I think this article is fascinating. Very thoroughly investigated and objectively commented on. I’d be interested to see how the older retro systems perform, for instance MS-II vs Nintendo, Mega Drive vs SNES, C64 vs Atari-800, Atari ST vs Amiga500.

Love your work!

Great article, thank you for this insightful info. To help put things in persepctive, could you add some comparison data to see how consoles rate to other “must have” devices in the home? Would be curious to know how game consoles energy usage compares against refridgerators, 75w lamp, microwave, stereo, dvd player, etc.

Love it!

Great article. Very interesting read. Further validates my patience in waiting for the Wii (best games, lowest power, nice).

One item lacking though is methodology. It would be good for your readers to know how you went about your experiment (so they can reproduce it and concur or disagree with your approach). Did you use a current probe? How did you extract the instantaneous power usage? etc.

Thanks.

you seem to forget that the 360 may use almost 10 times the power but its at least 500 times more powerful than a ps2 infact it can draw 2450 times more polygons per second and has 16 times the ram to power and wireless controlers etc so in reality it is far far more energy efficent

Interesting article but I fail to see how 20 bucks for over 700 hours of XBOX use is disturbing.

Interesting article. I’m amazed that the Gamecube is so low compared to the PS2 and XBox. Going with the other person who commented, I am also curious as to your methodology.

“Is double the energy worth anti-aliasing and a wireless controller?”

When it amounts to maybe $4-5 over the course of an entire year…. uh… yes. Yes it is.

What would also be interesting to see if there is any significant difference between the eariler and later generations of the PS2.

Good work guys.

This is Standby Power Consumption, meaning how much energy it takes when it is “off” but still plugged in. I think all of these devices are very energy efficient. Paying 53 cents or $2.63 to have your game console plugged in for an entire year is very cheap. These companies should be applauded for their energy efficiency.

It is not unusual for for home theater products to leak 27, 37 or even 80 watts when “off”! So, 2W is not really a big deal.

I really liked this article. However I doubt very many people who have the money to affort these consoles would really be so concered over a couple dollars to play over 700 hours of video games. I too would also like to see how these consoles compared to alternative devices such as DVD players, MP3 players, and other things that these consoles can do.

I only have the computer at this point. I know eventually it will be able to run all the console games. console gaming is killing pc gaming… etc. etc.

It would be cool to do a really in depth comparison since the beiginning with like nes snes atari etc. with graphs!

I see what everyone means. Obviously, even the biggest most powerful machines don’t really consume too much energy plugged in. I think what’s really disturbing about it is that, well, sure your ONE X-Box 360 doesn’t consume too much for sure, and in fact probably all the devices in your home don’t consume “too much” per se, but the fact that a whole lot of people at least have one computer, if not several, some type of video game systems, many TV’s, microwaves, and so on. So all those people who aren’t really using much tends to add up to a pretty decent amount.

Granted, I’m not exception. In fact, I’m sure I’m probably a good portion of the problem with the way I run things, but in the grand scale is I think where it starts to hurt, Very good points to consider though, if it’s done on a large scale.

I guess that explains my energy bill…

Xbox 360
3 PCs
2 Laptops
1 Server

Plus many other electro-gizmos. If I shut down all of the fun stuff, I could save $100 per month! Oh well, it’ll never happen, I just need to get a raise

this is lame. 2 bucks a year isn’t that big of a deal to me.

I think you need to check your math.
a 2W draw is 2*24*365/1000 KWh/y = 17.52KWh/y, which looks right.
However,
a 0.2W draw is 0.2*24*365/1000 KWh/y = 1.752KWh/y (1/10 of the 2W draw, right?)
the 0.1W draw should be half of the 2W: 0.876KWh/y

So what am I missing?

Don’t forget the TV, which totally dominates all these figures. Even a large LCD usually draws more than the XBox 360 when on.

“If you see the little red standby light you can rest assured your throwing away money.”

My throwing away money? A typo that obvious makes me seriously question this article’s credibility.

the 360 is a hog wow.. just wait for the PS3 then we can compare..

the ps2 isn’t the same gen not even close and sony touting the ps3 as “better” than a PC.

“you seem to forget that the 360 may use almost 10 times the power but its at least 500 times more powerful than a ps2 infact it can draw 2450 times more polygons per second and has 16 times the ram to power and wireless controlers etc so in reality it is far far more energy efficent”

Man, what a douche. This article isn’t about which console is more powerful, just what the energy consumption of each are in comparison to each other. Leave your fanboism aside for a sec and realise he’s talking about hardware power usage, and hardware power usage alone.

By the way, its spelt ‘efficient’.

It would be interesting to see if the PS2 and the Xbox’s power usage went down over thier life time. Is there any change you could compare a version 1 of both products to the recient versions?

Also, once the Xbox360 switches over to the 65nm process on their processor the power usage should go down. It would be interesting to see how much.

The efficiency is related to the application, so if you were talking about a compute farm, it might be more efficient.

By the way, it’s spelt “it’s”

To be honest, paying an extra few $ a year means nothing to me and i’d happily keep my console(s) on as usual.

What the article doesn’t mention is the other peripherals needed…such as a TV and sound system. Especially with next gen systems you would want to have something like a 50″ plasma and a nice sound system. Now powering those for 2 hrs a day for a year would definitely add up to some $$$.

This whole article fails the scientific method.

Since it tends to fixate on the xbox 360 and ps2, there is no mention of the models which are used. Besides for the shady failure of the usage of powers of ten, there is no mention of how the author managed to read the watt usage. Did he turn of the power to the rest of his house, and measure the meter directly? Did he check the current at the outlet?

Someone else should do this correctly, and post it on a single page.

20$ a YEAR…

Wow, anyone complaining about spending 20$ for the ENTIRE year on energy costs to play great games (I’m looking at the most expensive system here), needs to quit worrying about all that ‘wasted’ energy… 20$, for godsakes, you can make that BEGGING on the STREETS in a day. You could MAKE THAT WHILE PLAYING THE GAME, by doing point and click ads on your PC.

Who CARES if it costs 20$.

It’s not about that it’s only $20, it’s about if everybody has 10 watts an hr being wasted in energy leakage, that adds up over 1000 households to quite a bit. # California’s electricity usage growth has been 15% from 1990-2000.
# California has not built a new power plant in the last ten years. Some new ones are now under construction. Part of the reason is that residents do not want power plants or power lines in their residential or business areas.
# California is now finding some 3,000 megawatts a day from out of state.

It matters a bit to cut this down as much as you can. So “OMG WHO CARES $20 A YEAR” is really ignorant. Conservation can lower demand as much as 1000 MW as seen during the california power crisis. And that means less coal + less crap put into the air + less global warming.

I probably lose more money by keeping three computers plugged in (granted one is a Mac and the other is a laptop), a wifi network running, a big screen TV wiht it’s Motorola DVR plugged in and a microwave, toaster, refridgerator, air purifier, large box fan and a lamp plugged in. But here’s the thing about that: I can afford the energy consumption and I don’t feel the least bit bad about having it all plugged in.

In my home, we previously had an X-Box, PS2, Dreamcast, N64, 3 PCs (minus the laptop: I upgraded), 1 iBook and an older iMac plugged in at all times. All were in standby or low-power mode at all times. My electricity bill was $200 every single month while this was ocurring. My bill after the X-Box, Ps2, N64, 3 PCs (laptop now added), iBook and older iMac were removed? $160. Coincidence? Yes, actually. The roommates I had that owned those devices moved out *the same month my electricity rates went down*. I should be recieving my next bill for a full month without them or their stuff plugged into my home shortly. If it’s less than $160, we’ll know that they were using copious amounts of energy.

The biggest energy whore in my home is the gas heater. I hate that thing. Despite it being cheaper to get natural gas, I pay more for the priveledge of its use.

“Who CARES if it costs 20$.”

By the end of 2007, Xbox 360 cumulative sales are projected to reach 11.1 mil. units.
I’m starting to care

I don’t understand why so many people say this article is irrelevant and stupid. Such measurements need to be done and then everyone can reach it’s own conclusion. I beleive 20$ is nothing, but now at least I know!
Theyre experiments and surveys carried out all over the world every day, which produce unsignificant results, but ill are worthy because we know the results are insignificant …
So thank you for this article.
PS : please do not judge my grammar and spelling because my mother tongue is not English …

What you forgot - is the power required to run the TV or projector! A CRT requires 100-200W when running, and can use 5W standby (older models have very inefficient power supplies.) So, except for the hoggiest of consoles, I think the power requirement of the console itself is lost in the “noise”. Still, interesting measurement.

I fail to see how 20 bucks for over 700 hours of XBOX use is disturbing.You fail to see how playing 700 hours of Xbox is disturbing?Wow, you need a girlfriend

Dave Says:
June 18th, 2006 at 10:09 am
“you seem to forget that the 360 may use almost 10 times the power but its at least 500 times more powerful than a ps2 infact it can draw 2450 times more polygons per second and has 16 times the ram to power and wireless controlers etc so in reality it is far far more energy efficent”

Man, what a douche. This article isn’t about which console is more powerful, just what the energy consumption of each are in comparison to each other. Leave your fanboism aside for a sec and realise he’s talking about hardware power usage, and hardware power usage alone.

By the way, its spelt ‘efficient’.

I think the point the guy was making, is that whilst the xbox 360 may consume the most power its components are more “powerful” thus requiring more energy. From that point of view it is unfair to say that the xbox 360 is a power hog, however, on just the basis of power consumption then yes the xbox 360 is a power hog.

I don’t think the monetary cost is the point here. http://spong.com/article/7902?cb=937 I believe these are 2004 figures, but if all of those 74 million playstations are left in “off” mode (by that I mean the power saving mode they opearate in) that’s a waste of 1296480000 kwh (provided I’ve done my maths right). That’s a lot of energy wasted, especially if you then start factoring in other game consoles, and let’s not forget other house hold items. Perhaps it’s time manufacturers come up with a way of not having any electrical waste?

I find it very interesting the rate at which you are calculating the price per kWh at. I thought I was paying alot for power at 8.3 cents per kWh.

That aside, very cool article. I have always found it intersting that they still consume electricity while in the off mode, however I was not aware of the amount that they consumed in standby.

How about breaking out the ol’ N64, SNES, and NES?

Thanks for this analysis, it is very interesting. So, as of the end of 2005, Microsoft had sold 22 million XBox 360s. If each of those sat idle they would each leak 17.52 kWh per year. Juggling the numbers a bit, that’s 20 million times 20 kW hours per year — 400,000,000 kW hours per year, or 400 gigawatts per year, just to have these devices plugged in. PS2 and 360 sales are similar; add the PS2 and the rest and say that’s about 1,000 gigawatts a year just to sit idle.

1kWh = 3.61E6 joules; 1 barrel of oil = 6.1E9 joules; therefore 1,000 gigawatts is about 590 Million Barrels of Oil per Year, which is just enough power to keep the things turned off.

“1kWh = 3.61E6 joules; 1 barrel of oil = 6.1E9 joules; therefore 1,000 gigawatts is about 590 Million Barrels of Oil per Year, which is just enough power to keep the things turned off.”

I bet it really pisses you off that I’m running my air conditioning with the windows open right now, doesn’t it?

Oh, also, my XBOX 360 has been on and idling in the dashboard since I got it. Not to mention I have 3 computers with CRT’s that do nothing but display screensaver 24 hours a day.

Can you calculate how much oil I’m wasting?

Whoops … to amend my own post, Nintendo GameCube is about 20 million units; the PS2 is actually more like 100 million units (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox#Market_share) … adjust numbers accordingly.

15 cents per kWh is very high, how many states are really paying that much?

According to this page the average cost of residential electricity was 9.53¢/kWh in the U.S. in 2006, so why was 15 cents per kWh used? I’m guessing finding out I’m wasting only $1.50 on electricity a year by leaving my PS2 plugged in isn’t as dramatic.

“1kWh = 3.61E6 joules; 1 barrel of oil = 6.1E9 joules; therefore 1,000 gigawatts is about 590 Million Barrels of Oil per Year, which is just enough power to keep the things turned off.”

Actually, your math is off by three orders of magnitude. 1000 gigawatt-hours (or 1 terawatt-hour) is 3.6*10^15 joules, divided by 6.1*10^9 joules is 590,163. That’s 590 THOUSAND barrels, not million.

Wow the majority of people who are leaving comments arnt to bright. This isnt some bloggers attempt to tell people “OMg your wastin so much energy turn off ur 3shittys” The person was obviously just having fun doing comparisons. You people need to just seriously relax and just enjoy the read. While this isnt very useful information its still fun to know.

It was pretty funny to see the xbox fan boi who left his comment compare the 3shitty a ps2 though, he got a bit anal :D.

I thought this article was fun and interesting to read, and thats all I really wanted to get out of it not some ingenious information that can save me hundreds of dollars switching to Geico. Good job guys.

http://maps.unomaha.edu/Peterson/funda/Sidebar/OilConsumption.html
Matthew Pancia has a point… the US consumes 19 million barrels of oil per day. According to your 590,000 barrels a year, that would add about another 1500 barrels per day. Nice try though.

like black text on grey background
can you get any more stupid

Is it possible that the energy costs of expending calories (buying food to power your body) in order to reach around to the power cord to plug and unplug your ps2 might outweigh the costs of keeping it plugged in in the first place?

xbox 360 has 3 x 3.2ghz so shouldn’t it be listed as 3 x 3.2ghz or 9600mhz as they arent counting the other 2 cores?

The Xbox 360 doesn’t have 3 processors. It has a single triple core processor. It certainly does not equate to 9.6 Ghz. Also an interesting fact about all the first gen Xbox 360 titles is that they have so far only been using a single thread (this might not be true for the newest games). I dont know how much that would impact the results though. Good Read

You didn’t calculate performance per watt. At best you calculated clock cycles per watt.

The cores in the Xenon are relatively simplisitc, with fewer execution units than a traditional design, and the long pipeline which allows such a high clock speed brings high instruction latency (even compared to other deep pipeline deisgns like the P4 and PPC970) and high cost to any branch misses. Couple that with relatively small caches for the design and what’s rumoured to be a somewhat crude branch predictor.

It’s impossible to evaluation real world performance without any real world benchmarking, which I don’t think has happened, but it’s obvious that a straight clock speed comparison has bupkis to do with performance per watt.

Glad to see some people understand the scope of the problem. For every person $20 over a year is nothing, but 10 million consoles wasting $200 million dollars of electricity is a big issue. Hardly anyone has mentioned wireless controllers either.

Obviously, the following is not accurate - but it might make you think. Let’s pretend all 10 million 360s have a wireless pad. Now let’s pretend everyone is using AA batteries. Let’s pretend on average, each person needs 2x AAs per month, and that’s pretty conservative. So, each person uses 24 batteries a year, which is 240 million AA cells wasted on wireless controllers. Imagine how big that pile of batteries is - and those things don’t biodegrade. I’m no environmentalist, but I can tell when something is just needlessly wasteful, and that’s bad.

Several posters have questioned the cost of electricity. Just to add another data point, I pay Nstar 21.6 cents per kWh in the metro Boston suburbs.

Which versions of the PS1 and PS2 are used here? The later PSone and PStwo versions use substantially less energy thanks to dies shrinks of their chipsets making for less power draw and reduced cooling needs.

Chartered Semiconsudctor has announced they will be supplying a revised 65nm version of the Xbox 360 CPU and Sony has announced similar plans for the Cell.

It would be a good expansion of the article to test both the older and newer versions of the PS1 and PS2, and further testing later versions of the Xbox 360 and PS3 as they become available. It might be interesting to see how much cheaper the newer revisions are to operate.

The one problem I had with this was the cycles per dollar. The justification for the XBox is that you should multiply the frequency per processor * the number of processors to get the total speed Microsoft must have same breakthrough parallel processing algorithms to juice that much performance out of the set of processors. As a rule of thumb, 3 processors doesn\\\’t equal 3 times performance. With all the overhead of synchronizing those processors and avoiding hazards, 3 times is the LIMIT of performance. That is, unless they each work on completely individual tasks, 1 does graphics, 1 controls network/wireless, 1 executes game instructions, then it\\\’s nearly impossible to get 3 times the useful cycles overall. I think a more realistic goal would to have made it a more conservative multiplier like 1.5 or 2. Also, this doesn\’t count hazards within the processor and assumes that every instruction takes the same amount of cycles to run (which it doesn\\\’t when accessing RAM or the hard disk). Even though it is a very relaxed view at performance per cost, I think these issues should have been at least discussed by the authors. Even looking at the number of instructions executed per watt is useless since these systems use multiple different architectures (different number of pipelines, caching systems, etc.) that aren\’t directly measurable. Also, at least for the previous generation of consoles (PS2, GameCube, XBox), I know there are a number of games that exist for all three platforms. I think these should have been chosen for a more accurate power usage during the game testing.

As we mentioned we tested multiple games to ensure the readings were accurate. We just listed the racing games we used for helps in comparison. And yes the 360 having multiple cores but not multiple processors makes it very difficult to determine MHz per watt. Thanks for your insight.

I agree with ‘Cuddlez”. All those 2kWhrs add up. And I find it’s not entirely surprising that majority of people immediately think “wow, that’s like $20″, not, “wow that probably about 3-400kgs of coal”. Because that’s the point. I know most americans aren’t really aware/don’t really care about global-warming, (to the point that your government still protests that US pollution is nothing to do with global warming) but we are screwing the planet up. Sorry if thats too “eco” or “hippy” for you to deal with, but I’d like to be able to play Halo2 or whatever, knowing that by switching the thing off at the wall when I’m done, I’m doing small amount to try and ensure the world my grandchildren live in isn’t a polluted manky shit-hole (unless they move to LA). It’s not about the money. Money’s just pretty paper.

I’ll leave you with a lovely native-american saying that too many euro-americans haven’t heard:

Only after the last tree has been felled, the last river poisoned, and the last herd shot will people realise that oil can’t be drunk and money can’t be eaten.

$20 is not a lot for playing 7XX hours of Xbox. That thing is a hog, no doubt about it, but for the Benchmarks to watts comparisons in each technical department is a total drag if you’re willing to do the Math.

Compared to its low specs in todays market, it’s the biggest loser [tehehe]

I probably wasted more money reading all these comments on my laptop than my off xbox wastes in a year. lol

Cool article, but who cares about that small amount per year? I leave my computer on 24/7 and it’s not that influencial to the bill.

I’m sure someone has told you this by now, but frequency != power. You don’t measure the “power” of a system by adding up the frequency of the processors. You can measure actual mathematical peformance of the processors (operations per second) but the actual meaning depends drastically on the application.

The problem is that no single factor quanitifies game performance. Some would say it’s polygons per second, others would say that it’s the complicated logic that makes modern AI systems. You might even argue that the number of people who can play the system at once is a factor in determining the overall “power”, when expressed as the amount of fun that a machine can deliver over a given time. That’s what game machines are about, right?

Great article - I read something similar over at the KDE Developers blogs a while back about energy usage of household items whilst in standby mode. Since then I’ve always switched things off at the wall.

Would be interesting to see how different revision of the console change the usage (eg slimline ps2 and v1 of xbox to latest one) - would also be interesting to see how long a DS / PSP takes to change, use to empty etc.

Cheers!

Some people get it, others dont. The combined waste of devices burning coal and oil, pouring pollution into the atmosphere, makes a real difference. The bill doesnt reflect the real cost to the environment. So dont me a twat, turn your gadgets off, before your house is under water from global warming. Doesnt take to much to make a difference, just a bit of social concious.

These figures are really handy… I think this is a great article, but I’d really be curious to find out the stats with regards to TVs. I have a few retro consoles all hooked up to a little portable telly thats over 2o years old. My X-Box and PS2 are running on a standard 21 inch TV… But I just took delivery of a High-Def behemoth and while its obvious that the bigger the TV the higher the energy consumption, I have some nasty suspicions as to just how much more energy my LCD is going to be feeding upon.

The more power consumption the better. No one is going to research new power alternatives until we are close to running out of the archaic “earth destroying” ones like petro and coal. Fact is, humans are gonna “waste” a lot of resources and time doing things that other humans consider “stupid”. Won’t change, shouldn’t change.

We will find a clean, free, and infinite power source within the next century or 2, and attitudes of conservation will only procrastinate that. And the ones who are going to discover it are gamers, using a PC - not dopey ass hippies with macs - you can’t design fusion reactors with iTunes and After Effects you worthless dinks. Stop posing, consume, and be productive.

America - fuck yeah!

Oh by the way I have to add seeing as most of these comments are dominated by people who feel the need to point out that if you worry about these small figures of money you are obviously to poor. I personally feel that seeing as my energy comes from food which doesn’t cause global warming it’s better to use mine to walk across the room to throw a switch than use electricity for what is, on the whole, a fairly minor convenience

Really interesting article!
its true though

=========== quote
Al Boyanich Says:
June 18th, 2006 at 8:35 am

I think this article is fascinating. Very thoroughly investigated and objectively commented on. I’d be interested to see how the older retro systems perform, for instance MS-II vs Nintendo, Mega Drive vs SNES, C64 vs Atari-800, Atari ST vs Amiga500.
=========== end quote

With respect to C64 v Atari 800, the “power on” consumption of either would be comparable to the “off” draw of the Xbox360 or Playstation 2… i.e. a few watts. Those boxes were using 4 MHz 65xx CPUs and power consumption is related to CPU clock speed.

20 bucks a year isn’t much, but the environmental consequences are more alarming. If you add up all the 360 users, that’s plenty of carbon dioxide, or at the very least, a lot more than there should be.

MS have a duty to lower the wattage of those processors, they shouldn’t be outputing as much as a TV or an audio amplifier. And of course most people will have a tv and amp connected, so the actual power output is about three times the 360 alone.

The number of comments that say “This is retarded” etc. is alarming. WTF is with people? The attitude, “I’m so smart, you’re so thick” is pathetic. Especially wrt this article seeing as it was interesting, and relative to most blogs, had a lot of effort involved in its construction. So thanks to the authors.

Geez what nasty comments. Has this page been digged or slashdotted?

Listen up turds and look beyond your own little pathetic lives:

Millions of people times all these devices equals one heavy load on the environment that can be easily avoided.

Turn the damned things off. Simple as that.

Great comment jo. This is the point, a lot of people seem to be thinking about themselves and their own pockets. How many people on this planet have a ps2? and a tv’s? shed loads of energy. how many people are aware of the energy they are wasting? remember energy cannot be created or destroyed. and we haven’t worked out a way of getting energy back from harmful emmissions. and we probably never will. Carbon is carbon eh?

we’re all in this together people. and we don’t realise how possible it is for us to take back control…

Oh, and one last thing, i was quite surprised by Gamecubes performance-it really is a very powerful machine-blimey-what a difference branding can make to the success of a console eh?

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6475_7-6400401-3.html?tag=nav

This lists the power consumption of various modern TVs. Look at a modest size 27″ CRT. They use 80-120 Watts while running, and 2.5-3.5 while in standby mode. Look at some of the bigscreen TVs and it might blow your mind just how much power this adds up to. If you are like most people, your TV is on more often than just when you are playing video games.

What this all adds up to is that your entertainment center’s costs between TV, Audio, DVD player, etc, etc, together overshadows your console power consumption. While it is good to know that consoles do draw more power than you might think, keep in mind that they are only a very small fraction of your energy costs.

To put it another way, that $20.10 listed for an XBox 360 comes up to $1.675 monthly added to your electric bill. You can barely buy a cup of coffee for that much. As of March 2006, 3.2 million units had sold, requiring $5.36 million monthly according to this website’s power estimates. That price is for 428 million kWh of power monthly. A low-end nuclear reactor generates that much electricity in under one hour. High-end reactors generate almost triple that amount of electricity.

So, in other words, twelve hours of power generation from one small nuclear reactor produces enough electricity to power every XBox 360 console in the world for a year with power left over.

For Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_plant

Sorry, I miscalculated in my last post regarding power estimates. Their figures show 428 million kWh of power *yearly* for all XBox 360s in circulation. One small nuclear reactor produces enough power in one hour to run every XBox 360 in existence for over one year.

Some people may be paying 8c/KW but the world average is 14c/KW at the moment so these figures are very accurate.

Also I would love to see a measurement of these systems running DVD’s, I know for certain that the 360 is running lower (switches off 2 of the processor cores) due to the cool air flow out the back rather than the usual lava flow of air.

My only complaint would be the titles that they chose to push the systems. Burnout Revenge is not a good title to push the 360 to it’s limits, in fact based off the temperature of the components GRAW is the winner at the moment, some of the other titles on the other machines I wouldn’t rate to highly as well.

As for the air pollution idea, we ‘could’ reduce air pollution, which ‘could’ also reduce global dimming which as far as we know is slowing global warming at the moment. Pollution could be the thing that saves us at the same time as dooming us, a bitter irony there.

>15 cents per kWh is very high, how many states are really paying that much?

>According to this page the average cost of residential electricity was 9.53¢/kWh >in the U.S. in 2006, so why was 15 cents per kWh used? I’m guessing finding out >I’m wasting only $1.50 on electricity a year by leaving my PS2 plugged in isn’t >as dramatic.

I’m paying 17 cents in northern Maine.

This only tells part of the story. Even within the same console you have changes over production. The first Playstations had composite audio/video out jacks together with a video out cable, and at the end of their life they didn’t have the jacks OR a parallel port connector.

As companies recoup R&D costs and technology improves, console prices historically go down, and each price drop is historically matched with a design change on the consoles. Maybe a different BIOS, maybe memory chips from a different vendor with a different electrical configuration, a change to a new optical drive vendor. Each one of those changes can influence power consumption. Hopefully for the better, but who knows?

If you can read this there is a strong chance you are using a computer right now. If you are using a computer right now there is a strong chance it is burning as much electricity as the xbox360 or in many people’s cases much much more.

Gaming computers that attempt to produce the level of graphical details that the xbox360 produces can burn in excess of 500watts while running game programs easily.

As someone else already mentioned. The simple point that the xbox360 can produce that level of graphics and detail at a meager 145 watts is AMAZINGLY efficient. By comparison a single high end graphics card BY ITSELF can use about 145 watts. And many high end gaming computers have two of them running at the same time. Combine that with a high end intel processor or even the vastly more energy efficient current AMD processors, two hard drives, peripherals and the raw system draw is 500 watts or higher. But it gets worse because the power supply of your computer system is typically only about 70% efficient on a good day. So now you add about another 30% of pure wasted draw from the outlet that is burned up as heat your PC’s powersupply and we are sitting at a dandy 650 watts of draw at the outlet.

So…looking at the grand picture of things…I would strongly suggest being more concerned about cutting down energy costs of things that people often leave running…such as their AC, thier refridgerators, heating, or their PC.

No question its an interesting artical, the sobering reality is that by comparison to items that truelly have a high sustained draw and make significant impact on your electricity bill, the xbox360 barely registers.

Look at your monthly bill, do the math. It doesn’t take a genious to figure out this is not exactly the area you need to worry about cutting costs on.

I would like to see what a Gaming PC requires. You could obviously have very different setups ranging from a low-end model or an SLI Dual Core with RAID drives and a 550W power supply. Granted all 550W aren’t being used even while playing a game, I’m sure it’s more than the 360’s 165W (I believe that was the number) as stated in this article.

I think a bigger concern over energy consumption is battery life with mobile devices like laptops and PDAs. I won’t flinch at $20 a year to operate my 360, but 1/2 hour of battery life could be the decisive factor in which laptop I’ll buy.

“So what $20 a year is not so bad.” If this has not already been posted, I need t say it.

Well if yhour talking oneses and twoses. But we are talking millions of consoles. This is 40-60 million dollars more a year on energy !!! Just for game consoles enrgy waste.

I think everyone here needs to step back. I run 5 servers, 4 “regular” computers (hefty video and cpu’s), 2 largish tv’s, a 21″ crt, 2 17″ lcd’s, 1 19″ crt, 3 17″ crt’s, a laser printer, PS2, N64, Moto DVR, high power component stereo, 3 cell phones, NDS, 2 Macs, 1 SGI O2, 2 Cable modems, 2 Dvd players, and a vcr, oh and a pda on a pear tree. Even with all my household appliances, lights, etc, my electric bill averages $115 a month. No gas either, it’s all electric. Winters go up to $160-$180.

I use a crap load of energy I admit, but almost all of it comes from hydro-electric power. If I lived somewhere served primarly by coal/oil power I would probably cut back where I could, and not just because coal/oil power costs more. But because it does more damage to the environment.

Saying the usage isn’t worth mentioning is plain stupid. At least admit that you don’t care what the earth is like when you die. I do, as I have two children. Us Americans are in general too dumb to realize what everything we have actually costs, manufacturing, shipping, packaging, etc. We waste a LOT of resources. I admin I do as well.

By the way at the beginning of the article the guy said he used a wattage meter so whoever said “did he turn everything in his house off” should STFU.

This article brings to light our wastfullness. And based on the responses, we really don’t care, but at least we shouldn’t rationalize it with “$20 don’t matter”.

And bitching about cost per Mhz and 360 being so much more powerful? Come on, that’s hardly relavent at this point. Plus you have to realize the PS2, xbox, and 360 are COMPUTERS as in almost non-propriotary off the shelf kinda comuters (ok not so much for the PS2), of course they will use more than the
the other consoles, computers are terribly inefficient. I have to hand it to Nintendo, they are either saving money by making their devices more efficient or they DO care about the environment.

Now if the cell phone manufacturers could give their energy sipping secrets to some of the other companies out there…..

“It looks like many of our readers were right about the Xbox 360 offering a consideably higher performace per watt than the other consoles. Assuming Microsoft is telling the truth that the 360 has 3 x 3.2GHz processors we end up with an amazing 61.21Mhz / 1 Watt. If we calculate it at just having a 3.2GHz processor it drops to 22.42Mhz / 1 Watt. This shows that while it’s using more energy it is also more efficient when compared to everyone else. What completely caught us by surprise is the little game cube. It clearly offers the second highest performance at 30.81Mhz / 1 Watt while the PS2 came was just behind it at 14.70Mhz / 1 Watt.”

You forgot the PS’2 has twin VPU’s. Its not a signle IC powering it either. If your going to calculate it the way you have you have to caclulate the xbox360 as 22.42Mhz / 1 Watt to be fair. Since you already have both numbers shown for xbox360, I’d like to see a comparison that way for PS2 if possable.

Sure the 360 may cost an extra $20 a year to play but just think of the money yoursaving on your heating bill by having it turned on. It’s no joke when playing on mine (in a smallish room) I have no need for the radiatorto be on. However since my router packed up i’ve had to have my pc switched on to access the internet so i can play onl xboxlive. I wonder how much the cost of a net connection and router/pc energy cost add to price. Also disregarding energy how economic are the consoles when cost of hardware(new) and games(new) is divided by the amount of playing time the provide? £40 a year for xboxlive $20 a year on elec might make a lot of sense.

We need to work at both ends — energy conservation, and establishing renewable sources of energy (wind, solar, etc). However, I don’t think playing less video games is the answer. First, this report bases it on playing 2 hours of video games per day, which is a lot. The average gamer can divide that $20 figure by 7 right off the bat, to about $3/year. Second, the computer you’re currently using, the monitor, the TV you watch, the fridge and laundry machines, the non-flourescent light bulbs, are all worse offenders that you use regularly. Start with the biggest offenders and work your way down.

What i haven’t seen here is the fact that the energy consumed by your tv/computer/home entertainment can be seen in relation to the energy that your heating uses.
Example, if your computer is pouring out 200 watts of heat, that contributes to heating your home. (Maybe not totally efficient and in a 1/1 comparably scale, but still it heats up your home and therby shaving expenses off your heating bill)

Still, the stand-by button is a energy killer and it’s good to see awareness to this fact.
Many good points in this thread, good work guys =)

While I find the power usage of the Xbox 360 fairly low given its capabilities (search the web for pc gaming system power usage; its much higher for a high end system even without dual graphics cards), something seems off when you consider its power usage at the dashboard vs. gameplay. A mere 20 watt increase would seem to indicate that the 360 currently is in one of several conditions:

1.)It lacks a usefull system idle processes for low usage states resulting in at least one major component consuming near full power at all times.\
2.)The dashboard code is horrible inefficient and requires much too much processing power.
3.)Current games just do not push the platforms power consumption.

I’d hope the 3rd option is the case. Of course there could be many more reasons why idle power use vs. game power use comes out so close together. Maybe there was some flaw in the articles methodology. Anyway, interesting article none the less.

To the few morons towards the begininng of the comments about “what methodology did they use?” and the “I question the credibility because they are not telling us how often the are reading the wattage meter.”
1st page of the article:
* All readings were taken with the console directly plugged into a wattage meter and the average energy draw over the course of the test was recorded.

Meaning the wattage meter is hooked up between the console’s power cord and the wall outlet.

* Muliple games were tested in each console so rest assured the numbers are reliable

Obviously if they used multiple games to test the consoles they used multiple readings at as close to the same momentum and are using the average in the tables.
So I’m guessing most of the stupidity stems from publicly educated morons, though thankfully it didn’t affect me anywhere near the amount as some of the others here

Interesting article. Some of the comments here got me thinking about the cost (both monetary and environmental) to run other appliances in my house. Anybody know of a site where I can learn a bit more?

I’m personally guessing that Nintendo’s power consumption is lower because the company cares more about creating hardware that is high quality, but that’s just my biased opinion, being a Nintendo nut.

The attempt to compare the consoles based on “MHz-per-Watt” is a vacuous comparison. There is no comparison that can be made on a clock-per-clock basis between these processors. Particularly silly is adding in the clock frequency of the -GPUs- as well. A single cycle of a GPU clock gets a -lot- more work done in a fully loaded scenario than does a single cycle of a CPU clock, particularly for the simplified IBM-designed CPUs for the 360 and the PS3 with their greatly reduced instruction windows and branch prediction. Anyone with any knowledge of computer architecture can explain why.

Just because the 360 uses silly-high clock frequencies doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily faster than anything else. More power wasteful, yes. But not faster.

In response to NeuraLSpike’s comment, I certainly hope that the 360 is -not- exhibiting condition 3 as you described. If it does, that only means that the great 360 overheating problems will only get worse as newer games emerge which more greatly tax the platform’s power resources. My guess is that either the dashboard is inefficient, as you suggested, or that the platform as a whole lacks adequate power-management features. Afterall, who’s going to spend a lot of time thinking about how to be efficient at idle? The goal is to make sure that your 360 is -never- idle by keeping it stocked with the latest games.

Really appreciate this article. Thanks for researching and sharing this info. It would be even more enlightening if a calculation could be made on the total impact of next-gen consoles energy consumption by adding up units sold and running the numbers again.

All of this is quite relevant indeed considering the fact that as a country America leads the world in emissions accounting for over 30% of the entire amount of global CO2 emissions output. Those of us who want to discount the impact of this fact and others should go see ‘The Inconvenient Truth’ and learn how seemingly small things do add up to really big things in the long run.

I think it`s important to make clear whether you`re using the old larger model PS2, or the new slimline one that can`t accept a hard drive but has Ethernet built in.

The new one is considerably smaller, with newer, more integrated chips, and should draw quite a bit less power. It would be pretty fascinating to compare the two.

We hope to get an origional PS2 compared against a slimline PS2 later this week.

The money you spend gaming each year is almost negligible compared to the amount you spend on air conditioning and heating while you play. This site has the most useful tips I’ve ever seen on cutting down your energy bills - extremely in-depth coverage of the cost per year to run your fridge, stove, TV, etc.: http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/index.html
They also discuss how much it costs to run your computer equipment, which is a nice comparison to the article here.

One thing about the Wii’s energy consumption that should be considered is that as part of the design, it never truly shuts ‘off’, but rather goes into a low-power sleep mode. (Mr Iwata likened the energy usage in this mode as being similar to a flashlight bulb.) It’s part of a feature called “WiiConnect24″ which keeps the console connected to the internet at all times. This allows it to receive updates and extra content at any time of the day, not just when you press ‘download’.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiiConnect24

Your calculations for yearly idle + playing are wrong. You\’re using 24hrs standby + 2hours gaming … 26 hours in a day?

More accurate would be 22 hours standby and 2 hours gaming. Not much of a difference overall, but it\’s for accuracy\’s sake

Thanks for pointing that out. We made the adjustments to the table.

Great thoughts in general around an obviously thought-provoking article. Three of my own add’l thoughts: 1. CPU freq’s are almost irrelevant unless you’re considering the number of bits processed per cycle (a 32-bit processor is normally higher performance per cycle than an 8-bit processor); 2. GPU performance needs to be measured on more than “performance”, i.e. polygons/sec, since they’re also computing lighting/shading and God knows what else; 3. Gaming consoles use MUCH less power per hour/year than most gaming PCs, and EITHER choice consumes FAR less petro resources per hour of recreation than some joker blasting up and down the lake in their 454 cu in. wakeboard tug. Not even counting the fuel their SUV uses just getting them to the beach.

i feel that this page is just great. very interesting. as an electrical engineer with his eye on the enviroment, i’m quite impressed at some of these responses, and quite disturbed by the one who signed his/her response “America-Fuck Yeah” saying that energy should be wasted. this kind of thinking is far beyond backwards. we sure will have fusion reactors in 100 years. however, our climate will go off the hizzy between 2040 - 2060 at the rate of present emissions. as for us …humanity as a whole, we are indeed in crunch time right now.

Here is my question (and I will apologize in advance if this question has already been asked). Of the Playstation systems you tested, which versions did you test? For example, on Playstation, did you test the original model PSX or did you test the slim model PSOne? Same for Playstation 2; the original PS2 or the slim PSTwo? The reason I ask is that the chipsets and fab process is radically different from the initial version to the final version. The final versions are not only designed to cost less, but as a side effect, they should consume less energy and also produce less heat. So for example, while an original PS2 was a complete mess of boards and wires internally, the PSTwo is a system that functions on a single chip. Of the two, which do you think is going to consume the most power?

This question holds even more relavance as it puts several things into perspective. First, because Microsoft did not actually own any of the chip IP inside of the Xbox, they were not able to take advantage of any shrinking down processes. So a launch Xbox, consumes as much energy as a new one you can purchase in the store today. By way of comparison, every other console this past gen, saw at least one such internal rework of the system during the course of it’s lifespan. It would prove very interesting to secure the original versions of each console over the past gen, and compare the results of them vs. their newer counterparts.

The other relevance this poses, is that in January 2007, Microsoft has already stated that they intend to start producing Xbox 360 systems that utilize the first (of many I am sure) internal downsizes in the system, when they move from the 90nm fab process to the 65nm process. Even Sony with PS3 is rumored to be moving to the smaller, more efficient 65nm process by year’s end 2007. And of course word on the street has it that Nintendo will not be left out of this party. So whatever energy consumption readings you take of these systems in 2006, will have to be retaken by the end of 2007 to remain accurate.

Of course this brings up another intersting project. If you wanted, you could track the increasing efficiency (if any) of the game consoles over the course of time (say, year by year) to see how much of a difference can be experienced over the progression of time.

Something else I have to wonder while I am thinking. I wonder what having Wii Connection 24 is going to do to Nintendo Wii’s idle readings? How much more of the system needs to be activated in order to take advantage of WiiConnect24? I have suspected since the announcement of the service and the purpose of the service, that Nintendo has created a bittorrent client which they have embedded into the Wii, hence the need for the system to be literally always online. A torrent client makes a lot of sense in that it allows Nintendo to cheaply distribute whatever downloadable content, even when no one is using the system. They’d need one main server up in initial seed mode to get content out there, but once the first few hundred people had it, then getting it to everyone else who wanted it (potentially millions of users) would save millions of dollars over time on bandwidth. But my point is, how much energy is constantly running a torrent client (if that indeed is what it is) going to consume, and how is that going to reflect on the overall consumption readings?

One thing is for sure, this is going to be interesting finding out.

Great article. Would you be able to do the same for different models of a console? To see if they are improved with hardware revisions during their lifetime.

For all the Captain Planets out there the real question about game consoles and all consumer entertainment devices for that matter, is how much of this stuff ends in landfill, and what are the actual impacts of building these things.

The environmental impact of running these things is insignificant in comparison to the amount of wase used in their creation and retirement.

With new regulations in place regarding the manufacture of semiconductors, the impact that these consoles have in a landfill should be far, far less than older electronics. Ideally, when you’re done with the thing you would recycle it though. It would be wise of Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo to take a cradle to grave approach to these products and offer such services.

Very interesting website. Keep up the outstanding work and thank you…

heh heh, I think the only way to make people really worry about power consumption is to pad all the numbers with an extra ‘0′. . . Other than that it was a wonderful diversion of my work time

Cool!.. Nice work…

as a nintendo owner/player from way back… SWEET!!!

so how much would a video gaming cafe spend if they had 11 xbox 360’s, 10 xbox’s, 5 playstation 2’s and 27 flat screen tv’s ranging from 32′ screens to 40′ if they opened 10 hours a day and for 7 days per week????

when i bought my xbox 360 it cost me somewhere in the range of $700.That was back in june.then on top of that i spent about $60 on insurance for it.Its a cool system but its drawbacks outweigh its advantages.Now i just read that in a few months the price is going to drop $100 to combat the release of the ps3.
i feel ripped off.i remember back in the day when nintendo reigned supreme games were alot more fun back then it seems.it seems as though video game companies especially microsoft have become overly greedy in trying to capitalize on the consumer.$700 for a gaming system that doesnt even come with a warranty,games or a controller is kind of ridiculous.you may say aww man but it has such sweet graphics and a physics engine its so hardcore i love it but really,it runs alot hotter than any other system it costs more than $20 to power it because me personally, i dont know anyone who plays their system for only 2 hrs per day for the kind of money you invest in these things i think you should be getting something far more efficient in terms of a warranty package, games and reliability and energy usage. i believe microsoft rushed their deal in order to capitalize on us the consumer. Nintendo is the way to go. i have never really had a problem with a nintendo system thier games are alot more fun and memorable to play.nintendo is cheaper more reliable. i regret investing my money in a system and a company as unreliable as microsoft and i will remember not to, in future ventures of my own.

[…] This has lead me to check out a few statistics and to try and gather info on what uses how much.Games Consoles are relatively cheap if left plugged in but not on.This great page at Energy Star is pretty neat to calculate PC Power usage.The ozzies have got a great government page about white goods. […]

These are interesting figures, but to agree with all the other posters, the Xbox 360 is far superior to the PS2. The PS3 is the same as the 360, but will use more power due to the useless addition of the overpriced Blu-Ray player. Stop beating on the 360 when the PS3 power usage will be astronmical compared to the 360 and Wii. The Wii will be the most power efficient imo. Obviously 20 bucks isn’t a worry. Otherwise, it’s good to be curious and you guys did some quality work. As for doobie’s post, HOLY SHIT WHERE’D YOU GET YOUR 360? You realise you could have gone to Best Buy and easily saved $300 to buy a face plate and/or games? Right? The premium package comes with a controller, ethernet cable, Hard drive, and other stuff. I don’t feel sorry for you. I’m sick of people spending ridiculous amounts of money on a 360 off Ebay and then bitching about quality when it’s the best thing out on the market right now. Good work on the figures btw guys.

[…] Así me encontré con un artículo muy peculiar: análisis de consumo de consolas, que está en Dx Gaming. […]

Coming in a few months late, but I believe your standby power numbers for a few of the consoles to be inaccurate.

I modify game consoles as a side job, and thus I’ve been inside basically every console on the market. Both the Dreamcast and Gamecube have hard power switches that function basically the same as a light switch. When they’re off, they’re off. There should be absolutely zero power draw from either of those two when turned off. The same is likely true of the PS1, but it’s been years since I’ve worked on one of those so I can’t remember.

The Xbox however is more like an ATX PC, so you were probably correct with your guess of power consumption. It does provide 5v standby power 24/7 to allow for a “soft” power switch and certain modifications can add IR remote turn on.

Interesting article, mainly just to know the approximate power usage as I have always been curious. And it really isn’t much in comparison to other devices. To those people out there truly concerned about global warming, the biggest impact is with your house and car. With homes, heating and cooling is magnitudes beyond video game consoles. Put on a sweater and lower the thermostat. Or, lose some layers, find a fan, and turn off the A/C. Then sell your lame H2 or SUV and buy a smaller vehicle. And the other one nobody seems to realize is flying places. A few 3 hour flights is like driving all year in your car. I know it is only $99 dollars to fly to Vegas or whatever, but the carbon emissions from jets are staggering. Good luck.

http://www.jp.playstation.com/support/qa-591.html

PS3 requires 380W.
It seems very hot!

[…] Uppdatering: Hittade en välskriven artikel ang. spelkonsolers energiförbrukning här. […]

Smile…

Press every key to continue.
…

Hi.
Great article. ;D

I have a question:
How many watts the Ati Flipper (Gamecube’s GPU) consumes?

Thanks

Thankfully a few people do understand the meaning of this article.
It’s not about the money. it’s about (unnecessarily) wasting the environment.
To the morons which reacted:“So what! $20 a year is not so bad.” I would say: If you don’t care about spending another $20, consider donating to (environmental) charity.

Any idea when you’ll be updating the site with PS3 and Wii numbers? Joystiq.com had an article on power consumption of the Wii, and it looks pretty promising.

Nice…

Speak softly and carry a cellular phone.
…

Just curious - was the Xbox360 tested with hard disk? Hopefully, you can do a test WITHOUT hard disk to see if the power consumption is lower… I think it should be (hdd should be eating up the power and generating the heat)

Everyone who fails to see why energy use while in standby or during the whole year matters, even when it’s only $20, should immediately realize that some people play these games more than 2 hours a day.

Also, if this attitude of “it doesn’t seem like that much for this one thing” is continued to be held by everyone … then that $20/year becomes the new standard and eventually people will be accepting $40 … then $50 … then $100.

Then, realize that if all devices are allowed to be so expensive to operate , the problem would just snowball and snowball. It’s a question of belief and attitude. Game systems should be low power for the same reason that every other appliance on the planet needs to be low power, for everyone’s sake.

>>Eric the Red Says:
>>June 19th, 2006 at 4:39 am
>>Geez what nasty comments. Has this page been digged or slashdotted?
>>Listen up turds and look beyond your own little pathetic lives:
>>Millions of people times all these devices equals one heavy load on the >>environment that can be easily avoided.
>>Turn the damned things off. Simple as that.

Actually, the nastiest comments are coming from people like yourself. Pretty much anyone remotely neutral can see that. The comments range from “$20, big deal! thats not much!”, to “HEY ASSHOLE!!! YOU’RE DESTROYING *MY* PLANET WITH YOUR DAMN XBOX!!! MS SHOULD BE BANNED!!!!!one1111″

Now tell me which batch of commenters seems nastier and more insane? To all of the eco-fanatics, why don’t you lead the way by reverting to a complete pre-industrial revolution lifestyle? Personally, I’m actually not convinced, from looking at the science, that man kinds contribution to global warming is really all that significant. I believe that other factors including the natural cycle of expansion and contraction of the sun’s corona, the natural polarity shift of the earths magnetic field, and perhaps even just the naturally cyclical nature of the earths climate are more likely culprits for the VERY SMALL temperature shift that has occurred in the last 200 years or so. I find it hard to believe that 100 or so years of industrialization at the level humanity is currently at has massive, planet wide impact on an ecosystem that is billions of years old and of which only a small percentage is occupied by humans. That doesnt fit the “bash America, western civilization and progress” self-loathing of the eco special interests though.

If all of you eco warriors TRULY believe in the evils of man and technology, then go live in a tent in the woods. Funny how you’re really vocal only when it comes to regulating OTHER people’s behavior. That tells me none of you really give a shit about the environment and are really only looking for a “safe” issue with which to BLUDGEON those you already despise.

Oh, and cool article BTW. Would second the suggestion that some other devices and older consoles are included in a follow-up.

it was not helpful at all it did not tell me the power consumption. i would not recomend this site to anyone. i want to know how much it is costing me in a year.

this site is a bunch of crap why the would anyone care asbout how much energy a video game console takes up. a video game is supposed to be fun, you should not worry about how much energy is being used. If it is costing you alot of money then get up off your ass and stop playing you fat pigs.

hey Quantum Flux are you retarded video games are not destoying the planet

Now I know why I use a Xbox as a server instead of an old PIII…

It seems that in contrast to a lot of people that respond I do my best to save energy to spare the environment. All small bits help if you add them up.

Hey,

Hardcoreware.net has some data on PS3, 360 and Wii electricity consumption, for anyone who’s interested:

http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-356-1.htm

For a simpler summary, check IGN, who refer to the study:

http://au.wii.ign.com/articles/766/766997p1.html

By the way, this article is not only interesting in and of itself, the responses are interesting too. Like the way console fanboys start picking at each others’ grammar and spelling, and that of the article, in order to discredit them. People, remember: typoes happen, and not every website has an editor!

Hey, all you guys suck spending you life worrying about video games and if they will hurt the environment. You retards are wasting more energy complaining about video games, than video game do!!! You are all fucking losers (especially you Quantum flux). Get off your ass and stop complaining about this crap. It is pointless talking about, it won’t save the environment or stop global warming. If you really care, do something about it and stop complaining.

guys im an electrician and I can assure you that you are just stupid fucking greenies, you waste your time and [oh my god electricity as well] running all your test equipment (lmfao), not to mention the costs to run the server which hosts this website…. a playstation 2 or xbox 360 is not going to make any difference, it’s not going to make power stations burn any less fuel so get over ur fucking selves. feel free to email me as well id like to hear your comeback lol

Also i read how you are comparing Clock speeds and price YOU GUYS DONT HAVE A FUCKING CLUE you cant just assume coz its got a faster processor that it’s any better, FOR EXAMPLE, TO THE CONSUMER, an 800MHz MAC computer runs faster than a 1000MHz PC LOL

[…] Auf DX Gaming habe ich dann noch einen (englischsprachigen) Artikel zum Energieverbrauch von Konsolen im allgemeinen gefunden. Ist nicht mehr ganz aktuell, die neuesten Modelle fehlen, aber das ist nicht das entscheidende. Dort nehmen sie die Konsolen genau unter die Lupe und kommen zu dem Ergebnis 1) The PS2 is no longer switched on when not in use (red light lit) 2) A standalone DVD player is much cheaper to operate than the 360’s 3) We might unpack our Xbox 1 to play games on instead of backwards compatibility on the 360. Is double the energy worth anti-aliasing and a wireless controller? 4) Our fingers are crossed that CPU and GPU companies focus on lowering energy consumption of their processors. […]

[…] Va, que se que tanto furgol es pesado, además mañana (bueno hoy pero como si fuera mañana) juega la selección y todos seremos bombardeados por el antes, durante y después del encuentro. Hablemos de algún tema un poco más serio, el consumo eléctrico de las consolas. En un weblog llamado DX:Gaming han hecho un artículo sobre el tema pero como ha sufrido el acoso y derribo de Slashdot y otros megasitios de internet os pongo aquí una pequeña tabla de las conclusiones de su estudio. […]

[…] I dug up some video game console power usage estimates and used the Xbox 360 estimate of 165 W. Assuming I play for an average of three hours every night, we can estimate that I will use 180.675 kWh/year. My utilities company uses graduated pricing and a variable rate fuel surcharge, but we’ll use a convenient estimate of $0.10/kWh. This means that it will take about $18.07/year ($1.51/month) to play my Xbox 360. […]

my son has 3 friends over every weekend to have xbox tournaments live.this means 4 tv s 4 xbox s going nonstop friday 7:00 pm till sunday 10:00 am can anyone let me know how much this is costing ? just curious.dont get me wrong i have no intent on stopping their weekend tournament i am gratefull that these 4 very popular and athletic boys choose to stay at my house and have their gaming weekends instead of running the roads and doing things that could lead to trouble.my husband and i are very lucky but i am just curiuos.and yes i figured how much i spend on pedicures so i stopped.it is my duty to make the sacrifice not my son.i am just curious so if anyone knows the answer to the cost for the gaming weekend let me know.