Countless mega tonnes of text have been posted on debates that discuss the differences between the horsepower of the PS4 and Xbox One and there are still two more months to go for launch. If the rumors are to be believed, the PS4 is actually upwards with 50% more faster than the Xbox One.
PlayStation 4
The PlayStation 4 is, according to Sony, the fastest and most powerful console in existence. Let’s check out the specs, shall we?
- Price: $ 399.99
- Release Date: 15/11/2013
- Optical Drive: DVD/Blu Ray
- Game DVR: Yes, PS Plus subscription not required
- RAM: 8GB GDDR5
- CPU: Single-chip x86 AMD “Jaguar” processor, 8 cores
- GPU: AMD Radeon Graphics Core Next engine w/ 1152 shaders
- Storage: 500 GB Hard Drive (user removable)
- External Storage: TBA
Xbox One
The Xbox One is Microsoft’s latest attempt on gaming and the successor of the Xbox 360. Specs are as follows:-
- Price: $ 499.99
- Release Date: 22/11/2013
- Optical Drive: DVD/ Blu Ray
- Game DVR: Yes, with subscription to Xbox Live Gold
- RAM: 8GB DDR3
- CPU: 8 Core Microsoft custom CPU
- GPU: 853 MHz AMD Radeon GPU w/ 768 shaders
- Storage: 500 GB Hard Drive (non-removeable)
- External Storage: Yes, USB
Well, by the specifications given above, it actually seems that the PS4 is faster than the Xbox One. Edge, a gaming publication in the UK, recently published a story claiming that the PS4′s RAM is between 40 and 50% faster than the RAM in the Xbox One. More surprisingly, the PS4′s ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit) is also roughly 50% faster than the Xbox One‘s. What makes this even more shocking is that, one example of a game which was run on the PS4 ran at 30 frames per second at a resolution of 1920×1080 while on the Xbox One it ran below 30 frames per second at a resolution of just 1600×900. But it should be noticed that this is not representative of the final results.
Game performance is not precisely reliant on the hardware, it seems. The quality of the graphics drivers and available APIs can make a huge difference when it comes down to squeezing out a better frame rate. While the PS4’s and the Xbox One’s graphic cards aren’t completely ready, some developers have claimed that Microsoft is actually lagging behind Sony.
As Sony and Microsoft struggle to get everything ready for the next-gen launch, we’re stuck waiting to see how these consoles perform under real-world conditions. We’ve yet to see much actual gameplay footage running on final hardware, so speculation is all that’s left. Only After the consoles ship, will we finally begin to get a clearer picture of how different the PS4 and Xbox One will actually be.