On paper, the Xbox Series It’s a riddle that has puzzled many over the past few years, and after talking to multiple sources, including some of the industry’s leading triple-A developers, we finally have some answers – and it’s all in this edition week of DF Direct Weekly.
In terms of technical specs, the Xbox Series X is without a doubt the most powerful console on the market – at least until the aforementioned PlayStation 5 Pro arrives. The GPU hits 12 teraflops, complemented by a hefty amount of memory bandwidth: up to 560GB/s. PlayStation 5? There’s 10.23TF of GPU compute available, fed by 448GB/s of bandwidth. There’s a clear gulf, then. If we were to see this spec comparison in PC territory, you’d expect the former to fare comfortably better than the latter.
Except that hasn’t happened this generation. Overall, it’s the closest console generation we’ve ever seen and in most multi-platform releases the differences are pretty minimal. One machine can outperform another, or vice versa. Sometimes, if there are differences, it comes down to variations in dynamic resolution scaling – which often seems invisible in A-to-B comparisons. It’s a far cry from the Xbox One
- 0:00:00 Introduction
- 0:02:00 News 01: FSR 3.1 first look!
- 0:10:56 News 02: Dead Rising remake in development
- 0:22:55 News 03: Dragon’s Dogma 2 patched
- 0:30:12 News 04: Project Keystone details revealed
- 0:38:16 News 05: Forza Horizon 4 is being taken private
- 0:49:38 News 06: SSGSSAA appears in new game
- 0:58:46 News 07: Unity 50Hz physics problem returns
- 1:07:55 Supporter Q1: Why haven’t more reviewers noticed the issues with Elden Ring? And is it fair to give From Software so much technical criticism?
- 1:27:03 Supporter Q2: What can we expect from a potential PS3 emulator on the PS5?
- 1:36:05 Supporter Q3: Why does the Series X still sometimes outperform the PS5 in cross-platform games?
- 1:45:54 Supporter Question 4: Can something like Auto SR be implemented on consoles for backwards compatible games?
- 1:50:00 Supporter Q5: Why do games on low settings look much better than before?
What’s the explanation, after a few years of conversations with developers? How can a less capable machine outperform the more powerful one? As recently seen in our coverage of Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, the frame rate difference in favor of the PS5 is surprising, considering it’s apparently the less capable machine.
We’ve heard some interesting theories over the years, like how the Xbox Series can affect, but the main reason we’ve heard from developers concerns the nature of Sony’s development environment. More than one major triple-A developer tells us that the PlayStation GPU compiler is significantly more efficient than the Microsoft alternative, meaning better use of the graphics hardware. Overall, we understand that the lower API access afforded to PlayStation development means that game makers are getting more out of the hardware.
The second most common explanation we’ve received from developers concerns the nature of the GPU itself. Mark Cerny himself discussed this back in March 2020 when he revealed the technical specifications of the PlayStation 5. While the console may have fewer compute units than Xbox Series The extent of this advantage was always unknown, as the PS5 runs on a boost clock on both the CPU and GPU – maximum clock speeds are limited by a power limit on the processor.
Manage cookie settings
We’ve yet to hear any complaints from developers about the boost clock unduly impacting GPU performance, however. And in terms of raw numbers, there’s an interesting tidbit from the recently leaked PlayStation 5 Pro developer documentation: enabling the CPU boost option, which increases clock speed by ten percent, only causes a one percent drop in GPU performance – essentially a negligible one.
So, based on our conversations, the combination of a more efficient GPU compiler, lower-level APIs, and higher clock speeds will allow PlayStation 5 to match or even exceed Xbox Series X’s output in some scenarios. That said, there’s obviously value in the approach Microsoft has taken: by standardizing on DirectX 12 and the DXR ray tracing API, there’s a similarity to PC development that clearly helps game makers. And of course, Xbox still has more processing power – so game engines that capitalize on that will benefit. Additionally, there are situations where the Xbox ecosystem and feature set pays dividends. For example, while Elden Ring may run faster on PlayStation 5, Sony’s limited implementation of variable refresh rate support means we’d much rather play the game on Xbox Series X – it’s just a smoother and more consistent experience.
Now that we’ve heard the same set of points from a bunch of completely unrelated developers, that means the case is effectively closed on this particular topic – and we’d expect a similar situation to play out across the rest of the generation. PlayStation 5 Pro? This will be interesting. We’d expect it to leverage the same strengths that made PS5 competitive and take it further: PS5 Pro machine learning-based upscaling should act as a kind of effective ‘multiplier’ for the improved GPU performance.
This discussion is just a small part of DF Direct Weekly #169, where we have first impressions of the new Dragon’s Dogma 2 patch and AMD’s FSR 3.1 spatial upscaling overhaul (expect more in-depth coverage of both soon), plus commentary on the new Dead Rising -remake. I hope you enjoy the show – and remember that backers of the DF Supporter Program not only get early access to every episode, but can also contribute to the show. Have a good week!