On paper, the Xbox Series It’s a conundrum that has baffled many over the past few years and after discussions with multiple sources, including some of the industry’s most high-profile triple-A developers, we finally have some answers – and it’s all laid out in this week’s edition of DF Direct Weekly.
In terms of technical specifications, the Xbox Series X is undoubtedly the most powerful console on the market – at least until the arrival of the mentioned PlayStation 5 Pro. Its GPU reaches 12 teraflops, augmented by a nice amount of memory bandwidth: a maximum of 560 GB/s. PlayStation 5? 10.23TF of GPU compute are available, powered by 448GB/s of bandwidth. So it’s a clear division. If we were to see this spec comparison in the PC space, you’d expect to see the former significantly outperforming the latter.
Except that this generation has not experienced this kind of situation. Overall, this is the closest console generation we’ve ever seen and in most cross-platform releases the differences are pretty minimal. One machine can outperform the other, or vice versa. Sometimes when there are differences, they come down to variations in dynamic resolution scaling – which often seem invisible in A to B comparisons. It’s a far cry from the Xbox One Pro, where Microsoft’s machine had a clear advantage – or the PS4 vs Xbox One comparison, where Sony generally held an equally notable lead.
- 0:00:00 Presentation
- 0:02:00 News 01: First look at FSR 3.1!
- 0:10:56 News 02: Dead Rising remake in development
- 0:22:55 News 03: Dragon’s Dogma 2 corrected
- 0:30:12 News 04: Keystone project details revealed
- 0:38:16 News 05: Forza Horizon 4 to be delisted
- 0:49:38 News 06: SGSSAA appears in a new game
- 0:58:46 News 07: Unity 50 Hz physics problem returns
- 1:07:55 Supporter Q1: Why haven’t more critics noted the problems with Elden Ring? And is it really fair to pile so much technical criticism on From Software?
- 1:27:03 Supporter Q2: What should we expect regarding a possible PS3 emulator on PS5?
- 1:36:05 Supporter Q3: Why is the Series X still sometimes outperformed by the PS5 in cross-platform games?
- 1:45:54 Supporter Q4: Could something like Auto SR be implemented on consoles for backwards compatible games?
- 1:50:00 Supporter Q5: Why are low settings in games much better than before?
So, after a few years of conversations with developers, what is the explanation? How can a less efficient machine outperform a more powerful machine? As we saw recently in our coverage of Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, the frame rate difference in favor of the PS5 is surprising, considering that it is apparently the less capable machine.
We’ve heard some interesting theories over the years, such as how the Xbox Series slow”) can impact performance, but the main reason cited by developers concerns the nature of Sony’s development environment. More than one triple A key developer tells us that the PlayStation GPU compiler is significantly more efficient than the Microsoft alternative, meaning there’s better utilization of the graphics hardware. In general, we understand that the lower level API access granted to PlayStation development means game creators get 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 already spoke about it in March 2020 when he revealed the technical specifications of the PlayStation 5. Although the console may have fewer computing units than the Xbox Series of the GPU runs faster, which means that certain tasks will run faster, which is better suited to certain game engine designs. The extent of this advantage has always been unknown because the PS5 runs with a boosted clock on the CPU and GPU – maximum clock speeds will be limited by a power limit on the CPU.
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However, we have yet to hear any complaints from developers regarding the boost clock’s excessive impact on GPU performance. And in terms of raw numbers, there’s an interesting snippet from the recently leaked PlayStation 5 Pro developer documentation: enabling the CPU boost option, which increases the clock speed by ten percent, does not only sees GPU performance drop by one percent – which is then effectively negligible.
So, from our conversations, the combination of a more efficient GPU compiler, lower-level APIs, and higher clock speeds allows the PlayStation 5 to match or even surpass the Xbox Series X in some scenarios. That said, there is of course value in Microsoft’s approach: by standardizing on DirectX 12 and the DXR ray tracing API, there is a commonality with PC development that obviously helps game makers. And of course, the Xbox still has a higher compute throughput, so game engines that take advantage of that will see benefits. Plus, there are situations where the Xbox ecosystem and features pay dividends. For example, while Elden Ring may run faster on the PlayStation 5, Sony’s limited implementation of variable refresh rate support means we’d much rather play the game on the Xbox Series X – it’s just a smoother, more consistent experience.
At this point, after hearing the same arguments from several completely unrelated developers, the case is effectively closed on this particular topic – and we expect to see a similar situation play out across the rest of the generation. The PlayStation 5 Pro? This is going to be interesting. We expect it to build on the same strengths that made PS5 competitive and go beyond – PSSR’s machine learning-based scaling should act as a sort of “multiplier » effective on its increased GPU performance.
This discussion is just a small part of DF Direct Weekly #169, where we get first impressions on the new Dragon’s Dogma 2 patch and AMD’s FSR 3.1 spatial scaling overhaul (expect (see more in-depth coverage of both soon), as well as comments on the new Dead Rising remake. I hope you enjoy the show – and don’t forget that DF Supporters not only get early access to each episode, but can also contribute to the show. Have a good week !