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EricHiggin on 27 November 2018
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Intrinsic said:
EricHiggin said:

Forget? LOL. Another good point though. While I can't find the PSU spec for the Subor, with Pro having a 4.2TF GPU spec with a 310w PSU, and XB1X having a 6.0TF GPU spec with a 245w PSU, it probably fits somewhere in that range of efficiency vs performance. It is important to point out that yes, that can make a pretty big efficiency difference with just one component like the PSU, since those two consoles use pretty similar hardware, with XB1X having more premium components and a clear performance advantage, yet a much smaller peak PSU output. While the Subor uses Ryzen, and Polaris with some Vega baked in, Zen 2, Navi, GDDR6, etc, if they ended up in next gen consoles, would be that much more efficient vs their gains in performance. Like you say, the marketing numbers only tell a fraction of the story.

Technically speaking, the PSU sec doesn't really say much about the console efficiency. 

Both the PS4pro and XB1x use around 90W when running games. PS4pro uses 2W when its asleep and XB1x uses 11W. 

How much power is allotted for USB ports and stuff are factors to consider when looking at the PSU. 

XB1X has as many USB ports and more ports overall. If both consoles have similar hardware, use around the same amount of power, and have about the same amount of ports, then their PSU's should be fairly similar as well, yet the XB1X has more performance and it's PSU based on it's peak rating is about 20% lower than the Pro PSU. Some of this could be PS wanting extra longevity, and also the XB1X 'hovis method' power management system they have in place, but some of it is no doubt PSU efficiency rating based on the overall XB1X capabilities. Now whether the efficiency difference for the PSU itself is really 10% or 20% we don't know exactly, but it still proves the point that the PSU design and quality matters.

The point was about how much power the Subor is pulling from the wall, and what that means compared to the existing consoles and where they can go in the future. Well if the existing consoles have more efficient power supplies, then more of that power is going into actually feeding the hardware and not being wasted in the PSU conversion process. With a more efficient PSU, instead of pulling 185 watt from the wall, the Subor could possibly pull 150 watts instead let's say, which would mean headroom for extra hardware performance to bring it back up to 180w, with a more efficient PSU. It's also possible the Subor has a high end high efficiency PSU and it's totally maxed out, but we don't know that, and that's typically not the case as PC's get cheaper.

Last edited by EricHiggin - on 27 November 2018