AnandTech: Xbox One vs. PS4 - Hardware comparison

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Yesterday Microsoft finally took the covers off the new Xbox, what it hopes will last for many years to come. At a high level here?s what we?re dealing with:

- 8-core AMD Jaguar CPU

- 12 CU/768 SP AMD GCN GPU

- 8GB DDR3 system memory

- 500GB HDD

- Blu-ray drive

- 2.4/5.0GHz 802.11 a/b/g/n, multiple radios with WiFi Direct support

- 4K HDMI in/out (for cable TV passthrough)

- USB 3.0

- Available later this year

While Microsoft was light on technical details, I believe we have enough to put together some decent analysis. Let?s get to it.

Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). We?ll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that it?s usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms.

On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques.

Differences in the memory subsytems also gives us some insight into each approach to the next-gen consoles. Microsoft opted for embedded SRAM + DDR3, while Sony went for a very fast GDDR5 memory interface. Sony?s approach (especially when combined with a beefier GPU) is exactly what you?d build if you wanted to give game developers the fastest hardware. Microsoft?s approach on the other hand looks a little more broad. The Xbox One still gives game developers a significant performance boost over the previous generation, but also attempts to widen the audience for the console. It?s a risky strategy for sure, especially given the similarities in the underlying architectures between the Xbox One and PS4.

More @ http://www.anandtech.com/show/6972/xbox-one-hardware-compared-to-playstation-4

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Ooops, you can't catch the tech folk out :p

Similarly, the company claimed that there was more than 200GB of bandwidth within the system. Again, the number had no context or clarification and if rumors are to be believed, it suggests some rather creative accounting: 68 GB main memory bandwidth, 102GB bandwidth to an embedded SRAM buffer for the GPU, and 30GB bandwidth between the CPU and GPU. While that does add up to 200GB, there are no two parts of the SoC that can communicate with each other at 200 GB/s. The fastest link is believed to be the GPU read performance, which can aggregate across the main memory and SRAM buffer for 170 GB total.

http://arstechnica.c...losing-nothing/

Someone on GAF pointed out it's actually less than claimed in the Xbox 360 E3 2005 PR release

Never knew about that!

http://majornelson.c...s3-part-1-of-4/

Omg WTF this is gold, how did MS get away with this! Sony pulled some serious BS with the prototype PS3, but I had no idea MS done some of this as well...

SUMMARY

Now that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 specifications have been announced, it is possible to do a real world performance comparison of the two systems.

There are three critical performance aspects of a console:

? Central Processing Unit (CPU) performance.

o The Xbox 360 CPU architecture has three times the general purpose processing power of the Cell.

? Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) performance

o The Xbox 360 GPU design is more flexible and it has more processing power than the PS3 GPU.

? Memory System Bandwidth

o The memory system bandwidth in Xbox 360 exceeds the PS3?s by five times.

Xbox 360 has 278.4 GB/s of memory system bandwidth. The PS3 has less than one-fifth of Xbox 360?s (48 GB/s) of total memory system bandwidth.

One of the great things about working at Xbox is that we have some of the smartest people in the world working on the Xbox 360. When Sony came announced the PS3, along with the product specs some of our team started looking at some of the numbers to see what they mean. Floating Point, shaders, bandwidth?.what does it all mean. Clearly there are some numbers and stats that mean more to gaming then others, so the team cranked out some facts for everyone to absorb. Our world class technology team looked at the numbers and claims and decided to do what everyone else does: compare them to the PS3. The difference it that these guys are uniquely qualified to do so, and can cut through the smoke and mirrors to see what the real deal is. To that end, I present this summary, which I have broken up into four parts to make it more RSS Reader friendly.

Warning: Some of this stuff may make your head hurt, but these are the facts as they stand right now. Enjoy the read:

[Arceles]

If only I could install windows on a PS4... that would be my next gaming machine....

[neufuse Veteran]

the raw processing power of the system makes me cringe though after I look at my desktop systems raw power... dev's are going to have to come up with some highly optimized code to make good use of these systems... sure they are faster raw FLOP wise then the 360 and PS3, but compared to a Intel ivy bridge i7 system with a good quality mid range graphics card......

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

the raw processing power of the system makes me cringe though after I look at my desktop systems raw power... dev's are going to have to come up with some highly optimized code to make good use of these systems... sure they are faster raw FLOP wise then the 360 and PS3, but compared to a Intel ivy bridge i7 system with a good quality mid range graphics card......

Look at Uncharted 2/The Last of Us and the upcoming GT6 squeezed out of 512mb ram :p (even Beyond looks amazing) Next gen games will look fantastic on dedicated gaming consoles.

[neufuse Veteran]

Look at Uncharted 2/The Last of Us and the upcoming GT6 squeezed out of 512mb ram :p (even Beyond looks amazing) Next gen games will look fantastic on dedicated gaming consoles.

I'm not saying they wont, they can optimize stuff pretty well, I just feel underwhelmed by the processing power

[Crisp]

If only I could install windows on a PS4... that would be my next gaming machine....

Eh? Just build a 8 core AMD PC then.

[neufuse Veteran]

If only I could install windows on a PS4... that would be my next gaming machine....

Just build any current line of PC and you'd already have more power then the PS4... even with only 4 or 6 cores... the FLOPS per core is higher on most desktop chips today then in the XBOX One and PS4... and you have way more powerful graphics cards out now

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

For those that prefer Digital Foundry

In terms of the GPU hardware, hard information was difficult to come by, but one of the engineers did let slip with a significant stat - 768 operations per clock. We know that both Xbox One and PlayStation 4 are based on Radeon GCN architecture and we also know that each compute unit is capable of 64 operations per clock. So, again through a process of extrapolation from the drip-feed of hard facts, the make-up of the One's GPU is confirmed - 12 compute units each capable of 64 ops/clock gives us the 768 total revealed by Microsoft and thus, by extension, the 1.2 teraflop graphics core. So that's another tick on the Durango leaked spec that has been transposed across to the final Xbox One architecture and the proof we need that PlayStation 4's 18 CU graphics core has 50 per cent more raw power than the GPU in the new Microsoft console

Microsoft never had the luxury of this moving target. With multimedia such a core focus for its hardware, it set out to support 8GB of RAM from day one (at the time giving it a huge advantage over the early PS4 target RAM spec) and with serious volume of next-gen DDR4 unattainable in the time window, it zeroed in on supporting DDR3 and doing whatever was necessary to make that work on a console. The result is a complex architecture - 32MB of ESRAM is added to the processor die, along with "data move engines" to courier information around the system as quickly as possible with bespoke encode/decode hardware to alleviate common bottlenecks. Bottom line: if you're wondering why Xbox One has a weaker GPU than PlayStation 4, it's because both platform holders have similar silicon budgets for the main processor - Sony has used the die-space for additional compute units and ROPs (32 vs. 16 in One)

More than that, the system appears to have been designed with a very specific US focus, where cable TV boxes are the norm. What about TVs with built-in decoders, either terrestrial and satellite in nature? Not everyone wants subscription TV, so not everyone has a set-top box - but they're still enjoying a large range of digital channels and a decent amount of HD programming. Perhaps more pertinently, Microsoft appears to have invested a massive amount in accommodating live TV when the overall trend is moving towards time-shifted viewing and streaming media - something it almost completely ignored in its presentation. It's a very curious decision and a massive gamble.

Lot more @ http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-spec-analysis-xbox-one

[Arceles]

Just build any current line of PC and you'd already have more power then the PS4... even with only 4 or 6 cores... the FLOPS per core is higher on most desktop chips today then in the XBOX One and PS4... and you have way more powerful graphics cards out now

For developpment purposes, i.e. opencl, the PS4 has a very nice GPU... and the memory bandwith is really nice.

[Sebass]

So consoles now are actually custom PCs, lol. The new kinect is also coming to PCs as well.

[-T- Member]

So just like the original Xbox vs Ps2, and Ps3 vs 360, one system has more "raw power"

Which of those were the top selling consoles again?

[BajiRav]

So consoles now are actually custom PCs, lol. The new kinect is also coming to PCs as well.

they always were?

[neufuse Veteran]

they always were?

not really, consoles usually had CPU's that you couldn't get in a standard PC... aka custom Power Chips, RISC chips that are custom designed like the N64, etc..... now we are moving more towards standard CPU's with a few extra on die features

[spudtrooper]

Engineered systems for the win. We have what, 3 resolutions to aim for. 720p, 1080p and 4k. Even if you max out at 4k resolution that is 12,746,752 pixels, the Xbox One shouldn't have any problem holding 60fps because of the effective bandwidth with the ESRAM and GDDR3 averaging out.

Has the memory actually been really confirmed one way or another? I know sony mentioned gddr5 but I don't think there was a solid commitment.

GDDR5 is very limited supply for something that needs to hit mass production.. may be a big gamble

1080p won't push GDDR3 alone.. my gddr 5 ati 4870 is slower than my gddr3 7770 in many benchmarks all though I wouldn't complain about a gddr5 in the end. if your fill rates are high enough for your highest resolution at an effective rate through the entire pipeline, what does the stat actually mean in the end?

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Engineered systems for the win. We have what, 3 resolutions to aim for. 720p, 1080p and 4k. Even if you max out at 4k resolution that is 12,746,752 pixels, the Xbox One shouldn't have any problem holding 60fps because of the effective bandwidth with the ESRAM and GDDR3 averaging out.

Has the memory actually been really confirmed one way or another? I know sony mentioned gddr5 but I don't think there was a solid commitment.

GDDR5 is very limited supply and big $$

1080p won't push GDDR3 alone..

It was confirmed at their presser.... You don't think it's a solid commitment?

By the way 4K is for video only, not gaming.

[spacer]

Didn't I read somewhere that the Nextbox will reserve 3GBs of RAM for the OS and all of the non-gaming related crap? So isn't that, in and of itself, a huge difference in potential gaming performance between the two? Obviously the PS4 will have some RAM reserved, but I don't remember reading about it needing anywhere close to 3GBs.

[spudtrooper]

It was confirmed at their presser.... You don't think it's a solid commitment?

By the way 4K is for video only, not gaming.

if 4k is for video only, then gddr5 is wasted entirely..

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

if 4k is for video only, then gddr5 is wasted entirely..

Seriously? :s

Didn't I read somewhere that the Nextbox will reserve 3GBs of RAM for the OS and all of the non-gaming related crap? So isn't that, in and of itself, I huge difference in potential gaming performance between the two? Obviously the PS4 will have some RAM reserved, but I don't remember reading about it needing anywhere close to 3GBs.

Yeah it's 3GB

[NateB1]

What's interesting to me is the idea that the specs of the One really won't matter, depending on how much computing devs offload to the cloud. I read an article on Venturebeat that said that devs could offload AI processing, physics calculations, and even some rendering tasks to the cloud, and over time, the net raw processing power will increase, as MS replaces their servers.

If this is the case, then the One has a *huge* advantage over the PS4, which makes spec comparisons like this almost irrelevant. Who cares about the CPU/memory speed if there are massive datacenters that can perform computation tasks?

The only thing that might make a slight difference is the GPU - I'm surprised it's so much less powerful than the PS4.

[spudtrooper]

Didn't I read somewhere that the Nextbox will reserve 3GBs of RAM for the OS and all of the non-gaming related crap? So isn't that, in and of itself, I huge difference in potential gaming performance between the two? Obviously the PS4 will have some RAM reserved, but I don't remember reading about it needing anywhere close to 3GBs.

Does this really matter? Most pc games barely use any memory and if the OS is already in ram along with every service and supporting feature for the game it means the game engine is the only thing being loaded. "Engineered" systems have the benefit of being optimized so the OS isn't having to guess. Having the OS running all the time while the game can remain thin and optimized for resources could be win win

BUT, we shall see! definitely interested in seeing how these systems compete but i'm not worried about the ram situation. I don't know of a single game I play on my PC that uses more than a couple gb of ram if even that much.

[BajiRav]

if 4k is for video only, then gddr5 is wasted entirely..

Neither console is powerful enough for 4K graphics.

[spudtrooper]

Seriously? :s

You don't need GDDR5 memory to play back 4k content and all the decoding is handled by specialized chips anyway. 4kp is what, 3.8gbps uncompressed and gddr3 can do what, 6 times that? all the external interfaces will handle the load anyway and we will never see uncompressed 4kp during this things product lifecycle.. if anything it will be h264 on bdroms at high resolution but still compressed and capable of playing back no problem on ps4 or xone

with all that said, anyone have an effective rate of straight GDDR5 vs the effective rate of 32m eSRAM + GDDR3?

Microsoft is doing something cool to keep cache misses and latency to little or nothing.. didn't they say the Kinect does 2gbps alone? they got some magic sauce for sure, can't wait to see the ps4 and xbox one opened up and know whats inside.

clarification: video is assumed to be 24fps.. i don't for see 48p 4k being on consumer levels for a long time.. would need 10gE to watch that if not on raw film :)

[Sebass]

not really, consoles usually had CPU's that you couldn't get in a standard PC... aka custom Power Chips, RISC chips that are custom designed like the N64, etc..... now we are moving more towards standard CPU's with a few extra on die features

Moreover the new Xbox specs look like a PC from 2 years ago. So i guess PCs will be stuck again with gfx from 5 years ago, **** you MS!

[BajiRav]

not really, consoles usually had CPU's that you couldn't get in a standard PC... aka custom Power Chips, RISC chips that are custom designed like the N64, etc..... now we are moving more towards standard CPU's with a few extra on die features

First Xbox was an x86 class processor. Xbox 360/PS3 are based on PPC (5 I think ?) which were also used in Macs until 2007. Macs are a type of PC etc. etc.

Consoles have been specialized PCs is what I was trying to get at.