Nintendo Wii is certainly the least powerful of the new generation of video game consoles but with less advanced hardware the price is also lower than the competition. That Nintendo Wii consume less power than Xbox 360 and PS3 hardly comes as a surprise, but now that HardCoreWare has published a comparison of the power consumptions of the consoles we can see the huge difference. The comparison proves quite interesting as we can see Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and a well equipped PC (X6800, GF 7950GT) fight for the power. They have simply tested how much power the systems consumes during various loads and the results are both expected and surprising.
First of all, it’s obvious that PlayStation 3 is the overall most power-hungry console, but a powerful PC still consumes more power. The difference between PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 varies depending on the situation, but Microsoft has a small advantage overall. Nintendo Wii is a completely different story and even during load the power consumption is ridiculously low, just check out the diagram below.
Starting to determine any percentual differences doesn’t even feel meaningful and Nintendo once again shows which console is the right one for the price-conscious consumer. The entire power consumption test can found at HardCoreWare, where they also look into other kinds of load, such as DVD and HD playback.
