New report explains PS5’s performance advantage over Xbox Series X.

A recent analysis by a renowned technology expert sheds more light on the reasons why the PlayStation5 has performance advantages over the Xbox Series X in some games. Although the latter is more powerful on paper, the PS5 has proven to be more powerful in several head-to-head comparisons, leaving many to doubt the spec sheets.

In the lead-up to their launch in November 2020, the performance debate surrounding the PS5 and Xbox Series X was quite heated. The Series X had a more marketable performance advantage thanks to its 12 teraflop GPU, while the PS5’s 10.3 teraflop variable frequency GPU had a disadvantage on paper. However, PS5 hardware architect Mark Cerny explained that Sony’s focus was on a bottleneck-free architecture that was easy for developers to learn and could seemingly go beyond the numbers on the spec sheet.

Related

PS5 specs compared to Xbox Series X.

Sony officially announces the PlayStation 5’s specs, so potential buyers can now compare them with the previously released Xbox Series X specs.

This idea was somewhat confirmed when Assassin’s Creed Valhalla ran better on the PS5 than on the Xbox Series X, a problem that was attributed to the fact that the latter’s development tools were apparently not sophisticated. While ValhallaThe Xbox version was fixed by a later patch, the PS5 has consistently performed better than the Series X in many games, and a new report from Digital Foundry’s Richard Leadbetter, writing for Eurogamer, explains why. From speaking to several game developers, it appears that the PS5’s GPU compiler is far more efficient and allows for lower-level API access than the Series X equivalent.

The PS5’s GPU capabilities are “significantly” more efficient than those of the Xbox Series X

This basically means that developers can squeeze more out of the PS5’s GPU, even though it has a 1.7 teraflop disadvantage compared to the Xbox Series X. The second most common reason for the performance differences is that the PS5’s GPU simply runs faster, making it work better with certain game engines that are designed around clock speeds. The Series X’s GPU has more compute units (52) than the PS5’s (36), but the former’s GPU runs at 1.8GHz while the latter runs at 2.23GHz. The PS5’s clock speeds are also more in line with AMD’s RDNA 2-based graphics cards for PCs.

Interestingly, Eurogamer’s analysis is supported by a Crytek developer’s comments about the PS5 in 2020, where he stated that the Sony console was extremely easy to program compared to the Xbox Series X. While the Microsoft machine has also shown performance advantages in many games, the PS5 seems to be able to close the gap with most others due to its slimmer architecture. There’s no denying that both consoles are very well made, but the PS5’s clever engineering makes it punch above its weight class more often than expected.

PS5

$345 500 US dollars Save $155

Sony’s PlayStation 5 is part of the ninth generation of consoles and debuted with a launch lineup that included Demon’s Souls and Astro’s Playroom. The console ships with a Blu-ray disc, although a digital-only edition is also available at a cheaper price.

brand

Sony

storage

825GB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD

resolution

Max. 8K (4k playable at 120 Hz)

Original release date

12 November 2020

Original MSRP (USD)

Disc Edition: $499.99; Digital Edition: $399.99

processor

AMD Zen 2, 8 cores/16 threads, 3.5 GHz

Expand