PALO ALTO, CA — When it comes to buying a game console, energy efficiency is certain to be about at the bottom of a shopper's list of priorities.
But a new study from the Electric Power Research Institute shows that there is a difference -- and sometimes a huge difference -- in the amount of energy game systems use.
Testing how much power each of the three most popular game platforms use during one hour of play on EA Sports' Madden 360, EPRI found that the Nintendo Wii is the most energy efficient console, using just one-sixth the power of the Sony Playstation 3 or the Microsoft Xbox 360.
“Obviously there are many considerations when looking at a gaming system and we’re only talking about energy use,” Mark McGranaghan, vice president of Power Delivery & Utilization for EPRI, said in a statement. “There are also tradeoffs associated with graphics and speed that drive higher energy use and consumers will need to factor those elements in as well. The more graphically intensive systems will, by design, require more energy.”
The numbers breakdown is as follows: The Wii used an average of 13.7 watts, the PlayStation 3 an average of 84.8 watts, and the Xbox 360 an average of 87.9 watts.
While these numbers show a big spread of overall energy impacts, they all pale in comparison to some of the appliances plugged in to those systems. Even under what surveys found was heavy gaming levels -- 5 hours and 45 minutes per day -- none of these systems would use as much energy as a plasma television plugged in for the same amount of time.
But the EPRI story also finds some promising progress; even though all three systems are more graphically intensive, and the quality of the graphics has improved generation over generation, each of the systems uses less power than previous models.
Sony has cut the energy consumed by the Playstation 3 nearly in half since the 2007 model year, down from 150.1 watts. The 2007 Xbox used 118.8 watts, and the 2006 Wii used 16.4 watts.
The findings in the EPRI study are somewhat surprising, at least in light of the fact that Nintendo regularly holds down last place in the Greenpeace green IT rankings.
Photo CC-licensed by Catatronic.
Because no one ever turns it
Because no one ever turns it on after the few times of playing it
Since when is efficiency
Since when is efficiency measured in watts?
Consuming less power to do less does not make it more efficient.
Is my iPod screen more efficient than my big screen television? Just because it's doing less and consuming less power.
Efficiency is either unitless ratio/percentage (useful work per unit of energy) or gauged using a figure of merit such as miles per gallon (which, of course can be converted to the former.)
Its true!! It's more energy
Its true!! It's more energy efficient because you use it a couple times.. Get bored, and never turn it on again
i'd say the xbox 360 is most
i'd say the xbox 360 is most energy efficient. after it gets the red ring of death and you turn it off, it hardly uses any power.
I'd love to see the wii Play
I'd love to see the wii Play COD black ops lol
In practice, it's possible
In practice, it's possible for the performance of an xbox to exceed that of a Wii by approx. 10 times (you can't give an exact figure for a whole system). Of course it varies by application. The point is, the Wii may in fact be less efficient at times than the 360 given that metric. As far as theoretical performance is concerned, the PS3 can go allot further than the Wii (in practice it doesn't regularly do much more than the 360 as we see a majority of games on both platforms with few discernable differences).
Event bothering to test to work out that the Wii uses less energy is a joke. It is like testing to see which is more efficient, a single LED or a flood light be just measuring the power consumption of each against one another. Even if you added the correct step that we do not see here, of at least trying to incorporate lumens into that you would not suggest to use an LED or LEDs instead of a normal flood light at a football match.
Anyway I have the most efficient console of the lot, the master system.
duh, that white piece of
duh,
that white piece of trash nintendo markets has the processing power of a f'ing solar powered calculator.
thanks einstein, good job stating that a weak, inferior console uses less power. it shows....
Way to go Einstein... A
Way to go Einstein... A weaker, less advanced gaming rig useless less power than a more advanced and more powerful one. That's some great detective work there...
Come on. You can just look at
Come on. You can just look at the size of the consoles and know that the Wii consumes less energy. It is also 1/3 the power of the 360 and PS3, which explains the lower energy usage. Less power = less energy. Not worth writing an article on honestly.