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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.
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.
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?
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.
No we don't need another tax. It's called the power bill. You pay for it there. WTF is a "tax" going to accomplish, other than fattening the pockets of politicians, complicating our unbelievably complicated beuracracy even more, and making the poor even poorer?
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.
> No we don't need another tax. It's called the power bill.
Uh...yeah, you'd put tax on the power bill, so that you get charged a proportionate amount.
> WTF is a "tax" going to accomplish, other than fattening the pockets of politicians, complicating our unbelievably complicated
> beuracracy even more, and making the poor even poorer?
It'll force people to use power more wisely - they'll have to do stuff like turn lights off in rooms they're not in, and decide thing like `do I really need 32 devices on `stand-by`` instead of turning them off and incurring a minute or so wait for them to warm up.
If you were truly concerned about poor people then you'd know that it's the poorest people on the planet who'll be taking the brunt of the suffering caused by climate change such as decreasing supplies of water, increasing heat requiring air conditioning for survival rather than comfort, etc.
The tax could be spent on research into power saving technology, solar panels etc.
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.
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.
Great Scots!
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
- 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").
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.
I'll be powering my PS4 with plutonium I stole from some Libyans. They wanted me to build them a nuclear bomb but I just gave them some pinball parts. They didn't know the difference.
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
It's "Great Scott", you idiot! "Great Scott" You sound like a damn fool when you say it wrong.
"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)
Ah yes, taxes. The common solution to the "people are dumb" problem!
People are too dumb to know they are buying a power-wasting product. So taxes will fix it!
People are too dumb to buy CFL bulbs instead of old style bulbs. Taxes are the solution! (see a previous slashdot article where someone suggested taxes regarding CFLs. Similar situation.)
In fact according to slashdot comments, taxes can fix any economic problem!
Government: knowing what's better for you since 1933.
Vote Libertarian
Is your terror cell living in terror? Is your safe-house not so safe? If so, read the New York Times, the jihad journal.
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.
Don't tax the consumer, tax the companies.
Promote Charity on Myspace, Show Your Colours!
It'll force people to use power more wisely - they'll have to do stuff like turn lights off in rooms they're not in, and decide thing like `do I really need 32 devices on `stand-by`` instead of turning them off and incurring a minute or so wait for them to warm up.
What if these devices had an internal battery for maintaining the stand-by circuitry - would that make any difference to power usage? (Make it semi-internal - so that it could be removed/replaced).
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
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.
Taxing the companies is taxing the consumer.
Oh yeah, even better. Like US companies don't have to pay enough tax already. Yeah, let's see what else the US government can do to drive more companies out of the country.
People are too dumb to know cigarettes are unhealthy. Taxes'll fix that!
People are too dumb to know alcohol is unhealthy. Taxes'll fix that too!
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
> What if these devices had an internal battery for maintaining the stand-by circuitry - would that make any difference to power
> usage?
It would increase it. You'd need to charge them AND provide supply to the device itself, and it wouldn't be 100% efficient.
Better yet, simply educate consumers. They will prefer energy-efficient products, which will result in more energy-efficient products being introduced. Hooray for the free market!
"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)
If you were truly concerned about poor people then you'd know that it's the poorest people on the planet who'll be taking the brunt of the suffering caused by climate change such as decreasing supplies of water, increasing heat requiring air conditioning for survival rather than comfort, etc.
But those people can simply get a third job in order to pay for the electricity bill that the PS3 that they bought with money from their second job consumes!
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
If it took 1W/h to keep the device on standby before, it will still take 1W/h to keep it on standby. You'll charge the energy storage unit (battery, capacitor, whatever) while the device is running, and when off, the power will come from the stored energy. Ignoring the losses for storage in a battery (e.g.: heat produced during the charging of batteries) how would it increase the consumption? Specifics please.
> Yeah, like the prohibition forced people to use alcohol more wisely and taxes on gasoline forced people to use bicycles. This may
> strike you as odd, but the solution to everything is not legislation, and it's not taxation.
Prohibition was an attempt to get people to stop drinking. I'm talking about putting tax on electricity usage. I don't see the connection, except that in this case, people making their own electricity would be a good thing, and would be encouraged, and not taxed.
> This may strike you as odd, but the solution to everything is not legislation, and it's not taxation.
Straw man. I'm not suggesting taxing everything - just making it expensive to take part in activities that are unsustainable and damage the environment.
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
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."
Uh...yeah, you'd put tax on the power bill, so that you get charged a proportionate amount. I already pay $200+ a month in electricity for my little apartment. Power bills have nearly doubled over the past few years. All a tax does is make worse matters worse.
I once monitored my power usage - leaving just a single thing on while at work and killing all other circuits (even my refrigerator). I found my biggest power drains were the fridge, air conditioner, incandescent light bulbs, tv, and my stereo. My computer didn't even register compared to those (as it doesn't drain full power constantly). I now have my fridge set to a lower cooling level, I avoid the AC as much as possible (Houston sucks in that area), I use all-florescent lights, and I make sure the stereo is turned completely off when not in use. It helped a bit - I'm just under the $200 mark now.
I don't see the PS3 as being that horrid a power waster compared to other inefficient household appliances.
The tax could be spent on research into power saving technology, solar panels etc.
Oh, but it won't. You see, taxes are legislated with the suggestion or initial detail that the resulting funds be allocated to specific pet projects. Those pet projects are then typically cancelled or mothballed, and the funds go into the main cookie jar.
It's not a grim master plan by politicians to take our money - it's just the nature of taxation.
Also, as for climate change... the root cause of that has little to do with the efficiency of our power or our fossil fuels. The single biggest threat facing our planet is the fact that there are 6-billion-and-rising humans, consuming food, space, and water. Global warming is bad the the US, but on the whole not that terrible for the world. What IS bad is the rampant population explosion, deforestation by those same "poorest people" so that they can eat and breed (which is what people do - we are no different here), and the scourging of the oceans and jungles to pull every last morsel of fish and wildlife in order to feed families.
The answer is not to tax our power consumption. If I knew what the answer was, I'd gladly give it, but I guarantee it doesn't lie in taxation.
Do not confuse "Freedom of Choice" with "Free Will".
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...
The post you replied to suggested taxing the producer of the hardware, NOT the consumer.
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.
Looks like you've already got it. It takes more energy because storing the power in a battery is not 100% efficient. Why would you add complexity (battery+charging circuit) for a net loss, however small, in efficiency? Also, would you care to explain what exactly a W/h is?
You don't ignore the losses for storage in a battery, e.g. the OP's "not 100% efficient" comment.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
So then, when I pay my power bill every month, based on usage, where is that money going? Is it vanishing into thin air? People ALREADY pay for their power usage. They already pay for the power plants. They're paying for the scrubbers on the smokestacks. What do you think the power bill pays for, exactly? The gov't says that coal plants must implement procedures X to prevent pollution. It costs $x. Our power bills go up 0.00001% of $x to pay for said procedures. What part of this process are you not understanding?
Nope, no sig
i'll give you your answer:
don't have kids! or have at most two. if every person on the planet only spawned 2 children, the world population would flatline. i work with people raising 3, 4, or even 5 kids, and it makes me sick to think about how bad that is for the environment. if i have children, i plan on having only 1.
i know that this is slashdot, and most ppl here are single (myself included, dispite my most recent journal entry) so having kids isn't likely anyway.... besides, being single leaves you both time and money that you can devote to other things.
Don't call me back. Give me a call back. Bye. So yeah. But bye our, well, but alright we are on a shirt this chill.
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.
I know - which is why I said "ignoring those losses." The OP suggested that, excluding those losses, an energy storage system would be less efficient.
> People ALREADY pay for their power usage.
> What part of this process are you not understanding?
I think you're missing the bit about sustainable energy consumption, and the need to encourage people to use less energy. It's not that people aren't paying - just that they're not paying enough to cover the damage that's being done, and to make energy consumption sustainable. There'd be nothing wrong with using the current amount of power if it came from wind, solar energy etc, but sadly it's not, because oil is economically more sensible, but less green. If oil were taxed to the extent that solar energy,wind etc became cheaper, then people would use less energy, and the energy they DID use would be less damaging. The knock-on effect of the massive take-up of other energy sources would make them cheaper and encourage research into more efficient versions.
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?
We'll find you. You won't know how, but we'll find you.
The Libyans
Qualitas edurus commercium, nullus penitus net rimor, nullus deus beneficium
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.
Not if they're high enough to actually make a difference, they don't. Try visiting a coutry where gasoline taxes have pushed the cost to over $7/US gallon, and you might notice people buying more fuel-efficient vehicles.
"If you believe that, then there should be a tax against the manufactures of the appliances, not the consumers. After all, it is not the fault of the consumer that the manufacturer decided to create their devices so they are never really off. "
Get real, when taxes are raised on manufactures (make that any cost added to the manufactures) it will always be passed to the consumer via higher prices for the product. The only case it could work is if another manufacturer comes along and makes a more efficient thing for cheaper. But since it is usually more expensive to make something more efficient that will probably not happen.
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.
No, I'm pretty sure taxing the companies is taxing the companies. Arguably the companies would increase the price of their product to compensate, but then again they might not - However companies need clear incentives to think green, and taking the green in their pocket away seems like a good place to start, if they don't meet a given set of standards.
Promote Charity on Myspace, Show Your Colours!
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
I'm very touchy about the idea of limiting how many children any individual is allowed to have (within reason), but I am inclined to think that no matter how materially poor a society is, it can still be required to meet certain obligations before assistance is given from outside (beyond emergency issues).
When you have countries where the population expands explosively, without any effort put into infrastructure, the only reason they're able to continue to do so is the influx of medicine, food, and externally-supported technology. It's cruel to totally abandon developing countries to their own fate, but it's short-sighted to simply fuel their unrestricted growth far beyond their native means, at the expense of other developing nations that try to put an honest effort into their future.
Nature has a means of controlling population growth. When the population exceeds local resources, when the region lacks the mercantilism to obtain external resources by normal means, and when global society restricts the militarism and genocide required to obtain further resources by more direct means, the only other alternatives are famine and temporary fallback (a harsh but most common solution), restructuring to adapt to a larger population (difficult, but all the major powers went through it many times), or outside assistance (which by itself solves nothing).
When the Roman Empire pulled back from Europe, the societies left behind lacked the means to support their populations, and without Roman assistance quickly fell to low numbers. Periodic population explosions were quickly followed by die-offs - it's sad, but it's natural. It required major restructuring, done differently in different places, for European nations to escape from being poverty-stricken third-world nations (or the equivilant for their day). If the (at the time) affluent Arab states or the Eastern Roman Empire had started bringing in food to support the population (as well as advanced post-classical weapons), Europe would be very little from Africa (which has considerable resources, but lacks the structure to use it effectively).
In general, I think the best way we can help third-world nations, in their long-term interests, is to only help them avoid the most extreme disasters (which galvanize, but rarely truly help in any capacity), and use our power to slaughter the more destructive forces that disrupt them (being careful to avoid confusing violent shifts in power (an unavoidable part of development) with "destructive" matters (ie power-mad warlords)). It's a little like a chick hatching from an egg - left to it's own, the chick will eventually hatch - but it has to be protected from outside dangers, and it has to come out on it's own or it's doomed to be a cripple.
Do not confuse "Freedom of Choice" with "Free Will".
While the European eco-label scheme has resulted in far more efficient products, so much so that they've had to supplement the A-G ratings with A+ and A++ for some device types, you'll get some people who simply don't get it. Like the person who wrote into the Metro free paper recently to complain about plans to prevent climate change, saying the "green fascists" were coming to take our standby buttons. If people seriously consider having to stand up to turn off the TV is worth protesting, then no amount of carrot is going to work.
I'm scared of numbers that can't be written as a fraction. It's an irrational fear.
"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.'
"increasing heat requiring air conditioning for survival rather than comfort"
if you are ever in a situation where you feel this is needed.. may i recommed digging a whole.. the land is your friend.. sorry but this is bull shit.. "air conditioning" is always for comfort - you may use it for survival but you are doing wrong.. heat waves that kill people in citys is due to how we build our citys not because they lack a necisity
'...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.
... I have a large-ish 1bedroom apartment. I paid $50 last month that included some pretty cold days and in-efficient windows. Sounds like you need to replace some appliances, or, I dunno, not run AC so often.
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?
What part of the country are you in? Until the past few weeks, Houston was pretty hot. Not quite July triple-digit heat, but still in the mid 90's most of the time. Hot enough to where weighing a hot apartment vs a higher bill tipped in favor of a higher bill.
We only have a week of winter, on average, so I don't worry about the heating bills.
As for a $50 bill, you must get cheaper power up there. After the price increases, $50 is nearly unachievable (and requires significant sacrifice - my refrigerator alone would east a significant chunk of that).
Do not confuse "Freedom of Choice" with "Free Will".
> if you are ever in a situation where you feel this is needed.. may i recommed digging a whole.. the land is your friend.. sorry but
> this is bull shit.. "air conditioning" is always for comfort - you may use it for survival but you are doing wrong.. heat waves
> that kill people in citys is due to how we build our citys not because they lack a necisity
The heat kills people in countries such as Thailand and Turkey, especially the old and ill, which is why they use air conditioning a lot there.
CO. I'm not saying never use it, but $150 just from AC? That's crazy talk.
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.
I'm well aware of the situation outside the United States, seeing how I was raised in a European country where the cost of gasoline is currently sky high. However, I would point out that additional reasons are probably at play there, such as taxes on horsepower, or limits tied to income that restrict the maximum displacement of a vehicle one may buy.
yes but if they would build into the ground.. the earth has a constant temp a certian depths. why use energy for air conditioning when the earth will give you a constant temp year round??
it is more a problem in the way socity handles populated areas than it is a lack of energy
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
i never said make it manditory. (look what is happening to china! granted males are prefered there and females are being aborted....) but if enough people do it, overpopulatoin would soon (in geological time scales) return to theory rather than fact.
i don't think we disagree there
oh and...
gal.va.nize[gal-vuh-nahyz]
-verb (used with object), -nized, -niz.ing.
1. to stimulate by or as if by a galvanic current.
2. Medicine/Medical. to stimulate or treat (muscles or nerves) with induced direct current (distinguished from faradize).
3. to startle into sudden activity; stimulate.
4. to coat (metal, esp. iron or steel) with zinc.
Don't call me back. Give me a call back. Bye. So yeah. But bye our, well, but alright we are on a shirt this chill.
So you want more energy to be produce then you put in? For the first 20% of the supply being un-reliable (e.g solar and wind) you do not need to worry about storage(read that somewhere don't know where)
My Transformation Website
Kindle Books http://www.catprog.org/rev
Interactive CYOA http://www.catprog.org/st
If everyone had 2 children the population would decrease. You need 2.1 per person to make up for accidents before they make children
My Transformation Website
Kindle Books http://www.catprog.org/rev
Interactive CYOA http://www.catprog.org/st
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
Tax money being used to research green technology? I admire you're idealisem, but lets be resonable. The government doent exactly have a good track record for wisely spending revenue sources.
You're absolutely right. Don't tax Sony, or they might take their company overseas. Like to Japan or something.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
Why wouldn't they increase the price? They're under pressure to make a profit, and a new tax cuts into that profit, so they increase prices. It's really that simple, and very few businesses WON'T pass on the cost of taxes to the consumer.
and a decreasing population is a problem how? :)
Don't call me back. Give me a call back. Bye. So yeah. But bye our, well, but alright we are on a shirt this chill.
It might make the cost of power more representative of its true cost. All those power stations are fucking the environment at a rapid rate. It's going cost some serious cash to deal with the consequences. We're going to have to pay some time soon and higher energy taxes would both reduce consumption and put the greatest cost burden on those contributing the most to the problem.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
Or a modern-day Republican
The major parties see different problems, but the solution is the same: more government intervention
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
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.
The argument the UK government is making against standby features in electronic products, is that it takes the two megawatt power stations to provide 25 million households with enough electricity to keep all these gadgets online (TV , DVD player, set-top box, video-recorder, TiVo, digital-TV decoder). Not including the energy loss in the power lines trying to provide all this electricity.
Banning the standby feature is one way to reduce this requirement - the alternative is to switch everything off- or have a battery backup instead.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Considering even wealthy Americans think the PS3 is expensive, what makes you think the poor will be able to afford one?
Zonk wastes 8X more time posting fanboy articles
Don't you know? The Iranians already have the PS 4, that's why they want nuclear power!
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