Here’s Why PS5 Often Runs Games Better Than the Allegedly More Powerful Xbox Series X
As the ninth console generation approaches its fourth year, one question remained unanswered: how does Sony's PS5 console often outperform Microsoft's Xbox Series X, which is more powerful on paper? A few notable examples include Resident Evil 4, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, and Grand Theft Auto V following the next-generation update.
As a reminder, both PS5 and Xbox Series X are powered by custom AMD hardware featuring Zen 2 and RDNA 2 CPU/GPU architectures. Microsoft's console has an eight-core CPU clocked at 3.8 GHz (3.6 GHz with simultaneous multithreading enabled), a GPU powered by 52 Compute Units clocked at 1.825 GHz for an estimated 12.16 TeraFLOPS of computing power, and 16GB of GDDR6 SDRAM with a split design (10GB with 320-bit bus and 560 GB/s bandwidth and 6 GB with 192-bit bus and 336 GB/s bandwidth).
Related Story The First Descendant Summer Game Fest Impressions – Let the (Loot) Rain Fall on Me
On the other hand, PS5 has an eight-core CPU with variable frequency that is capped at 3.5 GHz, a GPU powered by 36 Compute Units with variable frequency up to 2.23 GHz for an estimated TeraFLOPS peak of 10.13, and 16GB of GDDR6 SDRAM with a 256-bit bus and 448 GB/s bandwidth.
Well, today, Digital Foundry published a new DF Direct weekly episode in which they attempted to share a more or less final take on the subject. John Linneman mentioned hearing from developers that the shader compiler and the API itself are faster on the PlayStation 5 side.
One of the big ones that we've heard referenced multiple times now is the shader compiler on the PS5 side is just extremely fast and optimized. It gets pretty complex, but it makes better use of the actual silicon in a way that allows the PS5 to speedier performance. That seems to be a huge thing. Obviously, Microsoft wouldn't be sleeping on that, they're clearly putting in the work on that, but so is Sony, and developers just seem to prefer Sony's implementation for this. Along those same lines, the PS5's main API
Read more on wccftech.com
