what builds did they use to test this? have they actualy measured consumption or simply added the PSU power limits? 7.2 hours a day is certainly not average time spent gaming (most people dont even do 20 hours in a week).
Also no, you DONT throw in web browsing, streaming video or idle time because those times are low power state runs that consume far less energy. you only count actual full load gaming here. and that consumption is incomparable with other times.
Unlike game consoles, where energy use has been extensively studied, PCs have countless barriers to energy efficiency. Most gaming PCs are custom units, and individual components like CPUs won't list energy levels the way other electronics do. Thankfully, that means simply buying the right components could save you money while keeping your frame rates high. For example, solid state drives use 70 percent less energy than traditional hard drives, while installing an improved cooling system also reduces energy consumption.
Absolute nonsense. All parts that have any significant power usage lists their load and maximum wattages. ALL OF THEM. in fact, its the other electronics that often skimp on that information. Not to mention that you wont be using it at maximum most of the time. In 99% of modern videogames, your CPU is not fully loaded and does not consume its rated power unless you are using a weak CPU fast GPU combo.
Buying different components will not refuce your power usage. more powerful components will simply run bellow maximum to produce same processing effect, using less power.
Solide state drives usage is irrelevant, hard drives usage is less than 1% of your PC power usage. over 90% is in CPU and GPU. third place is your RAM.
Cooling system will NOT reduce your energy consumption. in fact, it will INCREASE it. It will icnrease it in two ways:
1. more coolers or water cooling requires more power.
2. Components are running optimal in certain temperatures. if you cool them bellow that they will require more electricity to run optimally.
Which is great, because the only other alternative is convincing PC gamers that fast systems don't actually improve their gameplay experiences. And if that's the case, we'll be waiting a very long time.
As in - never. Fast systems improve gameplay experiences significantly for any properly coded game.
WouldYouKindly said:
I'm betting a lot of this can be solved by turning the PC off when you're not there. If you've got a solid state drive, this isn't even an annoyance because start up takes no time.
It cannot. Idle usage is very small. It is generally advisable against shutting computer off if you are leaving for just an hour because you actually ensure more wear and tear and power consumption in the shutdown/startup procedure than leaving it run idle. even the hard drives park and stop spinning if your system is truly idle.
wizzy555 said:
The paper also recommends activation the energy saving features on your hardware (if it isn't already on). This includes things like self-adjusting fan speeds. But this may involve poking around in the bios.
self-adjusting fans are noise-reduction feature and not power-reduction one. most fans, especially stock ones (that most people use) are bellow 1W.
Vigormortis said:
* Their model for a "typical gaming PC day" had the PC off for only six hours a day, with an estimated 4.4 hours of game time. So while I can maybe see 4.4 hours of gaming a day (certainly not for anyone with a full-time job), only a complete moron would leave their PC on for 18 hours a day.
HOWEVER....they absolutely have a point. There's very little effort in making gaming PC components as energy efficient as possible, beyond the end-user's attempts. As an industry, we really must start pushing for new standards.
Here's hoping their study, as much as I might question it, brings some much needed attention to the issue.
according to Raptr statistics (which is an optional third party gaming client that was bought by AMD and is now shipped with AMD drivers) average gamer plays bellow 20 hours a week, so 4.4 hours a day sounds very unrealistic. I often end up in "top 10-5%" by playing as little as 24 hours a week and such.
Actually there was a lot of effort at making PC components more energy savy. PC power consumption barely changed for over a decade despite calcualtion power increasing hundredfold. despite that, for example latest desktop line of CPUs from Intel put main focus on energy efficiency rather than power. there is a lot of push already.
Poodleboy said:
The statistics used here seem a bit odd. Firstly, do high end PCs really draw an average of 720W? As far as I can tell, the average rig draws around 350W when running full tilt.
you need a multi-GPU setup to draw 720W with ANY configuration. Single GPU setups no matter how elaborate are never that hungry. Multi-GPU setups are bellow 10% of PC gamers.
Fanghawk said:
Questioning the stats is completely reasonable folks, but those of us basically saying "these extreme gamers aren't the majority!" should remember - according to the study they'd still consume an insane amount of electricity. As in, 2.5% of the PC gamers are consuming 20% of the electricity. That is insane. Even if the number of builds which could do so is limited, that's a major efficiency problem.
irrelevant. even if 2.5% of gamers consumed 20% of the electricity (which in itself is silly) their premise to begin with is false and makes this irrelevant.
