Gamers create as much carbon dioxide as 5 million cars. A new study has examined the energy use of gaming devices across the county, and it’s bad news for anyone hoping to escape global warming by diving into a video game.

“Toward Greener Gaming: Estimating National Energy Use and Energy Efficient Potential,” published in The Computer Gamers Journal, found that U.S. gamers consume an incredible 34 terawatt-hours of energy each year.

That’s 2.4% of all residential electricity, with carbon emissions equal to more than 5 million cars, adding up to $5 billion spent. Gaming sucks down more power than all the nation’s freezers.

The study has plenty of blame to go around. In 2016, the year used as a baseline for most of the study’s findings, consoles were responsible for 66% of gaming energy consumption. PC desktops used 31%, PC laptops used only 3%, and the rest was consumed by media streaming devices (like Apple TV or Nvidia Shield).

PC gamers aren’t out of the woods, however. While they contributed less to power consumption overall, PCs tend to be less efficient than consoles and represent the highest per-household consumption in extreme examples.

The study describes a worst-case scenario of a home with two high-end gaming PCs, overclocked, using multiple 4K displays. That would eat up 2,560 kilowatt-hours per year.

Often, the inefficiency of PC gaming can be blamed on bad build decisions. The study “found dramatically oversized power supplies in almost all” PC desktops tested.

That reduces efficiency because most power supplies deliver poor efficiency when only consuming a small fraction of their maximum output.

Surprisingly, virtual reality comes out of the study unscathed. While virtual reality can increase power draw due to higher display resolutions, the use of techniques like foveated rendering can compensate. Virtual reality’s results were worst when a VR headset was used alongside an external display

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Source: https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/green-gaming-report-us-gamers-global-warming-climate-change/