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Xbox One vs. PS4 Graphics Showdown: The Rematch

August 14, 2013 by YodasBoy

Note: In light of the many comments below, I just wanted to respond to a few points...

1) Haters would do well to actually read this post; my main point is that the playing field has been leveled between the two systems, a point that no one has refuted.  I didn't say that the PS4 is outperformed by the N64.  Take a deep breath.

2) I am not IGN.  Seriously, what's with the "F IGN" comments?  You know this is just my blog, right?

3) I know the memory bandwidth comparisons in the chart below are not apples-to-apples, that was one of my points...read what I actually said before making idiots out of yourselves.

4) To anyone calling me a "retard" and saying I don't know what I'm talking about, try making a counter-argument instead.  FYI, I do have a computer science degree and half a decade's experience working as a software engineer... odds are that I know more about graphics chips and memory bandwidth than you do.

5) To those who are contributing to the debate and being rational: thanks for commenting on my blog, and keep being awesome.  To any butthurt PS fanboys: I wear your disdain as a badge of honour.

Anyway, thanks everyone for reading.  Original post follows...

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I wrote a post a while back comparing the graphical capabilities of the next gen systems, and (spoilers!) argued that while the PS4 had an edge on paper, it wouldn't necessarily make a significant difference in actual in-game visuals.

Now, new info has come to light, and I am no longer convinced the PS4 is the more powerful of the two consoles.  On the contrary, the playing field is much more level than previously thought, and the Xbox One may even have a slight edge over Sony's machine.

Item 1: Number of CPU cores dedicated to gaming

While we've known for some time that both consoles sport the same 8-core AMD CPU, a terrible reveal was made on the Xbox front: the One only allocates 6 of these cores for gaming, with 2 cores reserved at all times for the OS.  This essentially reduces the CPU power of the One to 75% of that used in the PS4, where games are concerned, right?  Sure, if the PS4 utilized all 8 cores for games.

A CPU profiler showing Killzone: Shadowfall running... wait, 6 cores?

However, it turns out that the PS4 also only allocates 6 of its 8 cores for gaming, so... nevermind then.  No advantage: PS4, no advantage: Xbox One, their CPU's are identical.

Item 2: Memory allocated to the OS

The collective internets had been under the impression for some time that the One's oppressive OS configuration greedily gobbled up 3 out of the 8 GB or RAM at all times, leaving 5 GB available for running games.  Good Guy Sony, meanwhile, only allocate 1 GB to the OS, leaving a whopping 7 GB for developers to utilize in their games.  An extra 2 GB, gosh, that could result in faster load times, larger areas, higher res textures, more polygons on the screen, and so on.  A definite advantage for the PS4.

Except for one thing.  The OS in the PS4 is easily just as burdensome as (and perhaps moreso than) the one(s) sported in the Xbox.  Apparently only 4.5 GB is accessible to game developers at all times, in addition to an odd configuration that allows access to an extra GB that is sort of available but not really.  Based on Sony's response to this leak, that extra GB is split evenly between hard drive paging (not sure that legitimately counts, since it's not actually RAM) and another half GB that is supposedly accessible to developers (but is somehow separate, and the PS4 dev kits still run at a default 4.5 GB...).  Given this, PS4 game developers have 5 GB of actual RAM to work with, tops, and most likely have closer to 4.5 GB in practice.  If developers can't count on that extra GB, then they can't reliably use it, and even if they could, 5.5 GB is still quite a drop from 7 GB.

This mayhem is running on 4.5 GB, ostensibly the maximum possible on the PS4.  Meanwhile, the Xbox will sport an additional half gig of RAM above that.

Instead, developers have a guaranteed 4.5 GB to play with on the PS4, and 5 GB on the One.  Advantage: Xbox.

Item 3: The speed of the One's eSRAM

Commentators not caught up in the anti-Xbox mob mentality have already noted that the DDR3 RAM in the Xbox One is actually faster than the GDDR5 RAM in the PS4 under certain circumstances.  There is, however another asterisk to add to the RAM speed debate.

The super-fast embedded memory of the One's GPU (of which the PS4 has no equivalent) complements the (slower) main memory in the system - this we knew all along.  Microsoft later revised their numbers for this eSRAM, however, increasing the theoretical speed by 88%.

Comparing the two systems' memory as 176 GB/s (PS4) to 68 GB/s (Xbox) has never been an honest apples-to-apples comparison, since it ignores the advantages of DDR3 and the eSRAM in the One.  Since that hasn't stopped anyone from making those comparisons, however, let's play that game and look at the theoretical speed of the One's memory:

192 GB/s (eSRAM) + 68 GB/s (DDR3) = 260 GB/s overall.

If we are to go off of theoretical numbers (which has been fair game for the PS4 fanboys thus far), the One destroys the PS4 with 260 GB/s vs. 176 GB/s overall RAM speed.

Booya

Item 4: Xbox's GPU boost

Another recent tidbit from Microsoft's camp is that the One's GPU has been given a clockspeed increase, albeit a minor one.  The next Xbox's AMD chip now runs at 853MHz, as opposed to its original specification of 800MHz.

This isn't a big bump up, but it's a bump nonetheless.  This results in roughly a 7% speed boost over the PS4's GPU and may help compensate for the One's chip sporting less GCN's.

Conclusion

All in all, we now know that the CPU's are virtually identical, the One's GPU is faster, and the RAM comparisons are much more even than previously thought.  Sony's OS occupies just as many CPU cores as its Xbox counterpart, and, as it turns out, is an even greater burden on the system memory.  A few months back, it looked like the PS4 had both faster and more RAM than the Xbox, but now it appears to have neither.

With these revelations, many of the PS4's supposed advantages over its competitor are essentially moot.  Perhaps now the debate will shift from memory and OS burdens to some other spec comparisons, such as the number of GCN's in the graphics chips.  At this point, though, the remaining differences between the two systems are trivial.  If a few extra GCN's in the PS4 are all the advantage it has, then it's time for people to stop acting like the PS4 is a vastly more powerful system.

Truth is, these two systems are virtually identical, and they are a more even match than we've ever seen in past console wars.  Don't count on either system having a significant edge on the hardware level.  Most likely, game developers themselves will be a much bigger variable in their games' graphics than the machines they're running on.

Which one will have better graphics?  The one with the better developers.

http://www.ign.com/blogs/yodasboy/2013/08/14/xbox-one-vs-ps4-graphics-showdown-the-rematch

There is so much wrong with this post that I would have to rewrite the entire thing for you in order to make all the needed corrections. And quite frankly, i don't particularly want to do that.

Please tell me that's an IGN blog post and not a professional article.

Developers have been saying for months and months that these two consoles have been nearly identical(which could change down the road). So does this article(Whether it has any merit is a different story) but the fans are the ones making it a war. And it is the fans that understand little about hardware, optimization, and the operating system. It is a little annoying to have people arguing about this for months and months when they are not certified (Majority) in Engineering or developing.

lol no!


Hey I'm on Nintendo side, but PS4 is clearly stronger than X1. It's not a insult. But everyone can see the truth. It's simple. Why you just go and play the games and have fun?

The PS3 was more powerful but traded but the architecture was bad for multiplats. The PS4 is still more powerful than the next Xbox but this time Sony created the hardware around what will make development easier for third parties.

Instead of having just better looking exclusives they'll have the equal or better multiplats. Thats a tough pill to swallow for some, but they will just have to deal with that.

MS can keep trying to fix the Xbox's PR issues (graphics being one of them) but when the games come out the theories are out the window.

Oh, so now the memory inside Xbox is oh so much faster? What about all that "Xbox doesn't need faster RAM, because the GPU can't use it anyway" talk? And can you really just add up speeds of DDR3 RAM and eSRAM? I mean, isn't there something more to it? On top of that, come on, it's just 32 MB. It's also harder to develop for such a setup, a true unified RAM pool is better in many ways.

I don't want to judge just yet, but the PS4 still seems to be the better system. Didn't developers over at GAF also confirm that there are 6 GB available for devs on PS4? Anyway, I'm waiting till the consoles are released and getting torn apart by some techies or something. We simply cannot know at this point what system is stronger. Though everything points at PS4. I mean... the GPU is friggin' 50 % faster, how could XBox possibly make up for that? With some GB/s more on the RAM? Seriously?

Aside from all specs-talk I am looking forward to first head2head-comparisons. By now I don't *see* an advantage PS4 has over Xbone graphically. But some games *should* show advantages, even big ones, if PS4 is overall so much stronger as some believe.

 Not going to look up links but the more recent ones that I can think of off the top of my head is the Watch Dogs developer and John Carmack(Someone with great credentials) to say they are identical.

Now I really dont want to argue about things I and you know very little about other than what we hear from across the industry.  We will see what happens in the coming years if there is a significant difference or if it is nearly identical like this generation(PS3 more powerful).

That doesn't matter to them as long as they hear that their console has a penis of equal size.