Before I begin a few words of caution. It goes without saying that the results of this benchmarking showdown will not be pleasant to some. Also, all the benchmarks were conducted virtually, which means that some slight variation may exist between real life results. The Equation System and the VGA Calculator used are the intellectual property of one Daeguen Lee (DG Lee) and all rights are reserved by him. The calculator can be accessed freely on his website iyd.kr (aka udteam.tistory.com).

PS4′s GPU (Pitcairn) Benchmarked Against the Xbox One (Bonaire) with and without eSRAM

Wow, I don’t think there has ever been an instance of a universal benchmark, and for good reason too. Since an actual universal benchmark would instantly put the power hierarchy in harsh relief it has not been done. However what we are going to attempt today is the closest you will ever get to a universal real life benchmark and the results should be very accurate. Alright lets start. Since both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One utilize AMD GPUs, that means that we are only going to use the AMD Equation System. A basic introduction of both the GPUs is in order. The PS4 GPU is codenamed Pitcairn and is basically a cut down variant of the Radeon 7870. It has a fairly high SP count and is clocked reasonably high too. The GPU has access to 8GB of Shared GDDR5 memory clocked a 1375 Mhz (5500 Mhz effective) and boasts throughput of upto  176 GB/s. Pitcairn has a 256 Bit bus which is quite reasonable for a GPU of this tier. The good thing about PS4′s GPU is that we have everything we need to calculate performance with almost zero real life variation.

On the other side of the ring we have the Xbox One’s GPU Codenamed Bonaire which has almost half the SP Count and and DDR3 Memory instead of GDDR5. That means that we are looking at an effective memory clock of 2132Mhz and a bandwidth of upto 68GB/s. However here is where the problem starts. Unlike the PS4 GPU we don’t have a nice clean specification roundup here. There is the annoying eSRAM to account for, something whose impact is not readily quantifiable. However if the Nintendo Wii with its 32MB of eDRAM and general game performance is any indication we can assume our calculations being skewed by not more than 10% at most. However for the sake of fairness, we won’t do that. Without further ado, here are the technical specifications of both GPUs:

Pitcairn Vs. Bonaire Comparison Chart
	Xbox One (Bonaire)	PS4 (Pitcairn)
Stream Processors (SP)	768	1152
Raster Operation Processor (ROP)	16	32
Texture Mapping Units (TMU)	48	72
GPU Clock	853	800
Memory Clock (Effective)	1066Mhz (2132 Mhz)	1375Mhz (5500 Mhz)
Memory Bus	256	256
Rated Floating Point	1.23 TFLOPs	1.84 TFLOPs
Unified Memory	8GB DDR3	8GB GDDR5
eSRAM	32MB (192GB/s)	N/A

Now all we have to do is plug in the values  into DG Lee’s AMD equation system over here and collect the results. Now comes the tricky part. How exactly do we accommodate for Microsoft’s eSRAM? The problem is we don’t know a lot about eSRAM, except its bandwidth. And even that is different. There are figures available from different sources ranging from 150GB/s to 209GB/s. Thankfully you can reverse engineer the values (clock and bus) required to estimate eSRAM performance. For the sake of giving the Xbox One the best chance I am going to use the value that Microsoft claims is the highest i.e 192GB/s. We can use any combination we want but I will stick to the 256Bit Bus of Xbox One. [192x1000 = 192 000. 192000x8 = 1536000. 1536000/256 = 6000Mhz.] So we simply enter Bonaire’s GPU configuration with the ram values changed to 6Ghz Frequency.

Sony PlayStation 4′s Pitcairn Vs Xbox One Bonaire

Here are the benchmarks for theoretical peak performance under ideal conditions. As you can see, the benchmark of the PS4 is nice and clean since all variables are known. However the same cannot be said for the Xbox One.  We are conveniently getting two situations. One in which the Xbox One is running without any eSRAM. And the second in which the eSRAM is the only primary memory (meaning the DDR3 Shared RAM is not accounted for) available. Now how exactly do we merge the two scenarios? Well, we can’t. Not without completely nullifying the integrity of this benchmark. I can tell you the basic idea though. What happens is that both the states are actually used simultaneously in the architecture of the Xbox One. Therefore you will see increased performance over the “No eSRAM” state depending on how effectively the developers utilize the frame buffering offered by the 32MB worth of eSRAM. 

Let me elaborate: If they cannot properly utilize the eSRAM at all (which is physically impossible I might add), you will get the ‘no eSRAM’ performance. Depending on how much they are able to utilize the eSRAM some portion of the ‘eSRAM only’ bar will be added to the lowest bar. However they cannot and never will be fully added. You will never get 23 + 27 = 50 Relative Points. Since they are utilizing the same GPU, realistically speaking the absolute maximum performance you can expect is till 32 – 35 Relative points. That is still lower than PS4 because nothing can account for the lower number of Stream Processors which is the heart of GPU horsepower. Bottom Line is, the more developers optimize eSRAM, the more frames and higher resolution you are going to get (32MB eSRAm is theoretically enough for 1080p) but even that has a limit and the PS4 will always remain at an advantage. Here is a bonus benchmark at the end where we pit both Next Gen Consoles against Entry Level to High End Radeon GPUs.

Next Generation Consoles Face Off Against PC

So as we can see, PlayStation 4′s Pitcairn GPU is almost completely equivalent to the now obsolete HD 7850. The 7850 was priced at a price point of $200 and was an entry level GPU. The 7850 was very much capable of 1080p gaming and this is reflected in the Resolution gate saga and PS4′s success in that matter. However if you plop down a few hundred bucks more you can get nearly twice the graphical power of the PS4 very easily and that is not even counting the Dual Chip flagship Vesuvius. Since these are only Radeon GPUs and select ones at that, the curious individual who would like to measure the PS4 or XBOX’s performance against his own GPU can lookup his card’s TMU, ROP, SP/CUDA Cores etc specifications from any GPU database and  put into the equation system himself.

Read more: http://wccftech.com/playstation-4-vs-xbox-one-vs-pc-ultimate-gpu-benchmark/#ixzz382TdGALm

The tecnical specification of the GPU's looks horrible here, just go to the website itself for that one. If a moderator knows how to correct that one, be my guest

PS: This is no place to post how great you PC is or whatever else. The WiiU is not mentioned in the article and that's how it is. Keep it on topic or don't comment at all.

Why no Wii U?

Edit: Still a bit silly that the XB0 and PS4 are not cutting edge like the PS3 and 360 were, also the architecture of the XB0 and the PS4 are kinda boring :P

bubblegamer said: The tecnical specification of the GPU's looks horrible here, just go to the website itself for that one. If a moderator knows how to correct that one, be my guest

Yeah its missing the numbers. For thos of you who can't be bothered to check the link: PS4 is much better in most categories.

My 2012 GPU beats both :3

sorry i just had to be the guy.

(and it actually does)

Makes sense... ps4 is awesome against the x1 but nothing to brag about when it comes to PC

That's nice for you. Keep it on topic though.

Good comparison on GPUs. Anyone thinking that either the PS4 or the Xbox One is equivalent to a high end PC, or even a mid end PC is flat out wrong.

Because with that GPU you get a lot more performance (people had no problem paying "a few hundred dollars more" last gen to get the PS3 over the 360 when it came out). Plus, a PC is used for more than just gaming. A high-end PC can be built for $800-900 that will outpace either the PS4 or the Xbone for years to come. Not to mention that the software is much cheaper, and online is free. And PC is backwards compatible with games of all generations, and even older consoles.

This was know from the start.

Some random search:

PS4 vs. Xbox One: GPUs compared

Again, by virtue of being an AMD APU, the Xbox One and PS4 GPUs are technologically very similar — with the simple difference that the PS4 GPU is larger. In PC terms, the Xbox One has a GPU that’s similar to the (entry-level) Bonaire GPU in the Radeon HD 7790, while the PS4 is outfitted with the (mid-range) Pitcairn that can be found in the HD 7870. In numerical terms, the Xbox One GPU has 12 compute units (768 shader processors), while the PS4 has 18 CUs (1152 shaders). The Xbox One is slightly ahead on GPU clock speed (853MHz vs. 800MHz for the PS4).

In short, the PS4′s GPU is — on paper — 50% more powerful than the Xbox One. The Xbox One’s slightly higher GPU clock speed might ameliorate some of the difference, but really, the PS4′s 50% higher CU count is a serious advantage for the Sony camp. Furthermore, Microsoft says that 10% of the Xbox One’s GPU is reserved for Kinect. Games on the PS4 will have a lot more available graphics power on tap.

And the reserve for Kinect is gone so only 40%.

Well and faster RAM for PS4