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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bill5 - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
It doesn't matter if you aren't concerned, the EPA is.Vote against Democrats if you dont like it.
Seriously from what i understand particularly regulations in the EU influenced these boxes, and I'm sure a power hog machine was out of the question due to the general climate of "green" propaganda nonsense.
A5 - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
The 360 got so hot it melted its own solder pads, despite sounding like a damn jet engine.There are plenty of engineering reasons to reduce power consumption.
JDG1980 - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
Exactly how will voting against Democrats in the US stop the European Union from imposing additional energy regulations?blitzninja - Saturday, November 23, 2013 - link
He sounds like he is either A. a retard or B. he is talking out of his ass or C. trolling. Either way, ignore him.The power consumption regulations are there for more than just "green". We currently have a problem of growing energy needs and where we're going to get that power form is a big question.
What people don't realize is that the power grid's infrastructure is designed with a peak load in mind and due to implementation and cost limitations you can't just "build more" as most Americans seem to think about it. 1 millions consoles sold at launch, think about that in terms of power consumption and remember, this legislation doesn't just apply to consoles.
Also, I don't understand why the whole "anti-green" view, I don't see how it's bad, even if you don't think global climate change is real (which it is btw, it's fact in every meaning of the word), do you really think dumping all that exhaust fumes in to the atmosphere is good for you or something? How would you like to weak a gas mask/air filter when you go outside? See whats happening in China right now (smog) because of the massive amounts of coal being burned.
tl;dr Power consumption affects more than "green" it affects infrastructure durability and limitations and a large upgrades are extremely costly and time consuming. So please do some research instead of trying to act like a 'smartass'. Also burning lost of fossil fuels can make you sick, see China smog issue.
blitzninja - Saturday, November 23, 2013 - link
Some typo corrections, typing on my phone:"...going to get that power from and how it's going to be transported are big questions."
"...Also, I don't understand the whole "anti-green" view,..." deleted 'why'
"...you like to wear a gas mask/air filter when you go outside?"
evonitzer - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
I think Anand is covering it more as a curiosity. High power PC's with much better capabilities consume similar amounts at idle, so a specifically designed piece of hardware should be optimized MUCH better. But it isn't, and neither is the PS4. Odd.Da W - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
My only issue is WHY Microsoft DID YOU KILL MEDIA CENTER and throw all your focus on the Xbox??? I would kill to have an HTPC with an HDMI-IN and voice command.althaz - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
If the XBox One had a tuner (or four) and more codec support, it would be an amazing media centre. As it is it's a bit inconsistent.A5 - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
Yeah. Not being able to do DVR stuff on the XBone makes it kind of a deal-killer.andrewaggb - Wednesday, November 20, 2013 - link
I was genuinely surprised they didn't integrate a set top box+pvr in at least one sku of the one and market it to cable providers