbox's 75 and PS2's 50, but 380 watts? That's insane.
Nope, no sig
I went back throough CNET, ZDnet, and god knows whatever blogs to try and find a source too and I'll be damned if someone hadn't done it already. Max power draw means nothing.
Just wait a year or so and Sony will release a better one with less heat and better hardware.
Just liek they did with the PS2 and the later PS2 slimline.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Don't post a submission if you can't be bothered to read the article. The PS3's power supply is 380W. It doesn't use that much power when you are playing, that's just the theoretical max the power supply can deliver. Gaming PCs often have 600W power supplies, the PS3 is entirely reasonable in comparison.
And of course, ~300 times more power and 8 times more power consumption isn't less efficient, its more efficient. So which is it Zonk: are you a troll, or just too stupid to do your job?
An easier, less controversial solution would be to require labelling for all electronic devices that would tell potential buyers how much energy the devices use. Something like "this devices uses a maximum of 200 watts when in use, 30 watts when idle, and 10 watts in standby mode". We have labels like these on water heaters and the like, why not smaller devices as well?
The real problem here is that if buyers can't distinguish a good product from a bad product, bad products will dominate the market. See A Market for Lemons for some insight into why this is so.
The PlayStation 2 was always a mess with the multiple processors on there, but the new generations, with Cell or the Xbox 360,e nt&task=view&id=2164&Itemid=2
make it much, much worse. They can quote these incredibly high numbers of giga-flops or tera-flops or whatever, but in reality,
when you do a straightforward development process on them, they're significantly slower than a modern high-end PC.
- John Carmack, http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_cont
How were these figures calculated? By taking the 127 from 100-127V range supported by the PSU and multiplying by 3A to get 381. 3 amps is what the FCC label says. But since the PS3 runs in Japan at 100V, the PS3 must demand at most 300 watts. At most. But that's just the PSU. It doesn't mean the device actually draws that power.
By way of illustration, the XBox 360 PSU run at 5 amps. 5 times 127V = 635 watts. So why no stories about the XBox demanding 635 watts? Why no stories that say the PS3 actually uses half the power of the 360? Because the XBox 360 consumes 160 watts in normal usage. It is entirely misleading to look at what the PSU can deliver to determine what the device actually uses.
The same will be true of the PS3. Unless some reputable site such as ARSTechnica, Toms Hardware etc. sticks a probe in the thing and states what power the thing draws this story should be treated as bollocks. Bollocks swallowed whole by Zonk as usual.
Could any other supposedly technical editor have let a story like this slip through? Another case for the 'zonked' files.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"when spinning a CD-ROM up to 52x"
.. writen at 52x where x is commonly 150Kb means.. ~6722 seconds = 1h 52min for a single disk.. damn reminds me of my first cd burner.. slow as all fucking get out
wait.. 50GB of data
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
The actual root of this story is a someones blog entry. True story. And now the story has been repeated and repeated and repeated and now it's apparently become a fact without context. The only fact is, is that the PS3's power adapter runs has a peak power of 380W. It doesn't require that power at all times. To compare the PS3's max power consumption to max power of a single Core Duo CPU seems disingenuous at best. Remember, the PS3 is an entire system, Cell Processor, Video Card, and HDD... So it has the components of a computer and it consumes at computer-esque amount of power. Maybe I am the only person who doesn't see this power consumption as relevant. I get that it will increase my power bill by few dollars every month, maybe even a few more dollars that Xbox 360, but that's ok.
And this an irrelevant fact, but I'd be curious to see the power consumption levels or a non-core Xbox 360 powering a HDD, and also requiring another outlet for it's HD-DVD add-on. I'd be suprised if we didn't see that 200W's for a core system creeping up into the +300W range as well.
At any rate, this story seems like a non-story to me.
You know how they got this information? They looked at the label on the power supply where it says 3.2A @ 120V~
If you look further down the article they show the label from the 360 power supply... where it says 5A @ 120V~
All someone did was multiply amperage by volts (3.2*120=384) and said, "The PS3 has a 380W power supply! Of course, if you go by that logic, the XBox 360 has a 600W power supply - and as has been cited here numerous times, that's just not the case. Can we say FUD?
Maybe I have this all wrong but 160 watts seems way too low for any modern rig, considering the juice required for the video cards. My power supply is over 600 watts and my two video cards need 150 watts each to run effectively. Does that not mean my beast uses far more than 160 watts?
Zonk ate my baby.
How can this comment with actual information be rated lower than those above with inaccurate information and speculation? I'm starting to hope the PS3 has iPod like success, just to piss off the haters here.
A decent gaming rig DOES indeed demand a 500+ Watt PSU, because there are very occasional spikes in power usage with such machines. The same is likely true for the PS3. It might spike at 300+, but have high sustained draws of MUCH less.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Nope, wrong. See my other reply to this thread.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
...Zonk3d!
Come back next week when Zonk claims the PS3's Real Time Clock runs at 14.31818MHz and asks in this day and age who would buy a 14MHz computer?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Last gen I was rooting against MS, since I hate them. My hate is a bit more evenly spread these days, and I despise Sony nearly as much now. I've been waiting for the Wii and PS3 to arrive before jumping on the next-gen console wagon.
But, just out of pure goddamn spite I'm leaning more and more towards the ludicrously expensive PS3.
On swallowing the price, however, it certainly helps that I *gasp* do in fact want a next-gen "DVD" player too. But that's not a big factor for me.
But.. since I'm broke, it'll most likely be quite some time before I get a new console. *Unless* I pick up a Wii on an impulse buy. That just depends on how much I like the games, and if my wife likes it.
As for the fucking douchbags on here calling for boycotts of Sony.. Hahaha, what a fucking joke. Wake the fuck up! If I'm going to boycott any of these companies, MS is first on my list. I do some OSS dev, and work almost exclusively with OSS software, and Sony is *far* more friendly towards OSS than MS. But I won't even boycott MS. Avoid using their software, yeah, just for business reasons though.
I boycott Walmart, Kraft, Exxon. You know.. companies that actually hurt people.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Did any of you anti-sony wii-suckers, and 360-girlz think that maybe Sony is deliberately over engineering the PSUs because somebody actually learned a lesson from the zippo batteris, hindenbooks and xbox 360 overheating issues?
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
The 360 which using the same misleading figures has an even bigger power supply than the PS3? The 360 that only draws 150-200W? Yeah, look at the 360, it shows how stupid and wrong this article is. Until someone is actually measuring power consumption, nobody can be claiming the PS3 is so power hungry. Some guy blathering on his blog isn't news for nerds, and its only here on slashdot because zonk is a fucktard.
If you follow the link in TFA, you will be redirected once more and end up at http://www.newlaunches.com/archives/sony_playstati on_3_further_details.php. That article simply claims the 380 watt power consumption, without offering further sources.
;-)
One poster there immediately replied "Absolutely wrong. It has a 380 watt power supply. That's no indication it actually draws that much!".
So take all of it with a shovel of salt
C - the footgun of programming languages
In the discussion on Newlaunches.com, the Newlaunches team itself gave a link to http://www.jp.playstation.com/support/qa-591.html. They claim it means "The PS3 will have a peak power consumption of 380 watts".
Sorry for claiming earlier that they did not back up their results (but I still think they could have put the link right in the article).
C - the footgun of programming languages
Lets take a serious comparison.
1996/7 , the ps1 was about 1.5X my weekly after tax salary outside usa, working on a decent job, but not uber top 5% professional.
2006, and the PS3 is equal to about 71% of my weekly salary, or still about 1.5X the average dude working so-so jobs.
So at flat numerical values , yes its a lot, but not really after you consider the evil bankers currency devaluation, though
we'll see after they bring about a forced depression-Mark2 in 2008 or earlier. All debtors will be slaves, unless we all
shoot the bankers, or marry their daughters.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
In Germany there is a tax on displacement, with a multiplier depending on the pollution class of the vehicle.
For cars using gasoline, this tax is a rather small part of the car's TCO (unless you are driving a really old stinker that does not even meet level 2 of the EU environmental standards). For a diesel it is more expensive BTW.
But there is no legislation that would limit you to a maximum displacement, sometimes you see even not-so-wealthy persons with an old US gas guzzler that has lots of displacement.
The price of liability insurance (mandatory) is tied to the likelihood of accidents with a particular model. Since the sort of drivers that likes to speed also prefers cars with lots of horsepower, those models are more often involved in accidents and tend to be more expensive in insurance. This is the closest we have to a "tax on horsepower".
But the biggest incentive to buy economic cars is indeed the cost of gasoline (and to be really efficient, it would have to be even higher).
C - the footgun of programming languages
There is certainly something going on with CNET these days, they seem to publish non investigated, stupid stuff against Intel competitors.
First "AMD will die, they sell good" story and now 380watt PSU story.
I'd fuel them with more fake numbers for uneducated, e.g. while folding 4 proteins (Increase.app) using 100% CPU power, my Quad G5 really uses 480 watts. If I was a regular user, it would be sub 200watt levels, there is a thing called "Bus Slewing" for God's sake.
Also:
". Whether it's related is unclear, but Apple certainly had problems putting G5 PowerPC chips into their laptops on account of heat and power-consumption issues -- eventually it gave up and switched to Intel for this reason, among others."
It is a freaking DESKTOP and SERVER CPU, designed with Workstation in mind nobody in PC World was dreaming about putting Xeon processors inside laptops. Nobody on Apple World except some naive fanboys were thinking a monster RISC chip like G5 would end up in a portable Mac.
Heat issues? Quad G5 is running in 40 Celsius here during normal work. While having ZERO idle time, folding 4 proteins same time, 64.6 Celsius.
I don't know who to blame, CNET or Mr. Jobs?
You just pointed out why taxing the manufacturer is what works. The tax is passed to the consumer! The consumer leans towards the cheaper product. Thus, the more efficient item would have less tax, lower price, and would sell more! WAHOO!
It is just too bad that taxes are ususally implemented improperly, in order to help the big businesses make more money. Because of this everyone screams foul when the idea of a tax is mentioned.
That explains why a lot of posters who jump against anything with the word tax...though I would expect smarter comments from this crowd. What about gas they say? Well, clearly the price of gas isn't high enough yet to have this impact....which is why the price of gas will continue rising. Too bad most of this cost is hidden to Americans, or else it would work. What does a gallon of gas cost in the U.S. after you factor in what the Govt spends to protect/produce/transport all of this oil? I know private companies do some of this, but the govt spends far more. This should be made up for with taxes at the pump, not taxes elsewhere...then maybe consumers would start to change.
For many who may be like me, you may already be cramming quite a bit onto one circuit/power bar. In my case, I've got:
TV
DVD Player+Surround Head Unit
VCR
Various Consoles
Lamp
One can fairly safely assume that only one console may be running at a time, but since the surround it piped through the DVD it's assumed to be on, and the VCR may be on (recording, etc) as well as the lamp in various situations. That gives us:
lamp: 50/100/150W variable
TV: unknown
DVD/Surround: At least 150W+sub in my case, some units are up to 500W for the surround
So you've got anywhere from about 250/300W up to 700-800W power draw without the console. Throw in 350W for the PS/3 and you may be over 1000W, possibly flipping the circuit-breaker on your power bar (especially the el-cheapo ones many people use) and/or possibly on a house circuit depending on whatever else is sharing the power.
I don't find it a reason to not by the PS3, but it's definately a good reason to be careful where and how you're plugging the sucker in.
Zonk wastes 8X more time posting fanboy articles