This article was originally published on our old site last year. But I decided to move it over here in honor of Earth Day 2009.
Power Consumption
The war between the three major consoles continues on. So far this year, Wii is winning the sales war, followed by XBOX 360, with PS3 trailing not far behind. We have already compared the PS3 and XBOX 360 from a game developer’s point of view, and he favoured the XBOX 360 as well. The most simple answer to the question is likely; “whose first-party titles do you like best?”. If you’re a huge Halo fan, you’ll want a 360. If you can’t live without Gran Turismo, the PS3 is for you. And for us Mario fans, the Wii is a must-have.
However, there are a few other ways to compare these consoles. We’ll be looking at various aspects throughout the coming weeks. Today, we’re looking at power consumption levels of each console. Are any of these consoles power-hogs? Is the tiny Wii really that much more efficient than the big boys? Most likely the results of these tests won’t sway your judgement, but they still may be interesting to look at.
The Test
For all power consumption tests, we used the Watts Up? PRO power meter. The new PRO model supports logging of over 2000 records, and can log as many or as few stats as you like. For instance, for these tests we logged the watt level every 10 seconds. This gives us 4 days worth of records. You can also log RMS voltage and current, Power Factor, and much more. The Watts Up? PRO has a USB connection and comes with software that will automatically make graphs, or can save tab delimited text files for use in spreadsheet programs.
Testing Methods
I wanted to test various aspects of each console – consoles aren’t just about video games anymore. Now, you can watch movies, browse the web, and even have it download news when it is turned off. The following aspects were tested:
- Power consumption during video game playback – several games were played, and a sampling of 30 minutes of pure gameplay was used to determine the average, peak, and minimum power usage of each console.
- Power consumption during movie playback – The same 3 chapters of the DVD Pulp Fiction were played on each console. The data sample is taken from approximately the middle 30 minutes of that.
- Power consumption in the console – To test how much power these consoles use when at idle, each machine was left in its console mode, with no games or videos being played.
- Power consumption during standby – The consoles were left off, and power consumption was tested. The Wii was tested with Wii Connect24 both on and off.
To add more data, I also tested my personal PC in many of the tests, and added the Oppo DV-981HD for the DVD playback tests. The DV-981HD is a DVD player that upscales movies to 1080p, and we’ll be reviewing it shortly.
The specs of the PC are:
CPU: Intel Core 2 X6800 (Reviewed Here)
Video Card: Foxconn GeForce 7950GT (Reviewed Here)
Motherboard: Intel DX975XBX
Audio: Creative X-Fi Fatal1ty (Reviewed Here)
Memory: 4GB DDR2 6400
So it’s not the most insane high-end gaming rig, but pretty capable of playing anything currently out there for the PS3 and XBOX 360.
As a side note, all tests were done at 220V, 50 Hz power, with the exception of the Wii which is connected to a step-down converter. When the step-down converter was used, the power meter was plugged into the converer, and the Wii into the power meter. This eliminates any extra wattage the converter uses from being a factor in these tests.
You can pick up an HD DVD player w/King Kong at FRYS.COM for $40.00 plus shipping. Would have been interesting to see that. I know it’s not Blu Ray but it make make normal DVD look better.
Just to note those look like early models. The PS3 especially has reduced component size to bring it under 130 Watts max power. The 360 also has reduced one of its chips to lower power but not as significant.
This makes your figures real for 2007 but not today.
Actually, that IS an earlier model PS3 which could be anything from the CECHAxx model (60 gb holy grail, phased out towards Fall 2007) to the CECHExx model (80 gb software emulation, phased out towards late 2008). The current generation of PS3s only have 2 USB ports whereas the aforementioned A and E models had 4 USB ports.
PlayStation Japan has a page on its site that briefly looked over the difference between previous iterations with current iterations of the PS3:
http://www.jp.playstation.com/ps3/hajimete/haji01_2.html
*facepalm*
Saying Twilight Princess is Wii’s prettiest game just shows how little you know about what Wii has to offer. You should’ve used Mario Galaxy. It looks a million times better than TP.
Having said that, thanks for the evaluation. Just as suspected. :P
“playing its most advanced game, Gears of War. GoW truly squeezes every little bit that the 360 has to give”
you talking about gears 2 or gears?
because theres a MASSIVE graphical leap between gears 1 and gears 2 so if it was gears 1 than that statement isent exactly true.
i would like to see a comparison of KZ2 power consumption compare to Gears 2.
being that both are the most advanced for there system
Where are the results?
It’s kinda shocking just how much power these consoles use. For gaming, it can be tolerable (although it’s all that power becoming heat that made the Xbox 360 so unreliable). But for things like watching tv or other video it is just obscene. For comparison the (second generation) Apple TV uses less than 3 Watts. Even a Mac mini with a Core 2 Duo CPU uses only about 30.
The GPUs that help gaming often raise consumption too. It’s best not to use gaming rig as a PVR or media center.
Sorry, error in last post. I meant to say that the WiFi adapter for an Xbox 360 uses about 3 Watts, and the Apple TV (2010) less than 6.
LCD based TVs use much less power than Plasma. Using the lowest comfotable brightness level both saves power and extends display life.
For people paying around $.13 per kw/h, every 10 Watts used continuously costs about $1 per month.