Updated Analysis : PS4 vs Xbox One

Insiderp :"Microsoft would hope that many developers would be aiming to have a 60 fps/subHD game over a 1080p/30fps one, and thats where Xbox One could potentially achieve parity against the PS4 version of the game".

[Sammy777]

Hi,
I am new user and this is my first submission
thanks

[Hatsune-Miku]

YOu should know that the ps4 is 50% more powerful than xbox one which is quite evident by the specs displayed in this article. On this site youll seealot of spinning when it comes to negative articles that are true and youll be labelled silly names for stating facts. Just be truthful in your posts and try to mostly state facts . Ps2 was released in yr2000 and xbox was released 2001 and was more powerful. Ps3 was released a year and a half after xbox360 with ps3 being more powerful and even with headstart for xbox360 the ps3 outsold itbeing way more expensive .

[GameNameFame]

As for your "Will eSRAM come to the rescue?'" section.

The project Cars devs said esram will mitigate "some" advantage GDDR5 has.

Xbox One has weaker ram and weaker GPU. Esram only mitigate some gap on ram side.

but does not do anything in closing GPU side.

[SonofGod]

Not according to the psycho Russian cult leader misterx lol, he claims there is a secret GPU hidden in the XO that one day will be revealed by Microsoft and there will be world peace and all his followers will drink kool-aid poison (probably)

[UltimateMaster]

Except the PS4 is aiming 1080p 60fps as much as possible.

[classic19]

i agree 100'000 percent on that graft..

[christocolus]

@hatsune

OMG.we all know the ps4 is more powerful, but pls stop with this 50% nonsense.. its not true dude or atleast show proof of this 50% difference. ..if anyones spinning stuff its definitly you bro.

@sammy77

Great article. Would like to see more submissions from you but also try articles that havent been already flogged to death on most gaming websites. Try to touch on other aspects of the industry too and as hatsune stated be truthful and factual and most especially do not allow bias or fear of fanboys cloud your judgement when doing your write ups.

Good job.

[KRUSSIDULL]

It's about 50% more powerful on paper, but probably not in real world performance for an example.

GTX 580 is rated at about 1,5TeraFLOPS and the GTX 680 is rated at about 3TeraFLOPS that is 100% difference but when comparing these cards in real world performance the difference is about around 30%

[dantesparda]

@ Christocolus

Um COD Ghost says hi (125% higher res) and BF4 also says hi (56% higher res and higher average framerate). Both of those games are showing over 50% performance over the X1. AC4 also has 56% higher res along with better AA. Even games with are closer in parity, the PS4 has technical advantages, like NFS with it Bokeh DOF and HBAO, compared to the X1's technically inferior SSAO and simple blur. The NBA has better AA than the X1 version.

So the proof is already there, you just dont wanna see it/admit it.

[dsswoosh]

@dantesparda

Think you'll find the XB1 framerates are better than the PS4 in all cross platform games.

The XB1 has a constant 60 fps and rarely drops ever. It also has better frame rate latency (which means no microstuttering).

The PS4 has frame rate drops in many games and consistently fails to hit a constant 60 fps.

BF4 isnt the exceptions here.

[coopman300]

Srsly anyone that just regurgitates the 50% more powerful crap obviously does not know how hardware works. There are pros and cons to how both consoles are built.

Ram is the biggest misconstrued component. Ddr3 is made to be system ram, it has low latency and can read and write at the same time. This means that ddr3 works with the cpu better, this is why the xb1 is a cpu centric console.

Gddr5 was derived from ddr3 tech specifically for use in graphics processing (hence the g in the name). It has high bandwidth but cannot read and write at the same time. This high latency causes it to not communicte with the cpu well, this is why the ps4 is a gpu centric system. This is also why the ps4 has a separrate ram pool to facilitate video recording and streaming while playing and the system ram is strictly partitioned.

The performance gap is not nearly as big as people claim, if there even is one at all when developers fully unlock the potential of these consoles.

[dantesparda]

@dsswoosh

"Think you'll find the XB1 framerates are better than the PS4 in all cross platform games."

Ah ignorance is bliss, eh guy? No X1 framerates are not better across platform games, PERIOD! Only one game has a slightly higher average framerate than the Ps4 ver. and thats COD, but we are talking about more or less a 5 fps better average. But the X1 is processing 125% less pixels, so for the PS4 to be only off by such a little framerate average when its doing a 125% more pixels, speaks for itself!

Also, BF4 not only has 56% higher res than the X1 ver but it also has a better framerate. Here see for yourself http://www.eurogamer.net/ar...

"The XB1 has a constant 60 fps and rarely drops ever. It also has better frame rate latency (which means no microstuttering)."

Once again, conplete and utter bullcrap! Ryse struggles to maintain its 30fps and even drops into the teens! While only running at 900p (a downgrade from its original targeted res of 1080p, plus the polys were also reduced from 150k to 85k and the game still struggles)

DR3 same thing, downgraded from its original 1080 target to 720p and can barely maintain its 30fps while also dropping into the teens.

So, i dont know where your getting you information from guy, but you are comepletely and utter wrong. The PS4 is outperformaing the X1 period!

[dantesparda]

@coopman

You're even more delusional the dss and know even less about hardware than he does.
here are some facts for you.

PS4: 1.60GHz CPU?
Xbone: 1.75GHz CPU

PS4: 800MHz GPU
Xbone: 853MHz GPU

PS4: 18CU
Xbone: 12CU

PS4: 1.84TFLOPS
Xbone: 1.31TFLOPS

PS4: 176.0GB/s
Xbone: 68.3GB/s

PS4: 1152 Shaders (cores)
Xbone: 768 Shaders (cores)

PS4: 72 Texture units
Xbone: 48 Texture units

PS4: 32 ROPS
Xbone: 16 ROPS

PS4: 8 ACE/64 queues
Xbone: 2 ACE/16 queues

PS4: 25.6GPixels/s
Xbone: 13.65GPixels/s

PS4: 57.6GTexels/s
Xbone: 40.9GTexels/s

The only area where the X1 might be better is in CPU speed and maybe in "some" RAM calcutions, but this crap about the latency is just a pathetic grasp by the X1 fanboys. The PS4 is %0% or better than the X1, do the same. This isnt different CPUs/GPUs like with the ps360, its almost the same exact chips. And where it matters most, (GPU) the PS4 has a BIG lead, FACT!

[classic19]

welcome to n4g sammy, welcome to the family.

[iGAM3R-VIII]

nothing really new here, just talks about the hardware

[Sammy777]

talks about esram's limitations as well as positives. An excellent article no wonder

[Charybdis]

Here is an more well written and in depth look from a better source into the limitations of xb1 esram.
http://techreport.com/news/...

[mewhy32]

Pretty good article. Brings ESRAM out of the veil that microsoft has schrouded it in.

[Bennibop]

Author has forgot to mention that Sony will also making performance improvements to the SDK's and new and upcoming games will push hardware even further. So the situation we are in now (Lower resolution on X1) is very unlikely to change! We just need to accept that and move on and enjoy the experiences on both machines provide!

[Fishy Fingers]

Cheap ass looking site with no fresh information.

[Charybdis]

Seems like an old article claiming xb1 does not support an unified memory acces system hsa/huma. The numbers are also off compared to eurogamer articles.
Either way it still seems the ps4 has the overall ram advantage.

[TheKayle1]

the bandwith of the esram is totally wrong

"The slides appear to indicate that the Xbox One's eSRAM is arranged in four segments of 8MB each, with four 256-bit read/write data paths. Peak bandwidth is indicated to be 204 GB/s"

the average is 150/160 gb/s as u can find on digital foundry

http://www.eurogamer.net/ar...

pretty much the same average of the gddr5 that have as peak 176gb/s

the cpu have access to the esram...

"Digital Foundry: And you have CPU read access to the ESRAM, right? This wasn't available on Xbox 360 eDRAM.

Nick Baker: We do but it's very slow."

so is a sort of huma...

and still

the esram can read and write simultaneously

"The big revelation was that ESRAM could actually read and write at the same time, a statement that seemingly came out of the blue. Some believed that based on the available information from the leaked whitepapers, this simply wasn't possible.

"There are four 8MB lanes, but it's not a contiguous 8MB chunk of memory within each of those lanes. Each lane, that 8MB is broken down into eight modules. This should address whether you can really have read and write bandwidth in memory simultaneously," says Baker."

""Yes you can - there are actually a lot more individual blocks that comprise the whole ESRAM so you can talk to those in parallel. Of course if you're hitting the same area over and over and over again, you don't get to spread out your bandwidth and so that's one of the reasons why in real testing you get 140-150GB/s rather than the peak 204GB/s... it's not just four chunks of 8MB memory. It's a lot more complicated than that and depending on how the pattern you get to use those simultaneously. That's what lets you do read and writes simultaneously. You do get to add the read and write bandwidth as well adding the read and write bandwidth on to the main memory. That's just one of the misconceptions we wanted to clean up."

i hope that little sites like that...before write something try to get more information possible

that article is totally misleading

ps. seem that for the ps4 we have 1.84tf......i would fix that xb1 isnt 1.3 tf...but the correct number is 1.35tf

pss on this note "eSRAM is virtually ineffective for any resolution above 720p"

he dont have any idea of what he is talkin about clearly

this put this article on the lowest lvl possible

[Sammy777]

again, try understanding the article rather than posting things you don't know. The 204 figure comes from writing in a birectional way -102 each segment. But you can't read/write at the same time on eSRAM. Even if you can , it is only 32mb that you have access to so the writer pointed out that it won't be sufficient for a resolution at 1080p,which is right . eSram can't hold a framebuffer larger than 32mb

also eSram doesn't have direct read/write access to CPU and this is why it is SLOW

eSRAM cannot write/read at the same time. No Ram can. ever wondered why you got banned at Neogaf .Increasing 10% speed doesnt directly correlate with a 10% performance gain. 10% is reserved for Kinect, meaning around 1.18 TF available to developers

[TheKayle1]

is totally wrong...u can read and write at the same time as the xb1 have it divided in 8 lanes so meanwhile one lane write the other can read

again dosnt matter how much big is the esram ..32mb are enough to a 1080p buffer
the esram come in action to solve the texture trashing decade problem..
with the tiled rendering you can have better texture and smaller frame buffer

the article is misleading and wrong sorry

as you can see the only game 1080p 60fps on next gen system is forza 5

and this was a RUSHED..launch title
the ps4 have a more powerful gpu..but the resolution problems that fanboys r claiming r just bs

for that 10% ms already said that they will free up that % for who wanna use it

http://www.eurogamer.net/ar...

[DoesUs]

ESRAM size is a ghastly amount, no amount of spinning numbers will change this. More hoops for XB1 devs to jump through to close the substantial gap which the PS4 holds.

[timlot]

Only 3 out of the 12 multiplatform games released on both have different resolution. The rest are 1080p. Yes 3 big games, but still only 3 with many games starting with Tomb Raider in January is 1080p on both. They way its been blow up you would have though the whole xbox one catalog 720p chugging at 30fps.

[moparful99]

There are zero "native" 1080p games on X1.. All of them that achieve 1080p on X1 are native 720p and subsequently upscaled.. There was never a question of wether 1080p was possible on the X1 seeing as both PS3 and 360 had games achieve this, its about native resolution and as of right now the PS4 has the most titles rendered at 1080p natively...

[DoesUs]

Forza 5 is native 1080p.

[creatchee]

Forza, NBA 2K14, NFS, Madden, FIFA, and others say hi.

[Hyper_Tension140]

Other than racing and sports games(which are easy on GPU)what other games run on 1080P on xbone?

[alexkoepp]

Actually every game on my Xbox One comes out as 1080p...

You just go into your console settings and choose 1080p as your output resolution. Tada! All games in 1080p!

[moparful99]

All above those games are not native 1080 they are all digitally upscaled...

[Hyper_Tension140]

@alexkeopp
Oh god,I hope your joking man....

[dsswoosh]

Funny thing is.....

His sentence is more accurate than your original sentence.....

[Hyper_Tension140]

No....the real funny thing is that every sports game on the last generation ran at 60fps and gran turismo on ps3 was at 1080p/60fps. Racing and sports games dont really push the GPU very much thats why their in 1080p on xbone,so yea I think im more accurate.

[Rock_On_PS4]

PS4 is a true 8th generation console. Wii U is more on track with the PS3 and XBox 360 as 7th generation consoles. XBOx One fits in as a 7.5 generation console system. The specs of the console systems and the quality of the graphics that have been produced do not lie.

[infectedaztec]

I would argue the opposite. Yes the PS4 is a bit more powerful, but all it really offers is better graphics (its like taking a PS3 and giving it a power bump). I remember the additional functions the 360/PS3 offered over the previous gen (quite a lot). They simply weren't just more powerful - they championed online play and both offered dashboard apps etc. They were also more powerful but that was expected.
The PS4 is really only more powerful than the current gen (and has a touchpad and better controller than the DS3).

The One offers alot more than just a power boost (even of its less than the boost offered by the PS4).

I know I'm gonna get disagrees, but please let me know what other things the ps4 offers (value and less-paywalls are not next-gen additions btw)

[Grindlefly]

For me the "share" function has been great. That alone is a significant offering

[LeCreuset]

Let you know what other things the PS4 offers? You do realize that you haven't actually listed a single thing that the Xbox does? The PS4 does that which matters better: play games.

As you yourself stated, the controller is better. In fact, I'd say there's more difference between the DS4 and the DS3 than there is between the DS3 and the DS1. You also have Gakai. And yes, the PS4 does have a camera and voice controls. Are they on par with Xbox's Kinect? Nope, but to paraphrase your argument the PS4 does offer it. I'd rather be lacking a bit on the gimmick side in favor of having the more powerful system for gaming. That is the main purpose of a gaming system.

[JeffGUNZ]

You don't think the touchbad is a tad gimmicky? Come on, you can't call the kinect gimmicky but not the touchpad.

[KingDadXVI]

This guy has absolutely zero clue what he is talking about. If you want an actual guide as to how the Xbox One SoC actually works I would suggest reading the Digital Foundry article as it clearly debunks this guys article and shows his complete lack of technical knowledge. If you want to analyze microelectronics at least have the engineering knowledge required to talk about it.

Here is the DF article if anyone wants to read it:

http://www.eurogamer.net/ar...

If you want to read analysis' by people who have a smidge of knowledge about the subject I would recommend you visit Beyond 3D's Console Forum:

http://beyond3d.com/forumdi...

They have a pretty good idea of what is going on there with several members who are involved in this technology including at least one that worked on the Xbox One development.

The truth of the matter is that the Xbox One will never have as many CU's as the PS4 or ROP's. What people don't seem to get is that the PS4 has to use much of that GPU advantage to perform non graphics compute (up to 4 CU's) while the Xbox One does not (1.2 CU's for Kinect). It is certainly more complex to code for the Xbox One and that is why early development is seeing some resolution and frame rate issues. These will disappear as the SDK is improved and drivers are optimized.

For those that do not believe that 4 CU's were intended for non graphics compute on the PS4 here is the link explaining it:

http://www.vgleaks.com/play...

Those CU's can be used for rendering but provide only a minor boost. This also results in putting more load on the CPU (that is why the primary purpose of the 4 CUs is for general purpose compute and not rendering).

This article is little more than a cut and paste troll attempt to get ad revenue.

[infectedaztec]

A well referenced article. I dont have the technical know-how to say if its true or not but you get a bubble vote for using links to back up your claims

[KingDadXVI]

Thanks. As you can see by my bubble count I usually get disagrees and bubble down votes because many people on this site don't like logic that disagrees with their personal opinion.

I am in no way saying that the Xbox One has the same GPU grunt of the PS4, what I want to debunk is the meme out there that having 50% more CUs equates to 50% more rendering capability. Mark Cerny knows it does not and has gingerly stated it by saying that those extra 4 CU's are better used for general compute as it helps the CPU. It is not all about the rendering on the GPU as the GPU is useless without the CPU. The Xbox One has gone a different route with the use of extra processors to offload a lot of work that the CPU and GPU would have to do.

Due to the complexity of the Xbox One SoC and memory it will take a little more time to be optimized for but as it is not nearly as complex to the PS3 was it won't take years. COD and BF4 were very rushed so that they could make the launch and we have seen the results of that. The next 6 to 12 months will see a lot of developers come to grips with it and you will see more parity in multiplatform games.

I will be buying a PS4 next and my main concern with its simple architecture is that developers are already close to maxing out its abilities and within a year it will be maxed out with no more room for improvement.

Once this generation has settled into its stride I would expect that both consoles will be hitting 1080p 30fps for most games and some at 60fps with the odd really graphically/physics intense ones running at 900p. Which is fine for this gen. 4K TVs will not be mainstream for another 5-6 years anyway.

Quantum Break is really going to showcase what early next gen will be graphically.

[MorePowerOfGreen]

Digital Foundry is full of it as well. No one should trust Digital Foundry.

XB1 is more powerful, Faster clocked CPU, More Ram bandwidth, 3 types of memory totaling over 16 gigs, dedicated Audio chip various co-processors with advanced things like DX3D 11.2 and Move Engines etc. All this brings a multi tasking experience that would choke other consoles. http://www.reddit.com/r/xbo...

None of this matters much as the traditional spec wars will be moot once the XB1, built from the ground up starts to use cloud compute servers.

XB1 is more like a PC and PS4 is a supped up PS3. PS4 would melt trying to use Kinect and other XB1 features, XB1 has more hardware. Boasting over a couple of GPU shaders and hyping them doesn't make PS4 more powerful.

[DoesUs]

@green.

So DF are not too be trusted now? LOL. It's funny you forget you only relied on them for face offs last gen! Spin it POG, spin it!

Must churn you up inside knowing you paid $100 more for an inferior machine where 95% of multi platform titles look and run better on the PS4! OUCH! Also, you have no idea about the XB1 architecture, you really don't. You are a multi account shill, always have been always will be. For nearly 8 years you've done exactly the same thing. People laugh at you, because your funny....but for the wrong reasons. People can see the proof right In front of them, they can see the difference is night and day. Anyway, please continue in your quest to spread misinformation, we all love it!

[christocolus]

Esram , esram, esram.... to get more out of the xbx one...you have to know how to work with the esram. I thought this would take a long time for most devs to start doing(coding with the esram in mind), but from recent articles..it seems devs are already finding very efficient ways to use it in their games..it will only get better as ms updates their dev kits too.

[mmj]

This is a very good analysis, well done.

I really think that the ESRAM is being blow all out of proportion though, Microsoft could release a newly specced Xbox One tomorrow with 8GB of GDDR5 (no ESRAM necessary) and it would still struggle in 1080P resolution due to the inferior GPU. You'd probably be looking at a few percent improvement.

[Killzoner99]

You fanboys can try to spin the numbers any way you want but the FACT is PS4 is 50% more powerful. Sorry if you regret your purchase.

[xboxjaun]

I have both and i like the xbox one the most. I shall never regret my purchase or my statement about that. Power isn't everything and the xbox does everything I need it to. Have fun with that 50% more power. I hope it makes a huge impact on graphics compared to the xbox which I would think it would show more being that much more powerful.. Let the dislikes begin

[dsswoosh]

Its not a fact rofl.

The CPU in the XB1 is faster than the PS4.
DDR3 is faster than GDDR5 at read/write operations.

In fact, the whole hardware set up is better in the XB1 except for the GPU.

[Edsword]

You should be a politician.

[KakashiHotake]

Microsoft is really going to have to lean heavily on the Xbox One's non gaming functions to really stand a chance this gen. They can't allow themselves to get in a games battle with PS4 because over time the gap in performance will be a lot more noticeable. At 1st glance they almost seem similar, but Xbox One is weak in a lot of the more important elements of game development. They can't allow PS4 to take a sizeable lead in user base because that will mean devs will push the PS4's performance harder and Xbox one just can't keep up. It doesn't help that PS4 is dominating the launch and the Xbone is $100 more.

[JeffGUNZ]

I disagree. Look at COD. That game does not break any walls in graphical and performance values, but the thing sold well. It really comes down to games that are fun. Look at Ryse, the game is a launch title and Crytek shows that beautiful graphics are achievable on the X1. Sure, the fun factor is less than stellar, but it looks really good. It's going to be influenced on how much MS pushes its studios, the $1 billion plus their put into their studios must pay off. They have some really nice games coming down the pipe but they need to continue to deliver top tier games every year.

[KakashiHotake]

Your only looking at it from a very linear point of view. It's not accurate at all to compare launch titles especially ones that were rushed. Developers are still learning the ropes with PS4 and Xbox One and won't really start to have a handle on it until about the second generation of game titles. No matter how you look at it PS4 has a distinct advantage under the hood in terms of horsepower and development. Not saying Xbox One wont be a great console and it should do pretty well, but I'm merely stating the obvious to those who accept the truth for what it is.

[JeffGUNZ]

Linear point of view, you completely misunderstood my post. I never once said the PS4 doesn't have a technical advantage and I didn't say launch titles were the end all or even that important. I simply stated that a launch title, meaning this early into next generation produced a visually stunning game. It shows the potential the Xbox One has as long as developers take their time and do not rush games out. It's common knowledge that games on each respected platform will continue to get better and better every year. Again, fun factor is still the most important thing when gaming. Look at KZ last gen, it was f'n beautiful, but medicore at best when it came to fun. Then, look at COD, it looks "eh" but the fun factor is there. Yes, COD is stale and washed up now, but it had its run. If MS continues to invest deeply into their studios and their studios continue to produce promising games, then MS will do very fine this generation.

[Flames76]

Xbox One has been outselling the PS4 2 to 1 since launch in america.Also the Xbox One just broke the record for the biggest launch ever in australia.Also PS4 has launched in 33 countrys with 2 million sold and Xbox One has launched in 13 countrys with 2 million sold.Yea so much for the PS4 dominating lol

[JeffGUNZ]

Again too early to tell either way. You provide a good argument, but then again Sony did not produce enough stock for the demand, which could also play a factor in that. All we should care about is that both consoles are selling at a higher and faster rate then expected.

[ironmonkey]

sub hd all your games lol. man that system really is crap.

[windblowsagain]

@kingdad.

Everyone has their opinion, as you have yours.

But it does not matter what coding,drivers they do on the xbox one. It'll never get anywhere near PS4 GPU performance wise.

Both will get better, but PS4 has alot more throughput to produce next gen games.

[PhoenixReborn]

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Xbox One experiencing some DRM issues on Twitch Live Stream.

At least PS4 doesnt have to worry about that

[MRMagoo123]

Doesnt matter if everyone knows how to use Esram or not, the xbone is still the weaker hardware and wont perform as well as the ps4 in the same circumstances

[Flames76]

Ryse already proves the Xbox One will have better looking game.There isnt any game at launch or any that has been shown on the PS4 that can touch Ryse.Plus Battlefield 4 outshines the PS4 version with brighter visuals and alot more detail.

[windblowsagain]

@flames76

Your smoking the wrong stuff.

PS4 version of BF4 runs at higher resolution and maintains fps.

Ryse looks decent, but Crysis3 looks better. Using the same engine.

I have BF4 on PC, and 64player battles. Nothing comes close gameplay wise.

[Max-Zorin]

Great systems bipolar fans.

[BobBelcher]

My opinion is better than your opinion.