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PS5 seems more balanced than Xbox One Series X

Bankai

Member
Please hear me out! :D (loook I fixet thhe typoh yu guyz)

I am a PS pro owner and really wanted PS5 to come out on top from, spec-wise in raw power. I was disappointed at first as well: 12.2 flops (Xbox Series X) is more than 10.3 tflops (PS5). Also, the Xbox has faster RAM (10gigs of it, 6 gigs is slower), a faster CPU and isn't variable in its performance.

But then I read/watched some more on the topic of the SSD and -here it comes- the obvious bottleneck in the Xbox design: RAM

- The Xbox has 16gigs of GDDR6, with a portion of it being used for OS and such. 10gigs of it is even faster than its PS5 counterpart (6 gigs is slower though).
- The Xbox SSD is a lot slower than the PS5's: roughly 4.8Gb/s VS 8.5Gb/s

In theory, the SSD on PS5 could just about act as a pool of "extra RAM". At least, that is what is speculated now. I thought about the PS3 days, when the CPU was amazing, but the system was kinda gimped by a weaker GPU (= no balance). I also remembered that XBox360 was praised, mainly because of it being a balanced system: RAM, CPU and GPU were working great in tandem with eachother. No real obvious bottleneck = the key.

10gigs of its total pool of GDDR6 is superfast on Xbox, but.. will it be enough for nextgen games? Reminds me of the eDRAM sistuation with XboxOne, where a relatively small portion of memory was supposed to eleviate all problems, but turned out to be a horrible bottleneck (which was fixed with Xbox One X). PS4 was praised form the beginning for having 1 big pool of GDDR5, just like they are doing now with PS5: 1 big pool of 1 type of GDDR6.

In raw performance the Xbox Series X will undoubtedly be the faster system. Still, I think the PS5 is more balanced, because it's all about removing bottlenecks. All custom chips and its SSD design were built towards reaching that goal.

I'd love to hear developers talk about this, because I have no idea which of the two would be preferable. But the topic of possible bottlenecks and resolving them by design really fascinates me.

I love this analysis, which proves my point: PS5 is more balanced than the Xbox series X:

 
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PocoJoe

Banned
I have a hunch that SSD will indeed be more than it looks, that it will affect to the REAL next gen experience

More cpu+gpu power = can output more and prettier pixels

but much faster SSD = can affect to game design of worlds, areas, physics, mechanics and the whole deal
 

Mista

Banned
Yes please, more meltdowns.

tenor.gif
 

pawel86ck

Banned
SDD tech on both consoles will offer huge memory savings, although streaming speed should be even more impressive on PS5.

Right now I wonder if XSX will also have a dedicated audio chip like PS5, because if RT audio will use GPU RT resources on XSX then graphics performance will be impacted making XSX slower despite having slighty faster GPU.
 
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Bankai

Member
I have a hunch that SSD will indeed be more than it looks, that it will affect to the REAL next gen experience

More cpu+gpu power = can output more and prettier pixels

but much faster SSD = can affect to game design of worlds, areas, physics, mechanics and the whole deal

Thanks for being one of the few people here to actually respond in a decent, intelligent manner.

I think you are right, raw power will always matter and it'll definitely depend on the game. Maybe all the "SSD speak" of Cenry is bullshit and they're just trying to cover up the fact that the machine is actually a lot less capable. Still, the fact remains: bottlenecks matter. Thgoughout the years I've experienced it firsthand in PC gaming; upgrading a component is great.. but when other components weigh it down, gains are bogged down.
 

MrMiyagi

Banned
Totally agree. Sony seems pretty confident that their SSD's tech will be the heart of next gen gaming. It's something that was nr1. on the list of things developers wanted to see in a next gen console and the ps5 has twice the performance in that regard. It could be a complete game changer for overall level design and how we move around in them, and we'll obviously see a lot more open world type games. It sure will be interesting to see what'll happen if 3rd party developers fully embrace it and use the ps5 as the base console. And the ps5 exclusives should be able to push overall world design much further. Also, I wonder how that will translate to the pc versions of multiplatform games.
 
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TBiddy

Member
Right now I wonder if XSX will also have a dedicated audio chip like PS5, because if RT audio will use GPU RT resources on XSX then graphics performance will be impacted making XSX slower despite having slighty faster GPU.

It will. Or does, rather.
 

darkinstinct

...lacks reading comprehension.
Please here me out! :D

I am a PS pro owner and really wanted PS5 to come out on top from, spec-wise in raw power. I was disappointed at first as well: 12.2 flops (Xbox Series X) is more than 10.3 tflops (PS5). Also, the Xbox has faster RAM (10gigs of it, 6 gigs is slower), a faster CPU and isn't variable in its performance.

But then I read/watched some more on the topic of the SSD and -here it comes- the obvious bottleneck in the Xbox design: RAM

- The Xbox has 16gigs of GDDR6, with a portion of it being used for OS and such. 10gigs of it is even faster than its PS5 counterpart (6 gigs is slower though).
- The Xbox SSD is a lot slower than the PS5's: roughly 4.8Gb/s VS 8.5Gb/s

In theory, the SSD on PS5 could just about act as a pool of "extra RAM". At least, that is what is speculated now. I thought about the PS3 days, when the CPU was amazing, but the system was kinda gimped by a weaker GPU (= no balance). I also remembered that XBox360 was praised, mainly because of it being a balanced system: RAM, CPU and GPU were working great in tandem with eachother. No real obvious bottleneck = the key.

10gigs of its total pool of GDDR6 is superfast on Xbox, but.. will it be enough for nextgen games? Reminds me of the eDRAM sistuation with XboxOne, where a relatively small portion of memory was supposed to eleviate all problems, but turned out to be a horrible bottleneck (which was fixed with Xbox One X). PS4 was praised form the beginning for having 1 big pool of GDDR5, just like they are doing now with PS5: 1 big pool of 1 type of GDDR6.

In raw performance the Xbox Series X will undoubtedly be the faster system. Still, I think the PS5 is more balanced, because it's all about removing bottlenecks. All custom chips and its SSD design were built towards reaching that goal.

I'd love to hear developers talk about this, because I have no idea which of the two would be preferable. But the topic of possible bottlenecks and resolving them by design really fascinates me.
You sound like you graduated at the Aaron Greenberg University in "Managing a PR nightmare"
 

darkinstinct

...lacks reading comprehension.
Totally agree. Sony seems pretty confident that their SSD's tech will be the heart of next gen gaming. It's something that was nr1. on the list of things developers wanted to see in a next gen console and the ps5 has twice the performance in that regard. It could be a complete game changer for overall level design and how we move around in them, and we'll obviously see a lot more open world type games. It sure will be interesting to see what'll happen if 3rd party developers fully embrace it and use the ps5 as the base console. And the ps5 exclusives should be able to push overall world design much further. Also, I wonder how that will translate to the pc versions of multiplatform games.
I mean Cerny himself said that for 4K graphics at PS4 levels you would need 8 TF. Then he goes and designs a 9.2 TF machine and upclocks it to 10.28. That's not being confident or balanced. It's just a desperate attempt to save your market position and to shift the messaging from the dominating "more TF = better" that they loved last gen (well, until One X appeared) to "SSD SSD SSD". It was clear a year ago that they wanted to hide something by changing the focus.
 

Alasterion

Neo Member
Oh... yes, yes!!

If that approach makes you feel better... BTW, I'm herin'.

Just kiddin'. Try to enjoy the games upcoming, I say. Discreditting a brand to justify yours (say bottleneck again...) is not a healthy way. Sure I would be thinking about First Party games as a measure of self-defence.
 

pawel86ck

Banned
It will. Or does, rather.
I have read eurogamer article in regards to XSX, but I cant find any confirmation a dedicated audio chip will be used, so I'm assuming audio RT will use GPU RT resources on XSX. When it comes to PS5 article a dedicated audio chip is mentioned.
 

KAL2006

Banned
Totally agree. Sony seems pretty confident that their SSD's tech will be the heart of next gen gaming. It's something that was nr1. on the list of things developers wanted to see in a next gen console and the ps5 has twice the performance in that regard. It could be a complete game changer for overall level design and how we move around in them, and we'll obviously see a lot more open world type games. It sure will be interesting to see what'll happen if 3rd party developers fully embrace it and use the ps5 as the base console. And the ps5 exclusives should be able to push overall world design much further. Also, I wonder how that will translate to the pc versions of multiplatform games.


How will it be a game changer if every 3rd party game needs to be able to run on Series X which has a slower SSD.

This means most 3rd party devs won't make use of the higher SSD Speed when it comes to game design which means the only improvement for 3rd party games is faster load times.

Where as a more powerful GPU, CPU etc on Series X even if it needs to run on lower power GPU CPU on PS5 the extra power can be used for higher res, frame rates, better RT, better textures etc.
 

darkinstinct

...lacks reading comprehension.
Wonder what will be the new RROD in xbox. I see they are going again for "faster" console and i hope they wont try to save on parts like they did with xbox360.
At 2.23 GHz vs. 1.825 GHz, the only console that is close to a RROD situation is PS5. It's either going to be extremely loud or extremely hot. The whole XSX design is built with cooling in mind (chimney effect).
 
Nah, the Xbox is better overall, period.

However at 4K resolutions the graphical advantage will be ‘hidden’ with various scaling / reconstruction techniques and so invisible to most. The best advantage it has is probably the CPU with a potentially 400MHz clock speed advantage, this will help a lot with more consistent frame rates. PS5 has a distinctly better SSD but won’t perform any miracles, and the Xbox SSD is no slouch either.

If they are priced the same then the Xbox is the obvious one to get for the multi plats (aka 95% of games). But if the PS5 is cheaper then it can be a good pick too.
 
*tsk, tsk, tsk*

c5a.gif


People haven't been paying attention. I've heard from my contacts at Sony that this is all a trap. They've been a bit iffy with the specs for a reason, to totally outplay Phil Spencer and Microsoft. They pulled the old switcheroo on Microsoft. They got so outplayed this time around as well.

my_trap_card.jpg




Once you see the overall design schematics of the box, you'll see that those bastards did it. They actually did it! People thought it was impossible, but those crazy Sony guys actually did it.



2ND GPU, BABY!!!!!

highresrollsafe.jpg




Xbox wrecked!

hqdefault.jpg


Cerny will debut Knack 3 soon. It will have super realistic bathtubs.

large.jpg


Oh, and a total mind blowing surprise:

2415094-2408190545-KazRi.jpg
 

LostDonkey

Member
As long as the system can handle it the SSD in Xbox can always be upgraded to a faster unit.

RAM on the other hand.
 
At 2.23 GHz vs. 1.825 GHz, the only console that is close to a RROD situation is PS5. It's either going to be extremely loud or extremely hot. The whole XSX design is built with cooling in mind (chimney effect).
PS5 is a 9.2TF machine Period, that 2.23 GHz boost was just a solution to make people less upset, 9.2 TF VS 12.1 TF would be silly, they had to place it in the double digit to make it less ridiculous, most games will not run 2.23GHz.
 

ZywyPL

Banned
It's hard for me to call the PS5 balanced when the CPU and GPU fight each other for the wattage from PSU... But still, even if we take a worst case scenario, something like 3.2GHZ CPU, 9.2TF GPU, 16GB RAM and 0.8TF SSD, it's still a fairly capable system, that's still much better than most PCs out there, which as long as SSDs won't get dirty cheap soon enough will be bottlenecking both next-gen consoles anyway with their HDDs.
 

TBiddy

Member
I have read eurogamer article in regards to XSX, but I cant find any confirmation a dedicated audio chip will be used, so I'm assuming audio RT will use GPU RT resources on XSX. When it comes to PS5 article a dedicated audio chip is mentioned.


There was supposed to be a talk at GDC about it, but I'm not sure if it's available anywhere, now that GDC was cancelled.
 

nosseman

Member
In theory, the SSD on PS5 could just about act as a pool of "extra RAM". At least, that is what is speculated now. I thought about the PS3 days, when the CPU was amazing, but the system was kinda gimped by a weaker GPU (= no balance). I also remembered that XBox360 was praised, mainly because of it being a balanced system: RAM, CPU and GPU were working great in tandem with eachother. No real obvious bottleneck = the key.

Even if the SSD:s are fast - I really dont see them being used as "extra ram". Speed and latency is still miles from ram (GDDR6 in this case).

NVME - 250 microseconds latency.
GDDR6 - 10 - 20 nanoseconds latency.

1 nanosecond = 0.001 microseconds.

NVME PS5 - 8 GB/second
GDDR6 PS5 - 448 GB/second.
 
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MrMiyagi

Banned
I mean Cerny himself said that for 4K graphics at PS4 levels you would need 8 TF. Then he goes and designs a 9.2 TF machine and upclocks it to 10.28. That's not being confident or balanced. It's just a desperate attempt to save your market position and to shift the messaging from the dominating "more TF = better" that they loved last gen (well, until One X appeared) to "SSD SSD SSD". It was clear a year ago that they wanted to hide something by changing the focus.

4k Graphics aren't going to be standard next gen. It would suck up so much resources, we would practically be playing the same games we're playing now, just in native 4k. The truth is that people don't care that much about resolutions/ fps. If they did, the X1X and Ps4 pro would have sold a lot better. Also, even if native 4k would become standard, 12 Tflops isn't that big a leap from 10,3 and we would probably just see native 4k vs checkerboard 4k on ps5.

In the end, the only advantage the Series X has is a 15% boost in raw gpu power, but is that really going to translate into a noticeable difference on a tv? Sony's design is more balanced in the sense that they can sell it at a much lower price, and their SSD tech opens up a lot more possibilities for overall level design, which is way more important in my opinion than a bump in resolution. The 3d audio thing can also be a pretty big deal if Series X players get their asses handed to them in the next COD because the ps5 players can pinpoint their location much better.
 
from the DF dude on reeeee

I think the gpu and CPU clocking Thing will work like this, i have it on a good hunch:

Devs will prioritise modes like high clocked GPU and lower clockd CPU, or the other way around. That is basically what the presentation says, they will have trouble hitting full speeds on both parts simultaneously due to utilisation (which is a bit duh), so one Part being higherclocked requires an under utilisation of the other. So a game that is mostly gpu limited will use a gpu Mode, a very intense open world game or... Some other Design requiring more CPU will use a CPU Mode. So underclocking the GPU there.

This of course assume that games do not really heavily utilise both parts at the same time, in which case, like a 60 Assassin's Creed game as we see on PC. Or a game with variable drs and a lot of CPU Stuff. Or any ambtious game that want to do both simulation and graphical things.

The one Part being higher clocked, requires an under utilisation of the other. Hence why freefloating resolution game with very preise dynamic resolution scaling, like Doom, Titan Fall 2, modern warfare etc. Will all probably need to be in the Mode for GPU Power. They are already maxing the GPU as is due to their Design.



so basically if a game want to push both graphics and physics\stuff on screen they can't use the max power from cpu and gpu, they have to make a choice.

do you remember your beloved set pieces in uncharted or gow with a lot of shit on screen, those are the scene where the power is gonna lack on one side or another.

what an elegant and balanced solution :messenger_sunglasses:
 
“balance” is PR spin for people having trouble coping. what does that even mean in a console? And how is ps5 more balanced than xsx?

PS5 had to throw in boost clocks to make 9.2 look better. it is “capped” at 2.2 and the cpu is “capped” at 3.5. while the xsx is stable and constantly outputting more power. thats not balance. How is the xsx not more “balanced” when it comes to gpu and cpu? Developers are going to have to do extra work trying to play an allocation game with the ps5s clocks and will likely rarely use the full 2.2ghz 10.3 tflops because they will prioritize consistency.

I just dont get how you can say the ps5 is any more “balanced” than the xsx when the xsx is more consistent, with more power, and with far less overheating concerns. If anything, the PS5 is poorly balanced
 

GymWolf

Member
from the DF dude on reeeee

I think the gpu and CPU clocking Thing will work like this, i have it on a good hunch:

Devs will prioritise modes like high clocked GPU and lower clockd CPU, or the other way around. That is basically what the presentation says, they will have trouble hitting full speeds on both parts simultaneously due to utilisation (which is a bit duh), so one Part being higherclocked requires an under utilisation of the other. So a game that is mostly gpu limited will use a gpu Mode, a very intense open world game or... Some other Design requiring more CPU will use a CPU Mode. So underclocking the GPU there.

This of course assume that games do not really heavily utilise both parts at the same time, in which case, like a 60 Assassin's Creed game as we see on PC. Or a game with variable drs and a lot of CPU Stuff. Or any ambtious game that want to do both simulation and graphical things.

The one Part being higher clocked, requires an under utilisation of the other. Hence why freefloating resolution game with very preise dynamic resolution scaling, like Doom, Titan Fall 2, modern warfare etc. Will all probably need to be in the Mode for GPU Power. They are already maxing the GPU as is due to their Design.



so basically if a game want to push both graphics and physics\stuff on screen they can't use the max power from cpu and gpu, they have to make a choice.

do you remember your beloved set pieces in uncharted or gow with a lot of shit on screen, those are the scene where the power is gonna lack on one side or another.

what an elegant and balanced solution :messenger_sunglasses:
lol you even reported my comment 😆
 

Bankai

Member
PS5 is a 9.2TF machine Period, that 2.23 GHz boost was just a solution to make people less upset, 9.2 TF VS 12.1 TF would be silly, they had to place it in the double digit to make it less ridiculous, most games will not run 2.23GHz.

Thanks for replying more thoughtful, after trolling the first time.

I think you are right. Much like the last-minute CPU overclock with Xbox One, this seems like a last-minute effort on Sony's part: 10% extra horsepower = the jump from 9 to 10 tflops. But it is variable, which means it's doubltful the machine will be able to run at these speeds for longer periods of time.
 

Bankai

Member
“balance” is PR spin for people having trouble coping. what does that even mean in a console? And how is ps5 more balanced than xsx?

PS5 had to throw in boost clocks to make 9.2 look better. it is “capped” at 2.2 and the cpu is “capped” at 3.5. while the xsx is stable and constantly outputting more power. thats not balance. How is the xsx not more “balanced” when it comes to gpu and cpu? Developers are going to have to do extra work trying to play an allocation game with the ps5s clocks and will likely rarely use the full 2.2ghz 10.3 tflops because they will prioritize consistency.

I just dont get how you can say the ps5 is any more “balanced” than the xsx when the xsx is more consistent, with more power, and with far less overheating concerns. If anything, the PS5 is poorly balanced

You're missing my point entirely. I suggest reading my first post again: it's about the RAM bottleneck and the difference in SSD speeds + dedicated hardware surrounding this issue.
 
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