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?"

Comments

Utter bollocks

[DrXym]

This story is utter bollocks that has been parroted from one blog to another without the slightest thought gone into checking if it might be true or not. Just follow the links and speculation from blogs all the way down.

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.