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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IKeelU - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
Those "obsessions" in the PC-sphere are academic exercises to underline the differences between otherwise very similar pieces of silicon. Good GPU reviews (and good PC builders) focus on actual game performance and overall experience, incl. power and noise.And of course it matters that the PS4 is has a better GPU. It's just that native 1080p vs upscaled 720p (+AA) isn't a world of difference when viewed from 8-10 feet away (don't take my word for it, try for yourself).
But like Anand states in the article, things might get interesting when PS4 devs use this extra power to do more than just bump up the res. I, for one, would trade 1080p for better effects @ 60fps.
chelsea2889 - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
Great comparison of both products! Has anyone else heard of Why Remote though? I heard it has face and hand gesture recognition and apparently integrates with different types of social media and streaming apps. It seems pretty cool, I'm looking forward to seeing them at the upcoming CES convention!greywolf0 - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
Wow and I thought the Xbox One was just significantly handicapped in both memory bandwidth and GPU cores. Now I learn about this magical third thing called ROP where the Xbox One literally has only half that of the PS4 and it noticeably affects perceived resolution and is even lower than the standard AMD configuration for proper 1080p output. More nails in the Microsoft coffin.If you want to talk exclusive games and variety, the PS4 has more than enough bald headed space marine games and yet-another-space-marine-FPS-OMG-oversaturation to satiate any Halo desires, if you even had one to begin with. What you won't find on the Xbox One, however, is all the exclusive Japanese-made games, because lets face it, the Xbox is gonna sell poorly in Japan regardless, and that means no incentive to even make a half-ass port for the Xbox. This means all the JRPG fans and quirky Japanese adventure and indie games are not coming to Xbox, just like last gen.
And Microsoft just opened a Scroogled store selling more anti-Google paraphernalia, a continuation of their assinine and low-brow tactics and culture. They continue to be nothing but assholes day in and day out. They may have curbed their evil corporation ambitions with the backlash from their Xbox mind-control "features", but they show no sign of letting up anywhere else. I didn't think I could care much about tech companies, as they are all in it for money, but Microsoft continues to be the most morally reprehensible one around. A company not worth supporting or saving. To be shunned. It helps that all their recent products have been absolute out of touch flops, from Windows Phone to Windows RT and 8. Ditto Xbox power grab.
UltraTech79 - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
>More nails in the Microsoft coffin.Drama queen. This shit just doesnt matter in consoles unless youre a fanboy of one side or another. What matters is how good the game plays when they are done and its in your hands.
immanuel_aj - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
Have to agree with you on the Japanese exclusives. They either take forever to get ported or don't get ported at all, unless it's a big title. I never got a PS3, but the PS4 seems like a good place to start and hopefully there'll be more indie stuff from Japan as well. I'm just waiting for a limited edition console to be released before getting one! Though using a Japanese PSN account is a bit of a pain sometimes.However, I don't think the PS4 has that many bald headed space marines ;)
jonjonjonj - Thursday, November 21, 2013 - link
i agree there's always someone crying about power costs. if the $5 a year in power is that big of a deal then you probably shouldn't be spending $500 on an xbox and $60 a year on xbox live.tuxfool - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
Or alternatively they might care for the environment. Multiply all that "wasted" power by everyone and it adds up. This is doubly true when the apparent tasks this power is used on don't really require it.maxpwr - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
Both "next generation" systems are increadibly weak and outdated. Not enough performance for Oculus Rift, let alone 4K displays.cheshirster - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
Please, stop your squarephobia.Origin64 - Friday, November 22, 2013 - link
I acnually feel this generation is pretty bad for innovation. The PS3 And 360 made sense, at the time. They were very fast machines for the money. Sony sold PS3s at a loss for years. MS I dunno.I feel like time has kind of caught up with that kind of console. What's the use of building a whole new OS when these machines are x86 and fast enough to run Linux? Why focus on all kinds of closed proprietary online features when all that has been done before - and better - by volunteers building freeware. You build a PC thats comparable performance-wise and competitive on price with these machines, if you rip some parts out of an old one and replace PSU/mobo/cpu/gfx. Everyone can find a battered old pc that you can screw new parts in. People throw the things away if they get a little slow.
Then you can have the power of running what you want on the machine you paid for. Complete control. It'll save money in the long run.