The Xbox One - Mini Review & Comparison to Xbox 360/PS4
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 20, 2013 8:00 AM ESTPower Consumption
As always I ran the Xbox One through a series of power consumption tests. I’ve described the tests below:
Off - Console is completely off, standby mode is disabled
Standby - Console is asleep, can be woken up by voice commands (if supported). Background updating is allowed in this mode.
Idle - Ethernet connected, no disc in drive, system idling at dashboard.
Load (BF4) - Ethernet connected, Battlefield 4 disc in drive, running Battlefield 4, stationary in test scene.
Load (BD Playback) - Ethernet connected, Blu-ray disc in drive, average power across Inception test scene.
CPU Load - SunSpider - Ethernet connected, no disc in drive, running SunSpider 1.0.2 in web browser.
CPU Load - Kraken - Ethernet connected, no disc in drive, running Kraken 1.1 in web browser
| Power Consumption Comparison | |||||||
| Total System Power | Off | Standby | Idle | Load (BF4) | Load (BD Playback) | ||
| Microsoft Xbox 360 Slim | 0.6W | - | 70.4W | 90.4W (RDR) | - | ||
| Microsoft Xbox One | 0.22W | 15.3W | 69.7W | 119.0W | 79.9W | ||
| Sony PlayStation 4 | 0.45W | 8.59W | 88.9W | 139.8W | 98.0W | ||
When I first saw the PS4’s idle numbers I was shocked. 80 watts is what our IVB-E GPU testbed idles at, and that’s with a massive 6-core CPU and a Titan GPU. Similarly, my Haswell + Titan CPU testbed has a lower idle power than that. The Xbox One’s numbers are a little better at 69W, but still 50 - 80% higher than I was otherwise expecting.
Standby power is also surprisingly high for the Xbox One. Granted in this mode you can turn on the entire console by saying Xbox On, but always-on voice recognition is also something Motorola deployed on the Moto X and did so in a far lower power budget.
The only good news on the power front is really what happens when the console is completely off. I’m happy to report that I measured between 0.22 and 0.45W of draw while off, far less than previous Xbox 360s.
Power under load is pretty much as expected. In general the Xbox One appears to draw ~120W under max load, which isn’t much at all. I’m actually surprised by the delta between idle power and loaded GPU power (~50W). In this case I’m wondering if Microsoft is doing much power gating of unused CPU cores and/or GPU resources. The same is true for Sony on the PS4. It’s entirely possible that AMD hasn’t offered the same hooks into power management that you’d see on a PC equipped with an APU.
Blu-ray playback power consumption is more reasonable on the Xbox One than on the PS4. In both cases though the numbers are much higher than I’d like them to be.
I threw in some browser based CPU benchmarks and power numbers as well. Both the Xbox One and PS4 ship with integrated web browsers. Neither experience is particularly well optimized for performance, but the PS4 definitely has the edge at least in javascript performance.
| Power Consumption Comparison | ||||||
| Lower is Better | SunSpider 1.0.2 (Performance) | SunSpider 1.0.2 (Power) | Kraken 1.1 (Performance) | Kraken 1.1 (Power) | ||
| Microsoft Xbox One | 2360.9 ms | 72.4W | 111892.5 ms | 72.9W | ||
| Sony PlayStation 4 | 1027.4 ms | 114.7W | 22768.7 ms | 114.5W | ||
Power consumption while running these CPU workloads is interesting. The marginal increase in system power consumption while running both tests on the Xbox One indicates one of two things: we’re either only taxing 1 - 2 cores here and/or Microsoft isn’t power gating unused CPU cores. I suspect it’s the former, since IE on the Xbox technically falls under the Windows kernel’s jurisdiction and I don’t believe it has more than 1 - 2 cores allocated for its needs.
The PS4 on the other hand shows a far bigger increase in power consumption during these workloads. For one we’re talking about higher levels of performance, but it’s also possible that Sony is allowing apps access to more CPU cores.
There’s definitely room for improvement in driving down power consumption on both next-generation platforms. I don’t know that there’s huge motivation to do so outside of me complaining about it though. I would like to see idle power drop below 50W, standby power shouldn’t be anywhere near this high on either platform, and the same goes for power consumption while playing back a Blu-ray movie.
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JDG1980 - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
So, based on the numbers shown here, it looks like the PS4's GPU is roughly on par with a Radeon HD 7850 (more shaders, but slightly lower clock). Meanwhile, the XB1's GPU is considerably weaker, with performance falling somewhere between a 7770 and 7790. Considering that this is a game console we're talking about (notwithstanding Microsoft's attempt to position it as a do-everything set-top box), that's going to hurt the XB1 a lot.I just don't see any real advantage to the *consumer* in Microsoft's design decisions here, regardless of supply chain considerations, and I think Anandtech should have been more pro-active in calling them out on this.
mikeisfly - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
The right question to ask is can both cards do 1080p gaming. Remeber these aren't PC where people are running games at much higher resolutions than 1920x180 on multiple monitors.douglord - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
Take a 7850 and 7770 and put them next to each other with FOR locked to 60 fps. Sit back 6 feet and play a fps. Tell me which is which. Maybe a 5% difference in visual fidelity.Revdarian - Sunday, November 24, 2013 - link
Lol no, by the way, what will you do if a game is heavy enough to run at 720p 30 on the ps4, at which resolution will you run it on the xb1?... yeap, it will be notoriously different.jeffrey - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
With the PS4 offering-up such a more powerful system, the arguement turned to Xbox One's eSRAM and "cloud power" to equalize things. Even with Microsoft boosting clocks, the Xbox One simply does not deliver game play graphics the way the PS4 has now been demonstrated to do.The PS4 graphics look much better. In COD Ghosts it almost looks like the PS4 is a half-generation ahead of the Xbox One. This actually makes sense with the the PS4 offering 50% more GPU cores and 100% more ROPs.
Considering the PS4 is $100 cheaper and with the bundled Kinect being a non-starter, the decision seems easy.
The troubling piece is that both systems are dropping featues that previous gen systems had, like Blu-ray 3D.
bill5 - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
heh, half generation? Do you have visual problems?Looking at all the Anand evidence, pics and yt's, you're quibbling over a 1% visual difference, seriously. It's shocking how little difference there is in COD for example, and that's a full 720 vs 1080 split! I expect in the future Xone will close that gap to 900 vs 1080 and the like.
I would say even the average *gamer* wont be able to tell much difference, let alone your mom.
Hell, half the time it's hard to spot much different between "current" and "next" gen versions at a glance, let alone between the PS4/Xone versions.
I'd say that, sad as it is, MS won that war. Their box will be perceived as "good enough". I've already seen reviews today touting Forza 5 as the best looking next gen title on any console, and the like.
All you really need is ports. Mult plat devs are already showing all effects and textures will be the same, the only difference might be resolution (even then games like NFS Rivals and NBA 2K are 1080P on Xone).
Then you'll get to exclusives, where PS4 could stretch it's lead if it has one. However these are the vast vast minority of games (and even then I'd argue early exclusives prove nothing)
I hate what Ms did going low power, it was stupid. But they'll probably get away with it because, Sony.
Philthelegend - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
You trolling?You are the visually impaired if you don't see the difference! Just look at the screenshots and if you have a low resolution screen zoom them in and see the difference. The difference is like playing a game on very high settings(ps4) to medium(xbone) on PC.
"MS won that war. Their box will be perceived as "good enough"." hehehehe you're an obvious troll or a blind fanboy, no one says that the loser won a battle because he was good enough
You say the Forza 5 is the best looking next gen title, then you go on talking about ps4 exclusives prove nothing?
The actual graphics are not the top priority, xbone could have the same graphics as the ps4 but the most important thing is to keep the framerates above and atleast 60 at all times.
TEAMSWITCHER - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
You and I must have watched the different videos. There is a pronounced "Shimmering" effect on the Xbox One - caused by weaker anti-aliasing. It's far more distracting than a mere 1%. In every video the PS4 image looks more solid and consistent. I'm less than an average Gamer and I can see the difference immediately.Microsoft simply didn't "Bring It" this time and when your in a tough competitive situation like game consoles you really can't afford not to. I really don't want to buy a "Good Enough" console. Thank you, but no thanks.
Hubb1e - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
I really didn't see much difference between the two. If I tried really hard I could see some more detail in the PS4 and it had a little less "shimmering" effect. In actual use on a standard 50" TV sitting the normal 8-10 feet away I doubt there will be much difference. Shit, most people don't even realize their TV is set to stretch 4:3 content and they have it set to torch mode because the "colors pop" better. It's probably going to come down to price and Kinect and in this case an extra $100 is a lot of extra money to pay. $449 would have a better a better price, but we'll see since there is plenty of time for MS to lower prices for their console after first adopters have paid the premium price.Kurge - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
Fail. All of that has more to do with the developers than the hardware.