Summary
A recent analysis from a renowned tech expert sheds more light on why thePlayStation 5exhibits performance advantages over the Xbox Series X in some games. Even though the latter is more powerful on paper, thePS5has proven to be more performant in several head-to-head comparisons, leading many to doubt the spec sheets.
Leading up to their launches in November 2020, thepower discourse surrounding the PS5 and Xbox Series Xwas quite heated. The Series X had a more marketable power advantage thanks to its 12-teraflop GPU, while the PS5’s 10.3-teraflop variable frequency GPU suffered an on-paper detriment. However, PS5 hardware architect Mark Cerny stated that Sony’s emphasis was on a bottleneck-free architecture that’s easy for developers to learn, which can seemingly transcend spec sheet numbers.
This notion was somewhat validated whenAssassin’s Creed Valhallaran better on PS5compared to the Xbox Series X, an issue that was attributed to the latter’s development tools apparently not being polished. WhileValhalla’s Xbox version was fixed via a later patch, the PS5 has continually demonstrated better performance over Series X in many games, and a new report from Digital Foundry’sRichard Leadbetter writing for Eurogamerexplains why. As per discussions with multiple game developers, the report finds that the PS5’s GPU compiler is far more efficient, allowing for lower level API access than the Series X equivalent.
PS5’s GPU Features Are “Significantly” More Efficient Than Xbox Series X
That basically means developers can extract more out of the PS5’s GPU, even though it’s at a 1.7-teraflop disadvantage compared to the Xbox Series X. The second most prevalent reason behind the performance disparity is that thePS5’s GPU simply runs faster, allowing it to work better with certain game engines which are designed around clock speeds. The Series X’s GPU has more compute units (52) than PS5 (36), but the former’s GPU runs at 1.8 GHz whereas the latter runs at 2.23 GHz. 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 aCrytek developer’s claims about the PS5from 2020, where he stated that the Sony console is extremely simple to code for compared to the Xbox Series X. While the Microsoft machine has also shown performance advantages in a lot of games, it appears the PS5’s more streamlined architecture has allowed it to close the gap for most others. There’s no denying that both consoles are very well-made, but the PS5’s clever engineering lets it punch above its weight class more often than anticipated.
