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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Sabresiberian - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
Sorry about the emotion in the last paragraph, but it irritates me that some console players have to make up excuses for their decision. If you decide to buy a console, that's all good, but don't cut your nose off to spite yourself by purchasing one for reasons that simply aren't true.Sabresiberian - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
"yourself" is a typo, should be "your face". :)PliotronX - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
That's very true, but then they've always lagged PC gaming. The closed proprietary system is a double edged sword. SDKs designed for a specific system can eek every last drop out of said system but then it's basically set in stone. I honestly don't think most peoples eyes are attune to the blur without GSync but they will notice true 1080p gaming. They all (PC, PS4, Xbone) all still serve their roles. Xbone just happens to veer off into Netflix territory a little too hard.ydeer - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
I agree, I’m not as excited about consoles as I used to be. What I am really excited about is SteamOS.Most reasonably priced gaming PCs have the potential to compete with this generation of consoles if Valve (somehow, magically) manages to bring down the overhead using Linux.
Plus you get the community. And a controller that at least has the potential to work better than anything we have used so far (see Civ5 on Steam Controller demo). And holiday sales. Upgradable hardware.
Heck, I can even see myself dual booting SteamOS on a MBP with the Steam Controller to play the latest and greatest games at almost equal quality than "next-gen" consoles, but completely mobile.
Please Valve, don't mess this up.
Wall Street - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
First off, 1440p, G-Sync and 120 Hz are all technologies that cost $250+ for the monitor alone and really demand another $300 on the GPU, so they are not comparable to the PS4 or XBox.Secondly, how can you build a gaming rig for $500? $100 is the Windows license. Another $100 gets a PSU, a case and a Blu-ray drive (but a really cheap case and PSU). Another $100 needs to be spent for a HDD and RAM. Now we are at $300 and don'y have a Mobo, CPU or RAM. A good CPU and CPU cooler costs $150, even for a cheaper CPU (with a stock cooler, the console would be much quieter than the desktop). At least $50 needs to be spent on a Mobo. This leaves you with only $50 on your $500 budget for a GPU. As you can see, this leaves you with a system that underperforms the consoles. I would also argue that a $500 system needs to cheap out on components leaving you with worse build quality than a console which is more similar to a premium SFF PC (which cost a premium to full sized). Also, this cost analysis doesn't have a monitor or peripherals, so if you don't have a PC or have a laptop, that is at least another $150 (many more people have TVs, and fewer people have monitors sitting around now that laptops have been a majority of PC sales over the past five years).
Hixbot - Sunday, November 24, 2013 - link
PC gaming is superior, but as long as developers leave out the local multiplayer elements of their console counterpart, a console will always have a spot in my home. You know, gaming in the living room with actual friends. I'd hook up my gaming PC to my TV and get some controllers, but there are basically no PC games that offer any decent local multiplayer options.mikato - Monday, November 25, 2013 - link
They do but you need to have all the computers in the same room. Pain in the butt, but we do it a couple times a year.Lonesloane - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
What about the noise of both new consoles? Anand is not commenting on that in the article, but after my experience with a Xenon 360 this is really important to me.Could you add that information?
JimmiG - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
It's funny how PC hardware reviews obsess over tiny differences in memory bandwidth, shader throughput and clock speeds, yet the PS4 having 40% greater shader throughput and 160% more memory bandwidth just doesn't seem to matter...blzd - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
Did you read the article? It was pretty clear and even pointed out to make real world differences. Maybe you thought theyd outright denounce the xb1 for it?