Fedora 16: Firefox power consumption comparison

Fedora 16 has been released so I decided to test it with my Firefox test script to find out what's the power consumption in typical real world "web browsing" scenarios.

Test description

I used the same iMacros script as in previous Firefox power consumption test. I only had to do some syntax changes, because iMacros API changed little bit since the last test.

Hardware

Tests run on HP Proliant DL360 G6 with default BIOS settings / no tunings. For measurements, I used Chroma 66202 the ENERGY STAR/IEC 62301 compliant power meter. The total energy consumed on AC side was monitored. As data logger / power meter controller another machine was used to not influence the machine under test.

Software

Latest available kernels and SW builds as available during the test day were used for Fedora 16.

Table 1: Used software

are

System	Kernel / SW build	Firefox	Flash
Fedora 15	2.6.38.8-35	5.0	Beta 2 11.0.d1.98
Fedora 16	3.1.1-2	7.0.1	11.1.102.55

Results

For comparison with Fedora 15 I've used the results measured in the previous test.

In the tables with results, there are power consumption, energy and sample standard deviations (marked stdev) for both values.

Active idle

For this test, Firefox has been running with about:blank for 30 minutes. 

Table 2: Idle state

System	Pavg [W]	Pavg stdev	Eavg [Wh]	Eavg stdev
Fedora 15	55.9613	0.0381	27.9744	0.019
Fedora 16	56.1119	0.0500	28.0497	0.025

There is no big difference when comparing Fedora 16 and Fedora 15 in idle state. Fedora 15 needs little bit less energy, but this is probably an error caused by several peaks during Fedora 16 measurement.

iMacros script with HTML5 Youtube videos

For this test, iMacros test was used as described above and Youtube was configured to use HTML5 video playback.

Table 3: iMacros with HTML5 Youtube

System	Pavg [W]	Pavg stdev	Eavg [Wh]	Eavg stdev
Fedora 15	65.6824	0.1331	32.8338	0.0665
Fedora 16	65.4778	0.1599	32.7316	0.0799

Fedora 16 needs little bit less energy when Flash is disabled and HTML5 is used for Youtube videos playback.

iMacros script with Flash Youtube videos

This test is the same as previous one, but Firefox flash plugin was activated and Youtube was configured to use Flash for videos playback. This also activates Flash adverts on other pages.

 

Table 4: iMacros with Flash Youtube

System	Pavg [W]	Pavg stdev	Eavg [Wh]	Eavg stdev
Fedora 15	68.9575	0.2617	34.4711	0.1308
Fedora 16	71.2404	0.0837	35.6122	0.0418

Big surprise is that new version of Flash or Firefox in Fedora 16 caused significant increase of power consumption. Fedora 16 with Flash needed almost 1.5 W more than Fedora 15.

Flash power consumption

This table shows difference between Table 4 and Table 3 which demonstrates saved energy when not using Flash.

Table 5: Flash power consumption

System	Pavg [W]	Eavg [Wh]
Fedora 15	3.2751	1.6373
Fedora 16	5.7626	2.8806

We can see the Flash power consumption increase here.

Conclusion

As the previous test showed, browsing web with Flash enabled consumes more energy. This is especially true in Fedora 16 with the Flash/Firefox version we tested. There's no big difference between Fedora 15 and Fedora 16 when browsing web without Flash.