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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F00L1Sh - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
I found this explanation very helpful.beefgyorki - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
Anand, when MS initially talked about the Xbox One OS design from their description it certainly sounded like the Xbox OS (i.e. the gaming OS) was just a VM running on top of a hypervisor. Given that, then in theory that VM could be modified to be made runnable on say a Windows Desktop PC or potentially even a Tablet.With one in hand now, is there anything that can be done to shed some light on that possibility?
To me the most intriguing aspect of XB1 is the OS if it truly is just a VM because that could open up some really interesting possibilities down the road.
flyingpants1 - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
What do you mean "just a VM", don't you realise the Xbox 360 OS was running in a VM too?Elooder2 - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
This. Was Xbox360 on an x86 CPU? No. But Xbone is. Therefore it seems logical to consider that if there is a possibility of somehow "extracting" the actual VM from the XBone, it could be made to run on a normal Windows PC with much less modification and hassle than the Xbox360 VM because there's no need to worry about the difference in architecture. Basically, I perceive that the biggest deterrent to making an "emulator" of the XBone (via a VM) is some form of software or hardware DRM. The Mac has a similar mechanism in Mac OS which will not let you install that OS on a regular PC because the regular PC doesn't have some extra chip that the boot code of the OS install disc looks for. As we all know, this was quite successfully cracked and Hackintoshes are plentiful. Ok, so Microsoft is not Apple and they may go down on anyone releasing an XBone emulator, but it doesn't mean it can't be done. It would seem much easier to produce an emulator for a console that uses, basically, almost, off-the-shelf parts.PliotronX - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
Good lord the Xbone falls short. The embedded SRAM is irrelevant, trading outright strength in 3D for faster operations tied to the subsystem is a failing strategy dating back to the PSX and Sega Saturn.Teknobug - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
Looks like PS4 wins not only in hardware specs, but graphics visuals. The only difference maker between the two seems to be game titles. I would have bought the Playstation 4 if Gran Turismo 6 was coming out for it but nope they released it for the PS3, bummer. I have Forza 2, 3, 4 for X360 and will not get Forza 5 after how Turn10 turned Forza 4 into a cash cow with DLC cars.warezme - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
Exactly, it is huge failure on the MS side and I suspect many a game developer will eventually reveal just how limiting their decision has been. Overall for the two consoles that I would consider to be a modern investment of 3 to 5 years, these are pretty pathetic hardware examples. Current gen PC's are already way ahead and the difference will only continue to surpass these consoles.Homeles - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
Actually, what's wrong with you? It's pretty common knowledge that ROPs are huge consumers of memory bandwidth in a GPU, and with the Xbone having half of them, memory bandwidth becomes far less of an issue.Get educated.
Spunjji - Tuesday, November 26, 2013 - link
Less of an issue at a given performance level. Your performance becomes gated by the ROPs instead, so it's still a bloody stupid design decision for a "next gen" console.Sabresiberian - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
Frankly, I'm disappointed in both of them In an age where PCs are moving to 2560x1440 as a standard, 120Hz, and G-sync. These consoles are simply already dated, even more so than at the release of the Xbox 360 and PS3. Good on the upgrades, but I simply can't see buying one over a PC I can build for around $500. (To be fair, it would cost you closer to $700 if you buy pre-made, but I'll point out that almost every one already has a PC. $500 for a PC and $400 for a console means spending more money, not less, for less capability; it only makes sense if you need 2 different pieces of hardware so one person in the family can use one while the other uses something else.)The only thing consoles offer is existing community. If all your friends play on an Xbox, or Playstation, it is hard to buy a PC instead. However, that isn't a plus, it is a minus because it sets apart gamers that want to play together. It polarizes those gamers that are emotionally attached to one or the other, and that is just bad for everyone. Good news is that Microsoft is talking about making it so PC players can play with Xbone players - but how is that going to effect the quality of the PC versions? Are they going to have to be capped in terms of game responsiveness and frame rates in order to level the playing field?
Don't get me wrong; I'm not bashing console players themselves. And, I get the attraction to cool hardware, I'm even tempted a bit myself, just cause "cool hardware" despite the limitations involved. And, there's the whole playing with others thing, havng both consoles would mean I didn't have to exclude people I want to game with. But, I'd feel like I'd be supporting a part of gaming that I really believe is bad for gamers in this day and age, so I won't be buying a console.
(And, don't give me any freakin tired, old arguments about controllers and a "different experience". It simply is not true, you can use any console controller on a PC. There is absolutely, categorically nothing you can do on a console that you can't do on a PC, except connect with exclusive communities and play exclusive games. Exclusive communities are bad for gamers as a whole, exclusive games are bad for gamers, too. Crappy hardware is bad for everyone.)