
Power vs. Speed: The Xbox Series X And PS5 are different animals - lawrenceyan
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinmurnane/2020/03/22/power-vs-speed-the-xbox-series-x-and-ps5-are-very-different-animals/#6eea45bf29d7
======
BearOso
Polaris and Vega were ROP-limited, and performed worse than nvidia cards with
similar tflop measurements.

The Xbox has a higher tflops rating because of more compute units, but it has
the same number of raster units. Because the PS5 clocks higher, its ROP
throughput will be greater. In a rendering workload like games this will make
a difference. Whether or not this offsets the fewer compute units remains to
be seen, but I’d wager the consoles are going to come out pretty much on par.
There’s not going to be a big discrepancy like PS4 and Xbone.

~~~
0xy
You're missing one of the key pieces: software. I don't think many would argue
that Sony can produce better tooling and operating system efficiency than
Microsoft.

Even with identical hardware, I'd place my money on a small Xbox edge.

The PS3 was on paper significantly more powerful than the Xbox 360, however it
didn't result in significantly better performance or graphics. In some games
in some cases yes, in others not really.

~~~
abdulla
Doesn't Sony use clang? My understanding was LLVM does a better job at
optimisation than MSVC.

------
sk0g
I'm failing to see how power and speed differ in a computing context.

CPU wise PS4 is weaker and slower, no matter how you frame it. Maybe on the
GPU side you could make an argument for that difference, but still.

Either way, seems like a strong move forward for gaming.

~~~
donatj
There's a couple of things in the article. The Xbox has a faster CPU, but the
PS5 has a faster SSD. The Xbox has more GPU cores, but the GPU cores of the
PS5 are faster. I would say number of cores versus speed equals how power and
speed differ.

------
dlhavema
I haven't bought a console since the Wii. With xbox vs Playstation battles, do
people often switch consoles, have both or stick to their favorite? It almost
seems similar to iOS vs Android in some ways.

~~~
donatj
I hear PS4 outsold Xbox One by a mile but it's strange because I only know
people who either have the Xbox One or both. I don't know anyone who has just
a PS4.

I know it's a small sample size, and not representative it's just a
interesting.

I personally have both, and I prefer the Xbox One. We actually have two so I
can game with my wife. The UI feels less like a toy, setting up groups and
games is still much easier with Xbox Live than anything PlayStation has ever
offered.

~~~
marcofatica
maybe it's a regional thing? everyone I know has a ps4 and I only know one or
two people with an xbox

------
laurentdc
Has anyone figured out if these new consoles will run games at 120/144Hz
refresh rates?

I'm thinking of going back to console after years of PC (mostly due to space
constraints and not having time to mess with fancy builds again) but 60 Hz is
the single biggest deal breaker for me. Switching to a lower refresh rate even
for a few minutes now gives me a headache

~~~
illuminati1911
Not sure if they support running games at those refresh rates, but either way
there won't be many if any AAA games that would actually be running +60 FPS.
If we can even get stable 60 FPS for most titles with 1440p or 4K, I'll be
surprised.

In the end it's still the graphics what sells and not the FPS for most people
and definitely for most people buying game consoles. In the current gen, lot
of games are still running 1080p@30FPS: [https://www.ign.com/wikis/xbox-
one/PS4_vs._Xbox_One_Native_R...](https://www.ign.com/wikis/xbox-
one/PS4_vs._Xbox_One_Native_Resolutions_and_Framerates#PS4_vs._Xbox_One_Native_Resolutions_and_Framerates_Comparison_Chart)

------
hncensorsnonpc
Clickbait article, they are very similar. On PC the CPU was hardly ever the
bottleneck so I expect not much from the options MS is offering there.

~~~
fulafel
We have GPUs becuse of the CPU bottleneck, it's been a very big thing.

~~~
imtringued
That's just nitpicking. Just because something is turing complete doesn't mean
it is optimized for a specific task. The responsibility of processing graphics
has been shifted away from the CPU for a long time already.

~~~
fulafel
I think you are working with an oversimplified model of graphics programming
if you think graphics code runs just on the GPU.

But even in this ideal scenario, there would already big sacrifices involved
in just offloading this stuff to GPUs: Sacrifices in SW complexity and
development time moving from programmer-friendly CPU code to hard-to-program
GPU interfaces.

The reality is in fact a CPU+GPU juggling setup where interacting CPU and GPU
computations must be carefully coordinated and performance-tuned.

If the CPU bottleneck didn't exist and we could do without today's GPUs, we
could make better graphics applications (games) given the same investment and
technical engineering competence, and game developer life would be much more
pleasant.

(There's an alternate history of more programmer friendly GPUs of course too,
see eg the Larrabee story)

