NEW STUDY: Taming the Energy Use of Gaming Computers

[NatCat]

Greetings LTT forum members! I would like to share this new study that my father and I just published.

The news release is written below.

We appreciate all constructive criticism of our paper!

 

 

Taming the Energy Use of Gaming Computers

Nathaniel Mills
GreeningTheBeast.org

 

Evan Mills
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
evanmills.lbl.gov
[email protected]<script cf-hash='f9e31' type="text/javascript"> /* */</script>

 

Just published in the journal Energy Efficiency, this new study presents a novel analysis of the energy use of gaming PCs…. 

Download the full report here.

 

One billion people around the world today engage in digital gaming. Gaming is the most energy-intensive use of desktop computers, and the high-performance “racecar” machines built expressly for this purpose comprise the fastest growing type of gaming platform.

 

We found enormous performance-normalized variations in power ratings among the gaming computer components available on today’s market.  For example, central processing units vary by 4.3-fold, graphics processing units 5.8-fold, power supply units 1.3-fold, motherboards 5.0-fold, RAM 139.2-fold, and displays 11.5-fold. Similarly performing complete systems with low, typical, and high efficiencies correspond to approximately 900, 600, and 300 watts of nameplate power, respectively.

While measured power requirements are considerably lower than nameplate for most components we tested--by about 50% for complete systems--the bottom-line energy use is massive compared to that of standard personal computers.

 

Based on our actual measurements of gaming PCs with progressively more efficient component configurations, together with market data on typical patterns of use, we estimate that the typical gaming PC (including display) uses about 1400 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year. The energy use of a single typical gaming PC is equivalent to the energy use of of 10 game consoles, 6 conventional desktop computers, or 3 refrigerators. Depending on local energy prices, it can cost many hundreds of dollars per year to run a gaming PC.

While gaming PCs represent only 2.5% of the global installed personal computing equipment base, our initial scoping estimate suggests that gaming PCs consumed roughly 75 billion kilowatt-hours per year of electricity globally in 2012, or approximately 20% of all personal desktop computer, notebook, and console energy usage combined.  For context, this corresponds to about $10 billion per year in energy expenditures, or the equivalent electrical output of 25 typical electric power plants.

 

Given market trends and projected changes in the installed base, we estimate that this energy consumption will more than double by the year 2020 if the current rate of equipment sales is unabated and efficiencies are not improved. Although they will represent only 10% of the installed base of all types of gaming platforms globally in 2020, relatively high unit energy consumption and high hours of use will result in gaming computers being responsible for 40% of overall gaming energy use.

 

This significant energy footprint can be reduced by more than 75% with premium efficiency components and operations, while improving reliability and performance. This corresponds to a potential savings of approximately 120 billion kilowatt-hours or $18 Billion per year globally by 2020.

 

There is a significant lack of current policies to achieve such improvements, and very little guidance is available to help consumers make energy efficient choices when they purchase, upgrade, and operate their gaming PCs.  Key opportunities include product labeling, utility rebates, and minimum efficiency standards.

 

[AlwaysFSX]

I'm going to be the jerk that points out the obvious but it would be incredibly pointless to try and change "standard components" with "premium efficiency components" because that would jack up the prices of everything ten fold. There's a reason no one does it.

 

The biggest problem with why computers draw so much energy is the complexity of the process to complete a task. Software models are out dated and waste time to do something that a much smaller line of code could do. If you change the software set to something that's even half the size you could get (theoretically) the same performance for half the power.

 

Replacing everything with platinum however? Nah. That's an endeavor that'll get you nowhere.

 

Sorry I'm like this but yeah.

[Notree]

 

There is a significant lack of current policies to achieve such improvements, and very little guidance is available to help consumers make energy efficient choices when they purchase, upgrade, and operate their gaming PCs.  Key opportunities include product labeling, utility rebates, and minimum efficiency standards.

 

 Do you think company's are not trying to make things more energy efficient? All those things you mentioned cost money.Which means that those costs will be passed to the consumer. I for one do not wanna pay more cause some guy who wants to use less power needed a label to help him choose parts.

[AlwaysFSX]

 Do you think company's are not trying to make things more energy efficient? All those things you mentioned cost money.Which means that those costs will be passed to the consumer. I for one do not wanna pay more cause some guy who wants to use less power needed a label to help him choose parts.

Yeah there's a reason we use gold instead of better metals, it's readily available and more than good enough.

[winningsince1337]

I overclock the shit out of my computer most the time which increases power draw to about double what it is at stock. This nets an additional 20% performance (average). And then I suffer because it turns my room into a toaster. But I do it for the love of the PC MASTER RACE, Gabe N., and max fps.

 

TLDR: People above me already said it all, we have capitalism and I can waste my money on dank pc gaming framerates if I want to.

 

Fuck the peasant box consoles too, GG COD nerds

[Electronics Wizardy]

Gaming systems don't use much more power if you consider that all that is being added to a normal desktop is a gpu that uses about 200w at max load(probally les than 3 hours a day) and about 20w idle. And if you shutdown your system or sleep it will save lots of power.

[Counter-Strike Player]

Well OP, hopefully by 2020, we'll all be using nuc's using 10 watts to game at 4K, since we can watch 4K videos with that kind of wattage today. If the problem is about increasing your carbon footprint, distributing limited resources, and storing more nuclear waste byproducts, then have less kids

[nekomata]

Well OP, hopefully by 2020, we'll all be using nuc's using 10 watts to game at 4K, since we can watch 4K videos with that kind of wattage today. If the problem is about increasing your carbon footprint, distributing limited resources, and storing more nuclear waste byproducts, then have less kids

Or, we can just a massive genocide that eliminates a bunch of people so that we can use their supposed carbon footprint if they were still alive

[NatCat]

Great to see so many people comment on our piece (or at least the summary).  Following are our thoughts on a few of the points.  Do read the study itself to get the complete picture.

 

I'm going to be the jerk that points out the obvious but it would be incredibly pointless to try and change "standard components" with "premium efficiency components" because that would jack up the prices of everything ten fold. There's a reason no one does it.

 

The biggest problem with why computers draw so much energy is the complexity of the process to complete a task. Software models are out dated and waste time to do something that a much smaller line of code could do. If you change the software set to something that's even half the size you could get (theoretically) the same performance for half the power.

 

Replacing everything with platinum however? Nah. That's an endeavor that'll get you nowhere.

 

Sorry I'm like this but yeah.

 

Well, it's of course already happening a lot -- just look at the rapid improvements in RAM and PSUs over the past 10 years.  Certainly not pointless.  Sure, it's not driven exclusively by efficiency aspirations, but those efficiency gains yield other bennies that people do want (miniaturization, etc.).  In some cases energy savings will pay for the incremental costs (typically nowhere near 10x).  Indeed, without a long history of efficiency improvements in computing, we couldn't have machines as powerful as today's (heat, cost, reliability would kill it).

 

Much agreed that improving the software itself is a super-important thing to do, and there is a lot of low-hanging fruit in that domain.  This is a big area of focus in HPC and there's no reason it can't be done by game coders as well.  But it's a false choice to say savings should be done thru code OR hardware -- the history of energy efficiency in other realms, shows that the most significant outcomes are when both avenues are pursued jointly.  Bottom line is more performance for the same amount of energy use -- a lot more.

 

 

 Do you think company's are not trying to make things more energy efficient? All those things you mentioned cost money.Which means that those costs will be passed to the consumer. I for one do not wanna pay more cause some guy who wants to use less power needed a label to help him choose parts.

 

Sure they are.  Our paper actually shows that in spades.  Huge variations in efficiency clearly already exist for a given level of performance.  That's actually part of the very promising news in all of this, i.e., there are abundant existence proofs that efficiency gains can be had without compromizing performance (see chart at bottom of original post).   Re: costs, no question they are passed along to consumers.  Many people readily pay more for double windows than single windows, more for LED bulbs than incandescent ones.  Question is whether the focus is simply on first costs or total costs of ownership.  Labels are cheap; they're not going to raise the cost of your gear, but they do help someone who cares about how much they spend to game make more informed choices than is today possible.

 

I don't see the argument against improved consumer information. Would we really be better off if cars did not have mpg ratings or EnergyStar on our fridges?

 

 

I overclock the shit out of my computer most the time which increases power draw to about double what it is at stock. This nets an additional 20% performance (average). And then I suffer because it turns my room into a toaster. But I do it for the love of the PC MASTER RACE, Gabe N., and max fps.

 

TLDR: People above me already said it all, we have capitalism and I can waste my money on dank pc gaming framerates if I want to.

 

Fuck the peasant box consoles too, GG COD nerds

 

Nothing wrong with computing power, for those who can afford it and have buckets of ice cubes to dump down their backs as needed.  The thing is that it's a false choice to say that performance must be compromised in order to get efficiency (see chart at the bottom of original post in this thread). In the paper we cut measured energy use in half without putting a dent in performance.  Capitalism is actually quite consistent with energy efficiency, which is already a multi-hundred-billion dollar industry (products & services).  Free markets work best when information is readily accessible.  The really inefficient countries are the ones that lack this drive and bury information (think Russia).

 

 

Gaming systems don't use much more power if you consider that all that is being added to a normal desktop is a gpu that uses about 200w at max load(probally les than 3 hours a day) and about 20w idle. And if you shutdown your system or sleep it will save lots of power.

 

We wish it was that simple, but that's not the only component that differentiates a gaming PC from normal desktop. Figure 12 can help you unpack this further, e.g., if the user had the discipline to shut that particular kit down instead of staying in standby you'd save ~260 kWh/year (or about a fifth of the total).  Healthy improvement, but not a panacea; much more can be had by upping true component efficiency.

 

 

Well OP, hopefully by 2020, we'll all be using nuc's using 10 watts to game at 4K, since we can watch 4K videos with that kind of wattage today. If the problem is about increasing your carbon footprint, distributing limited resources, and storing more nuclear waste byproducts, then have less kids

 

It would be great if population was the only problem.  In reality, Americans represent 5% of world population but use something like ~25% of the resources.  The product of population and consumption per head is the number that matters. Need to work on both in order to really address the big energy problems.  Also, one person having less kids still sucks the bad air emitted by other people's hummers.

 

Meanwhile an average gaming PC uses 1/3 as much electricitiy as an entire average California home -- not trivial.

[Counter-Strike Player]

Also, one person having less kids still sucks the bad air emitted by other people's hummers.

Regardless, having 1 less child is 20 times more effective than other methods I can do personally to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Some examples of these methods would be like, buy nothing but energy-star appliances, turn lights off at night, recycling every possible thing that could be recyclable, and drive a Prius for the rest of my life. And the irony is that although 1 American has the spending power of about 8 Chinese nationals, China ends up being the scapegoat for emitting higher co2 levels than any other nation (although not surprising given the sheer number of people.)

[Imakuni]

If people would only actually buy adequate PSUs, maybe that would help.

 

The amount of dudes I see with 750w PSUs, but only 300W-ish configs is insane....

[Electronics Wizardy]

Lots of the computer power saving is coming from the server market where more money is spent on power and cooling than the servers. This then goes to the desktop market. 

[Counter-Strike Player]

If people would only actually buy adequate PSUs, maybe that would help.

 

The amount of dudes I see with 750w PSUs, but only 300W-ish configs is insane....

 

ikr? Through several rma's (of all went decently smooth), I ended up with an overkill 1200w 80+ gold psu from Antec. The key with the 80+ certification is a lot of underlying validation that it will be that efficient at that particular load so finding one that operates that efficiently at a decent spread of loads is probably what you're looking for. Here's an independent report on mine: http://www.plugloadsolutions.com/psu_reports/ANTEC_HCP-1200_ECOS%202169_1200W_Report.pdf -- notice the smooth horizontal line at 90% efficiency at nearly all loads tested.

 

Now, as I'm writing this and have several (non-graphics intensive) apps open, my tower is pulling ~90 watts from the wall. How much efficiency am I getting at ~7% load? Who knows.

[CatzRuleZWorld]

Gaming is the most energy-intensive use of desktop computers

Ummmm... Uhhhh... Did you forget to do your research? Folding? Video rendering? Those things use more of your computer's max power consumption than gaming...

[Counter-Strike Player]

Ummmm... Uhhhh... Did you forget to do your research? Folding? Video rendering? Those things use more of your computer's max power consumption than gaming...

 

Yes yes, all those things are fine and dandy. But they can't run Crysis.

[mr moose]

Yeah,  gunna have to say this is another look into household items trying to make changes through policy that will have little real world effect other than increase the cost to the end user.

 

Many times we see social endeavors drive policy that has a net effect on the consumer but makes little difference to the root issue. 

[Me1z]

It's not gonna happen. Gaming computers will continue to consume insane amounts of power for as long as they exist. Compared to what we had only 5 years ago, the power to performance ratio has more than doubled. But at the same time we've used that increase in efficiency to get double the performance at the same power ratings rather than the same performance at half the power consumption. It's not like we finally hit a point where 'computers are good enough and don't need to be improved', if anything, its the complete opposite. We NEED more computational power. Not want, NEED. We are still well within the territory of hardware holding back what can be achieved with software. Until I can run F@H simulations in real time instead of in nanoseconds per day, graphics cards will continue to consume upwards of 300W and there's nothing that branding or labels can do about it. Instead of trying to do the impossible, how about you put some effort into affordable solar panels to cancel out the power used by my computer instead? I would love to power my home with solar, but I don't have several thousand dollars lying around. Don't blame computers for using power, blame local power companies for continuing to rely on fossil fuels and charge asinine rates for something as basic as electricity. The technology already exists and we could easily generate more than enough power for the whole world using renewable resources, don't blame us for the failures of those who actually have the ability to bring about change.

[Notree]

Sure they are.  Our paper actually shows that in spades.  Huge variations in efficiency clearly already exist for a given level of performance.  That's actually part of the very promising news in all of this, i.e., there are abundant existence proofs that efficiency gains can be had.   Re: costs, no question they are passed along to consumers.  Many people readily pay more for double windows than single windows, more for LED bulbs than incandescent ones.  Question is whether the focus is simply on first costs or total costs of ownership.  Labels are cheap;they're not going to raise the cost of your gear, but they do help someone who cares about how much they spend to game make more informed choices than is today possible.

 

I don't see the argument against improved consumer information. Would we really be better off if cars did not have mpg ratings?

 

 

 

 

 

  Yes people buy those things cause its an option. What your saying is to do it to all parts. The current way its done is perfectly fine. Anyone who care's about power usage will get low power parts.I don't really care about power consumption personally. Your dreaming if you don't think they would raise prices.Guess there just going to do all that extra work for free huh?

I think the consumer information out there is perfectly adequate .

[Imakuni]

Until I can run F@H simulations in real time instead of in nanoseconds per day

Or, until we can run accurate brain simulations in real time. In other words, "true" IA, in a sense.

[Counter-Strike Player]

...if the user had the discipline to shut that particular kit down instead of staying in standby you'd save ~260 kWh/year...

 

Well time is money to a lot of people. If the assumption is that you have a full-time job working from home on your computer would you rather have a instant boot to the desktop or save the extra $1.50 to wait a cumulative ~12 minutes for your computer to boot each day for the month? How about waiting a full 2.5 hours just as "waiting time" for your computer to boot each year? I didn't check but did you factor in the extra amperage needed at each cold boot to briefly spin up all the fans and hdd's to operating rpm?

[Counter-Strike Player]

Or, until we can run accurate brain simulations in real time. In other words, "true" IA, in a sense.

 

Trust me, you really, really don't want "true" AI to exist. Watch this video why:

 

[winningsince1337]

Regardless, having 1 less child is 20 times more effective than other methods I can do personally to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Some examples of these methods would be like, buy nothing but energy-star appliances, turn lights off at night, recycling every possible thing that could be recyclable, and drive a Prius for the rest of my life. And the irony is that although 1 American has the spending power of about 8 Chinese nationals, China ends up being the scapegoat for emitting higher co2 levels than any other nation (although not surprising given the sheer number of people.)

 

Plot twist, cows actually make a metric shit ton (no pun intended) of greenhouse gasses. Stop eating so many burgers to save the world

[Counter-Strike Player]

Plot twist, cows actually make a metric shit ton (no pun intended) of greenhouse gasses. Stop eating so many burgers to save the world

 

Well that's true but your basic cow isn't playing Crysis in an air-conditioned room while drying his clothes in the laundry room -- while living with a family of 5 doing the same thing driving in the family SUV (who all live to 90 doing the same things and eventually have *6* kids of their own.) The point of that study is the "legacy of your carbon" and how that can potentially multiply exponentially and can very easily "out-do" whatever "green saver" stuff you're doing now.

 

And yes, producing animal products as food is going to cost more resources if we're talking about carbon production versus eating a (boring) plant-based diet. I'm no vegan but when you talk about meat-consumption, it's expensive on the scale of energy expenditure. Scroll down on this treehugger(lol) link to see a graph of what I'm talking about.

[Counter-Strike Player]

doublepost, delete pls

[trag1c]

Interesting read. Still don't give a shit though because I like to harness thy gigahertz.