Top 4 reasons why the PS5 is outperforming the Series X

The Xbox vs PlayStation Showdown. The brand new consoles from Microsoft and Sony have officially launched. And gamers around the world are eagerly anticipating buying an Xbox Series X and a PlayStation 5, aka Xbro and BaeStation. And as such, with every new generation comes the inevitable comparison of which Console is more powerful. This article will discuss the 4 primary reasons why the PS5 is showing a performance advantage over the Series X.

[piroh]

Good read

[piroh]

PS5 has a slight advantage due to some aspects writen in the article. Basically, both consoles are unique and specific, during a manufacturing process Sony bet on higher GPU clock speeds, unified RAM and SSD, Microsoft bet on a raw power of GPU and split RAM

XsX reminds me PS3 when it comes to game development, the question is how will significantly weaker XsS influence the game development of Xbox exclusives

[InUrFoxHole]

All I know is both consoles are going to have some bangers this gen. Really love what Sony did with their controller.

[ABizzel1]

Yeah I wish the author was here to discuss it, but unfortunately, the mods banned him as soon as he tried to join.

[Atticus_finch]

@AB Why was he banned?

[ABizzel1]

@Atticus

No clue. He was banned the day he made his profile posted a comment thanking me for helping him most here, and instantly banned lol.

[CaptainHenry916]

I think Mark Cerny and Sony's engineers were smart to go with 36 CUs at higher frequencies because it's easier to divide the workloads

Like Cerny said, it's harder to fill these small triangles. Xbox has to properly give work to all of those 52 CUs

[bouzebbal]

There wasn't much competition last gen but this time around there is zero competition.. Unbelievable for the first time ever a console doesn't have a single asset. It's just a more powerful Ouya

[SirBruce]

A PS5 Slim in 2023 can kill Xbox Series definetly... because Xbox Series X seems to be the Xbox Series One X of this generation... no second midstemp opportuniy for Microsoft this time. Only Xbox Game Pass could win as platform... on the long term.

[Godmars290]

Doesn't it just boil down to Sony building up their experience in the industry where MS, despite all their time in it, have failed to acquire any?

They came in with specific goals and mindset and have, regardless of what they actually say or seem to do, alter that mindset.

They want to be an aggregate platform, have everyone come to them, everyone pay them, while they put in the least effort.

The best example of this, how it doesn't work, is how they "acquired" timed exclusivity to Netflix when it just started, tied their own subscription service to, only to see take off when it available on the PS3 where it could be gotten with no strings attached.

Been saying they need to get away from the mindset that they're the only game in town, that everyone will come to them and that they just need to keep saying it, but its too late at this point. MS have already made the physical Xbox redundant to a streaming app as they copy Netflix, just as dozens of other streaming services are popping up. Making their own shows to promote them, unlike a certain console game maker I shouldn't have to name.

[pedrof93]

Honestly, the game pass makes it all worth it, I've manage to get an XsX earlier last week, as they said the value is fantastic :D

[medman]

Enjoy your console....I was fortunate to get a ps5 at launch, and a series x was delayed a little less than two weeks after launch from Amazon. I skipped the xbox one this past gen, so gamepass is really tremendous for me right now....in november my data usage was well over 2tb...thankfully I have an unlimited plan with no cap. A good bit of that was for the series x...I filled the main ssd, and filled about half the seagate ssd with downloads for games for xbox I missed last gen. The ps5 is simply awesome.

[Aussieguy]

You can play the Game pass on a pc or even an Android device. Heck, even the xbox exclusives are all going to PC now (including Halo).

I just can't see any reason at all to buy a xbox anymore

[Firebird360]

Gamepass will be the ultimate downfall of gaming. I cant believe anyone supports it just because its a good deal.

[Dragonscale]

@firebird360 nah, xbox will never be popular enough for that to happen. When the main feature of your console is a rental service it just won't cut it.

[SirBruce]

Is it really neccesary to buy an Xbox Series console to enjoy Xbox Game Pass? If it is enabled con PC soon, you'll only need a cheap laptop or something cheaper and a controller... well... and 1$ for 3 months if you can get deals as usual.

[Babadook7]

Gamepass is great, but that ps+ collection that comes with ps5 is on another level.

[IGiveHugs2NakedWomen]

I remember people claiming that there were devs saying the performance gap between these consoles was massive. *chuckling*

The one thing I will never understand about why Microsoft chose to use two sets of RAM instead of a unified pool of RAM is mind boggling and this configuration is probably what's causing problems. I don't know of any graphics cards that have a fast pool of RAM coupled with a slow pool of RAM so to me the design makes absolutely no sense.

[TheProblem]

Yeah what happened to that so called ex Sony dev who claimed series x is a beast and developers were massively disappointed in the Ps5. He said it was almost a ps3 situation all over again for them.

[lifeisgamesok]

They went with a slower pool to try to cut costs instead of one unified pool of GDDR6 like the PS5

It wasn't a good move IMO

[Bathyj]

Excellent read. I'm glad someone is bringing up the benefits of the higher clock speeds and how it affects everything because I think people are really sleeping on that. Also having more focus in the tools in the APIs is going to be a big benefit to PlayStation and not trying to be the jack of all trades and master of none like Xbox.

anyone who thinks teraflops is still the only thing that matters should read this whole article.

[lifeisgamesok]

A good read indeed and I'm glad reality finally came for the "12 Tflopz of powah" people.

214 days ago:

@Shaggy2303 The more CUs the more difficult the game development

If resources from the GPU aren't properly divided between the 52 CUs then it is forced to drop a huge number of those CUs

The GPU has to have enough resources for the CUs at all times or you lose the performance

214d ago 27 agree22 disagreeView comment

[ApocalypseShadow]

Interesting reasons. But there's really only one:

*Sony was ready for next gen.*

From development of the console, the launch games, the UI, the controller and the accessories like the media remote and 3D headphones. Sony was ready while still providing content for last gen. Gamers laughed at Mark Cerny. Now they are eating crow.

With all the talk and nonsense about Sony saying nothing, from journalists, influencers and gamers spreading false information. It is Sony's system that is sought after the most worldwide.

That's called "Generations." Giving gamers a feeling of something they haven't experienced before. Sony has done that successfully across the board. Not an extension of last gen. An evolution. Possibly, a revolution in sight, sound and feel.

That's what a market leader does. Gives reasons why you should buy their product. The only way to do that, was for Sony to hide what they were doing from their opponent. And speak when something needs to actually be said.

[lelo2play]

"Sony was ready for next gen."
^^^^^
THIS!.

Microsoft released a console without exclusives. This is a first...The Xbox Series clearly wasn't ready to be released.
BTW, Microsoft with it's stupid console names doesn't help. Their marketing department needs to be fired.

[ABizzel1]

The marketing department is one of the areas I think does their consistently well at Xbox. They didn't come up with the name alone, they simply pitched ideas and that's what the Execs choose. They do good at advertising and marketing the console, services (GamePass), hyping their fans, and maintaining engagement.

Now the other parts of the business have all been questionable. The hardware engineers are fine, the software engineers are fine, and the game studios should hopefully be fine with the new talent. But fine isn't going to get their mindshare and marketshare, and every other area is subpar IMO.

[Elda]

Preach!

[ABizzel1]

"With all the talk and nonsense about Sony saying nothing, from journalists, influencers and gamers spreading false information. It is Sony's system that is sought after the most worldwide."

100% this, but I wouldn't even call them journalists anymore, as even these major publications are practically bloggers at this point, some of them don't even have core gaming experience and are writing reviews on games. The games journalist industry had degraded significantly from the PS360 era.

Now we have sensationalist, people just cramming to get the scoop first, or the most catchy / or trollish headline whether it's true or not.

[Jinova]

Well said sir!

[franwex]

I don’t recall any gamer laughing at Mark or Sony. If anything they were the ones that created the most excitement regarding next gen.

[ApocalypseShadow]

Basically meaning that some gamers didn't believe in Mark Cerny's design of the console. That it was underpowered compared to Microsoft's. Instead, it's just designed differently to be optimized. And it shows in PS5 1ST and 3RD Party games in comparison.

[Destiny1080]

some really great excuses

you should do halo next

[REDGUM]

There's only 4 reasons?

[Unknown_Gamer5794]

Most of this is over my head, but I guess it's not as simple as higher numbers = better performance. It's all about optimization. This is why I don't care about teraflops or any other numbers thrown out. What I care about is how games actually look and run. I know there's a lot of math behind how all of that works, but because I don't understand most of it, I only care about the end result. If a company says their system has a lot of teraflops, cool. They can then proceed to show me what their system actually does with those teraflops.

[RazzerRedux]

This is why I and others were preaching earlier in the year that people should wait until we see actual games running on the hardware before they start beating their chests. Anyone who has researched and shopped for a PC GPU knows the teraflop is not very reliable and doesn't translate into one to one gains in performance as the article points out very well. Show me frame rates at comparable settings and resolutions.

The simple fact of the matter is these two consoles have a lot of differences in how they were designed for processing. So much so that teraflops, which are based on rigid formula, are just not accurate. Things like the Geometry Engine, VRS, or SmartShift or even the speed of the memory are not taken into consideration at all. It is simply the number of CUs and the number of cycles. As the article points out, teraflops depend on constants, but here we have so many variables.

Microsoft marketed teraflops and a lot of people bought that wholesale. And a lot of those same people are suddenly very quiet now. And others are now buying into these theories on devikits and tools. Either way, the boasts came to a stop and that is a good thing. In the end, I think we simply have two consoles that are closer together power-wise than anyone, including myself, thought.

[Bladesfist]

In the PC world and with the constraint of ONLY ON THE SAME ARCHITECTURE, say Turing for example, more teraflops does equal more performance with few if any exceptions. The problem arises when people want to compare different architectures or in the consoles case, somewhat customised chips, running different Operating Systems with different APIs and such. You can't compare console GPUs in isolation like you can with a PC.

[RazzerRedux]

@Bladesfist

Absolutely. The most common example of this is Vega 64 vs 5700 XT.

12.66 TF GCN vs 9.75 RDNA and yet the lower TF 5700 XT smokes the Vega in games:
https://www.youtube.com/wat...

https://www.techpowerup.com...
https://www.techpowerup.com...

[TheProblem]

“ Either way, the boasts came to a stop and that is a good thing”

Yes. Hopefully we can finally put to bed all that stupid beast talk that’s been going on since the spec reveal of the one X in April 2016 up to recently. The Xbox fanboys have been so sad and cringe with that

[lifeisgamesok]

Yep. I posted this comment below 214 days ago that got 14 likes but 11 dislikes lol

@Element Faster but fewer cores is better for programmers. With the XSX having so many CUs it'll be harder for it to reach it's theoretical peak since you have to do more optimization on the workloads

Both consoles will be powerful but I believe PS5 will see better results quicker in 1st party titles than it'll take for developers to code around the XSX hardware. XSX has split ram too...

[WireMucks]

Ok you were talking about performance in games,.. Well PS5 is probably way more efficient as a gaming system,.. They can do more with less and it is easier to optimize for it,.. It is called efficiency,..

(about sales)
Because it is PlayStation and it has mindshare and MS was not able to create any in 3 generations,.. MS is tasteless, not creative, culture poor type of a company. They are very opportunistic I will give them that,.. and kudos to them as buisness,.. but they are so damn chips and soda,.. It is a miracle they are still selling any. Only significant thing they released is always made by others,..and usually comes to everything (like Ori and Cuphead) they don't have an ounce of creativity in them,.. (except being good as a cut-throat and propagandists)
If anyone would even phantom them actually competing with Sony or Nintendo ,.. is beyond ridiculous,.. MCdonalds and fast food is very

[Pughski]

Doesn't help that Phil Spencer is a PR lying POS

[DaGR8JIBRALTAR]

😃😃😃

[CaptainHenry916]

😁😁

[Rainbowcookie]

Great article.

[curtain_swoosh]

heres the thing. having a powerful console is all good and great, but if u cant back it up with anything, whats the point?

im not trying to bash it, but all we've heard from xbox was "monster this, best console ever this"
and now look at it. it was outsold by the console who gave us next to no information about it before it even came out. why?
Games.

[RacerX]

Yep, I'm finally switching to Sony after 10 years on Xbox. The Xbox Exclusives were WAY to slow last Gen, always drooling about everything PS4 had.

So I'll get a PS5 and use my Xbox account on my PC when they drop a good exclusive (which is like 1 or 2 every November)

[Bathyj]

Better late than never mate. I'd suggest getting PSplus collection and get a crash course in the generation you missed out on.

[SonyStyled]

Can you send me a pm? I’m wondering why you jumped at Xbox in 2010 as opposed to 2005. I mean, you started playing on Xbox at their turn of reducing their AAA game output to focus on Kinect. Probably the worst time to buy an Xbox if looking for 10+ years of good gaming over what the competitions AAA output since 2008.

For me I went from PS2 to PS3 in March of 2007 six months after the “disastrous” $500-$600 PS3 launch, and mostly because I was very hopeful of more platforming games and a sequel to Jak 3, which was later cancelled to focus on Uncharted. But even without my cherished Jak and Daxter the PS3 overachieved any gaming dream I could imagine in that 6-7 years. Still hoping for Jak 4, and excited to continue the AAA stories PlayStation has delivered gaming fans like myself since PS2, PS3, and PS4.

When you do get a PS5, welcome to PS. You have beyond a truckload to catch up on!

[waverider]

So many warned about this. The problem was the marketing done by Microsoft and all the talk of 12 teraflops....

[FyBy]

Bbbbbbut xbox is most powerful console far better then ps5 because because because.... Head blows

[buffig]

It's a weird state of affairs when games are being patched on Series X to bring them level with PS5. As predicted, the terraflops talk was all for nothing in the end. Great job Sony!

[SullysCigar]

Because Sony innovated over last gen and Xbox imitated - with 'much more biggerer' numbers lol

Xbox: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"
Sony: "it ain't broke, but we can make it better"

Sony values it's place in the industry. Some were worried they would get complacent, due to lack of competition. What they've achieved is based on not just striving for success and money, but passion for their craft - something most large American corporations seemingly cannot fathom.

[SonyStyled]

My opinion which will get disagrees, Sony will be complacent if Xbox ends console manufacturing. Who would they compete against, Nintendo? I mean Xbox as a service will deliver AAA games via PC and cloud streaming to phones and TVs, which it’s Microsoft who is trying to catch up and replicate Sony’s 1st party software success this generation after being lackluster for 10 years. But who would Sony compete against in the evolutionary spectrum of game console hardware? -thus my thoughts on complacency. Not in software, but in evolutions in hardware

[kryteris]

seems like cyberpunk resolution was better than the ps5.

[ABizzel1]

They're using last-gen versions in backward-compatible mode. So for Cyberpunk, you're not playing a PS5 vs Series X game, you're playing a PS4 Pro vs Xbox One X game, with the Xbox One X having 2 modes one focusing on a higher resolution around and one focusing on performance and 60fps. The PS4 Pro version running on PS5 only has the performance mode.

[Atticus_finch]

Sony Teraflops> MS Teraflops.

[talocaca]

Nobody trusts Microsoft anymore 🤷‍♂️

[Focus40]

Speak for yourself please Actually I trust no company same way I feel about the government

[Futureshark]

What a well written, well informed article.

[B1uBurneR]

Watched the video, but that doesn't explain why more recent 3rd party games are performing better on Series X. I think we all agree that these launch titles exclusive or not ...were mostly made for this gen, in other words early ports.

[WireMucks]

Like which exactly? I don't know 1. Unless you mean last gen games running under backward compatibility,.. There was not a single game released where PS5 does not preform or look better at least a bit better or both.

[WireMucks]

Not that it is going to matter much at that high resolutions anyway. I can see ps5 actually having a bit better third party games ,.. even if they don't look better,.. they have an awesome controller,.. which is more of a difference then theoretical pixel hunting @ those resolutions,.. and 2-3 fps more.

[BlaqMagiq1]

So we're gonna act like Dirt 5 wasn't running worse on Series X than PS5 at one point? Even some instances DMC5 Special Edition was running better on PS5. These are facts that were confirmed by Digital Foundry.

[B1uBurneR]

PS5 will not outperform XBOX Series X on non old-gen ports. It is barely keeping up even though dev kits has been out longer and dev are more familiar with it that the Series X. @Mac name one PS5 exclusive (bread and butter) launch title that can keep a steady 4K 60fps RT. We see that happening on a 3rd party game on the Series Call of Duty. Don't get too hyped off these PS4 pro ports. If you call Spiddy Morales, Demon's Souls. next-gen graphics what the hell do you call Scorn. Lets call these fresh batch of launch titles what they are, Last gen ports posing like a fresh paint, but you can still it old paint peeling under it.

@Blaq SXS vs PS5 ... you'll see more under 4K 60fps RT on the PS5 than Xbox. Can't wait to see how live with that fact down the road.

[potatoseal]

Scorn looks like shit. Walking sim with no real gameplay animations. Looks B-GRADE

[BlaqMagiq1]

You literally did nothing to prove your case but provide excuses lmao. I bet the more PS5 games that outperform Series X the more excuses you'll be coming up with. I can't wait to see what excuse you come up with next lmao.

[B1uBurneR]

You literally did nothing to prove the so called powerful ps5 can run is own launch exclusives games @ 4K60fps with RT, everything else is just non-sense.

[BlaqMagiq1]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

You can't even show one launch Series X game that does 4k/60fps with ray tracing either.

[BlaqMagiq1]

The only launch exclusive yall had was delayed an ENTIRE YEAR because it was a garbage showing of what the console AND the game can do.

Like I said the multiplats have been outperformed on Series X by PS5 and the numbers have proven it. Continue to move goalposts tho.

BTW if the Series X is so much more powerful than the PS5 why is it stuck running Watch Dogs Legion at 4K/30fps with ray tracing like the PS5? Better yet, why is the Series X stuck running Yakuza Like a Dragon at 1440p/60fps? Let the excuses begin.

[XbladeTeddy]

Who on earth calls them an Xbro and BaeStation?

[Barneyco]

Agreed. If you want to be taken seriously you shouldn't play the stupid name game. Other than that it was a very informative article.