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Nintendo s ( NTDOY ) Wii prided itself for being a super energy-efficient console that ran nearly silent and sipped very little electricity. And although Microsoft s ( MSFT ) Xbox 360 was originally a loud monster with a penchant for Red-Ring-of-Death-ing itself, the amount of power it consumed was never as much as Sony s ( SNE ) launch PlayStation 3 , which used more power than a refrigerator. Eurogamer took it upon itself to pit the Wii U against the Xbox 360 S and new super slim PS3 and concluded that Nintendo s new console draws so little power in comparison to its rivals that its tiny casing still feels cool to the touch during intense gaming. Most impressive is that the Wii U maintains its low-wattage while fitting in a chassis that s smaller than both the Xbox 360 and PS3.

According to Eurogamer s tests, the Wii U draws only 32 watts of power during gameplay of games that are as graphically intensive as the 360 and PS3, with both consoles using 118% and 139$% more power, respectively.

To achieve such green levels, Nintendo clocks the Wii U s CPU to 1.24GHz and uses far fewer transistors than the competition. While there are still some mysteries as to how the hardware remains cool, Eurogamer also discovered that the AMD-built GPU increases performance by 40 per cent per square millimetre of silicon another big leap in efficiency.

Most disappointing in Eurogamer s analysis is that they weren t able to get the Wii U s wattage to spike more than 33 watts, suggesting that the console can t be over-clocked in the future to pump out more polygons.

If you re still on the fence on which console you should buy or play games on, the Wii U looks to be the one that ll keep your electric bill nice and low.

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