New consoles won't hog as much power for simple tasks like streaming.
by Kyle Orland
Today's high-definition game consoles can be big power drainers, drawing around 70 to 100 Watts when in active use (depending on the model). That's down from over 170W of energy draw when the systems were first launched, thanks to firmware updates. Still, it can be quite a lot of energy, especially when the systems are being used for relatively simple things like Netflix streaming (an Apple TV, for comparison, only uses about 6W of power, and a Super Nintendo uses only 10W).
The energy situation seems poised to improve with the next generation of consoles, though, according to a Polygon report. Systems like the Xbox One were "designed from the ground up to maximize computational power per watt," according to Microsoft Senior Compliance Manager Tim Calland.
The Xbox One's scalable multicore design is key to that efficiency, he said. "One major difference we have now versus the Xbox 360 is scalable architecture, which means that it deals with tasks by just using the amount of computing capacity needed for the work to be done. Gaming is the big high-power experience, but when we are doing lesser functionality like streaming media, we're using much less energy than the Xbox 360 did when we launched... We have eight cores now and we only use the amount that we need. That wasn't an option in the last generation."
Photograph by Kyle Orland
Even when running at full capacity, Calland said that the Xbox One generates "eight times the computational power for the same amount of energy as Xbox 360 at launch." Of course, the Xbox One has a much higher ceiling for computational power than the Xbox 360 did, so the overall energy consumption for players upgrading is still likely to see a bump. Still, there's room for that efficiency to improve over the console's lifetime, just as it did with the current generation of consoles.
Calland also confirmed that the Xbox One will be set to shut down after 60 minutes of idle time by default, just like the Wii U. Even though that setting can be overridden by users, turning it on by default can have a surprisingly large effect on a console's aggregate lifetime power consumption.
Courtesy: arstechnica
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