From Extreme Tech - PS4 vs Xbox

Developer claims PS4 will always be stronger than the Xbox One

• By Joel Hruska on April 4, 2014 at 3:59 pm
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Last week, Xbox Achievements posted an interview with Oddworld creator Lorne Lanning in which the developer seemed to claim that the performance gap between the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 would narrow and eventually vanish. Now, new reports cast doubt on that claim — according to Just Add Water CEO Stewart Gilray, Lanning was misunderstood. That performance gap between the two platforms that has characterized many titles to date? It’s not going anywhere.

According to Gilray, “the PS4 has MORE COMPUTE units, and faster memory and a whole bunch of things, that would make that [Xbox One / PS4 parity] physically impossible to happen.” At this point, four months after launch, an increasing amount of data suggests that Gilray is right — and that may be why the PS4 continues to outsell the Xbox One at a rapid clip.

The PS4′s undeniable hardware advantage

Everything we know about the Xbox One-PS4 matchup suggests that the PS4 is winning the hardware battle thanks to a straightforward memory arrangement (no need to muck with the 32MB of SRAM) and a stronger GPU. I continue to think that the SRAM cache in the Xbox One is a bit too small for easy 1080p — not so small as to make 1080p impossible, but small enough to make it very inconvenient. Developers faced with the problem of optimizing their game to specifically allow for 1080p have mostly chosen to work within a lower resolution; even the Xbox-exclusive Titanfall has stuck with 792p rather than a full 1080p.

What’s more telling, however, is the way that Microsoft continues to push out the idea of further Xbox One upgrades. Thus, we’re told that the Xbox One will support DX12, even though it’s not clear that a new API will help much. We know that Mantle and DX12 attack many of the same problems (even if there’s no evidence to suggest that DX12 is a straight port of Mantle). To date, the Mantle benefits we’ve seen have been strongest in scenarios where a weak CPU is paired with a strong GPU. Unfortunately, if CPU performance was really what held the Xbone back in game tests, it would already be faster than the PS4 — the Xbox One’s CPU cores are clocked about 8% higher than Sony’s.


This suggests that DirectX 12 might deliver a general six-to-12% performance improvement over DX11 for Microsoft’s console, but that’s not the same as making the SRAM cache larger or improving the memory bandwidth. These are all noteworthy improvements, but they don’t change the fact that MS is scrambling. The company has increased CPU and GPU clocks, announced a new API, and may be considering giving developers back the GPU horsepower currently reserved for Kinect, all because it got its bets wrong in the first place about how much horsepower it needed to compete toe-to-toe with Sony.

Sony isn’t talking up these kinds of changes — even though we know that consoles often become more efficient and capable over the long term thanks to software updates and developer familiarity — because it simply hasn’t needed to.

The question isn’t really whether or not Microsoft can make the Xbox One as powerful as the PS4 — it can’t, without a hardware redesign. The question is whether or not it can give developers enough power as to make comparisons between the two platforms a moot point. After all, the Xbox 360 and PS3 had strengths in particular games, but both platforms ended up in very similar positions in the end.
For now, the PS4 retains a significant quality and speed advantage over the Xbox One. Some of the particulars of the Xbone’s design seem to imply that it’ll be extremely difficult for Microsoft to reach parity with Sony. The Wii’s tremendous success last generation proved that you can drive huge console sales with novel gameplay as opposed to strictly focusing on great graphics, but Microsoft has typically marketed itself to a gaming segment that’s concerned with such capabilities. That strategy may have backfired, given current sales figures.