Last night was exciting in the gaming world as Sony finally released all the specifications for PlayStation 5. With Microsoft’s Xbox Series X specs already out there, we cannot help but draw a comparison between the two consoles.

Source: T3.com

First of all, unlike the previous models, these two devices are very different from each other. Both Microsoft and Sony have made plans to release their products for the market at the end of the year. Microsoft said that they would also notify us of the next-gen advanced games available for Xbox Series X in June. But now that we have the specs for PS5, we have some idea of what to expect from both the companies.

Sony has included completely different CPU, GPU and SSD speeds so yes, if we say that this changes the game for Xbox Series X console, we wouldn’t be wrong.

While Microsoft went with eight AMD-based Zen 2 cores clocked at 3.8 GHz each, Sony shaped the console with eight AMD-based Zen 2 cores clocked at 3.5GHz each. Simultaneous multithreading (SMT) has been enabled on the Xbox Series X, so Microsoft’s CPU cores decrease to 3.6GHz each. This difference seems absolutely nothing on the paper.

Source: BGR

However, when it comes to GPU and SSDs, that’s where the performance difference is visible. Microsoft went with a custom AMD RDNA 2-based GPU for the Xbox Series X that can hit 12 teraflops of power with 52 compute units at 1.852GHz each. Sony, on the other hand, picked a custom AMD RDNA 2-based GPU inside the PS5 which gives 10.28 teraflops of power with 36 compute units operating at 2.2 GHz each.

Sony is employing variable frequencies on both the CPU and GPU. Do you remember the boost clock on PCs? It is almost like that with just a few minor changes. Eurogamer revealed that Sony PS5 system architect, Mark Cerny talked about the console’s power budget. So it is tied to the thermal limits of the system, which means that the performance of PS5 depends on how much the console is being used by the games. 

Source: The Verge

Sony plans to offer developers reduced compute units running at a variable and higher clock rate. This way, the expected performance will sharpen in the console. However, from what we can see, the developers will have to put in more effort to optimise games for PS5, at least until we see what’s the plan for Xbox Series X. Also, Microsoft most definitely has beaten Sony in this aspect, at least on paper.

Now let’s talk about storage. With Sony, tech experts were amazed to find out that the company has included a remarkable SSD solution that gives 825GB of storage and 5.5 GB/s of performance. In comparison, Xbox Series X just has a custom 1TB NVME SSD that will provide less than half raw throughput which according to an estimate comes to 2.4GB/s. So the time for loading would see a huge difference between the two consoles. 

Source: Gamers Game Hub

Now it all depends on the game developers. Only they can tell how effective both the strategies have turned out, but they need to make use of load times, frame times and realtime ray tracing. We are desperately waiting for the next-gen game titles that will finally decide which console has won this year.