The PS5 continues to seduce more than its competitor, the Xbox Series X/S. However, on paper, the latter is more powerful than Sony’s console: how can we explain the similar if not superior performance of the latest PlayStation in gaming?
As the ninth generation of consoles approaches its fourth year, the conclusion is clear: the PS5 has crushed the Xbox Series X/S. If Sony has won this long round, it is in particular because GTA V games often run better on its console than on Microsoft’s. However, it was not a foregone conclusion. On paper, the Xbox Series X seems more powerful than the PS5. So how can we explain this phenomenon?
The Xbox Series X is more powerful than the PS5 on paper
First, here’s a quick recap of the PS5 and Xbox Series X specs. Both feature AMD chips designed specifically for each console, with a Zen 2 CPU and RDNA 2 GPU. The Xbox Series X features:
- An eight-core CPU clocked at 3,8 GHz (3.6 GHz with simultaneous multithreading enabled)
- A GPU powered by 52 compute units clocked at 1.825 GHz
- 16GB of GDDR6 SDRAM in split design: 10GB with a 320-bit bus with a bandwidth of 560GB/s, and 6GB with a 192-bit bus with a bandwidth of 336GB/s.
All this for an estimated computing power of 12.6 TeraFLOPS. The PS5 is equipped with:
- An eight-core CPU with variable frequency capped at 3,5 GHz
- a GPU powered by 36 variable frequency compute units up to 2.23 GHz
- 16GB of GDDR6 SDRAM with a 256-bit bus and 448GB/s of bandwidth.
It thus reaches the lower figure of 10,13 TeraFLOPS estimated.
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PlayStation 5’s shader compiler and API are superior
In the latest weekly episode of its Direct podcast, the media outlet Digital Foundry tried to reach a definitive conclusion on the question. One of the journalists, John Linneman, claims to have received this element of an answer from video game developers: the PlayStation 5’s software would simply be much better than that of the Xbox Series X.
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Several developers have reportedly stated that the PS5’s shader compiler is “rather complex“, but that he is “simply extremely fast and optimized“. Similarly, the PS5’s core API would also be “faster than what Microsoft does with DirectX“. Which will make much better use of the console’s hardware capabilities.
But not everything is rosy in Japan. According to Alex Battaglia, the American console would make better use of Epic’s Unreal Engine 5. Games running on this popular graphics engine generally benefit from the higher number of computing units of the Xbox Series X. So the console war is not quite over.
- The PS5 runs some games better than the Xbox Series X, which is more powerful on paper.
- According to video game developers, this is due to its more powerful software.
- The shader compiler is said to be better optimized and the PS5’s API faster than Microsoft’s DirectX.
