I was really looking forward to Sony’s PlayStation 5 Tech Talk. In the end, I feel like I did not get a lot out of it. Perhaps because this was a highly technical GDC presentation that was inexplicably repackaged for consumers?
Thankfully, there are people out there who created fancy charts comparing the PS5 specs to the Xbox Series X’s.
| Feature | PlayStation 5 | Xbox Series X |
|---|---|---|
| Price | TBA | TBA |
| Release Date | Holiday 2020 | Holiday 2020 |
| Optical Drive | 4K UHD Blu-Ray Drive | 4K UHD Blu-Ray Drive |
| RAM | 16GB GDDR6 RAM (256-bit) | 16 GB GDDR6 RAM |
| Memory Bandwidth | 448GB/s | 10GB at 560GB/s, 6GB at 335GB/s |
| CPU | 8x Zen 2 Cores at 3.5HGz | 8x Zen 2 Cores at 3.8GHz (3.6GHz with SMT) |
| GPU | Custom AMD Radeon RDNA Navi 10.28 Teraflops, 36 CUs at 2.23GHz – (Supports Ray Tracing and 3D Audio via Tempest Engine) | Custom AMD Radeon RNDA Navi 12 Teraflops, 52 CUs at 1.825GHz – (Supports DirectX Ray Tracing) |
| Video Output | 4K, 120hz refresh rate, 8K Support | Native 4K, 8K Support, Up to 120hz |
| Data Transfer Speed (I/O Throughput) | 5.5GB/S (Raw), 8-9GB/S (Compressed) | 2.4gB/s (Raw), 4.8GB/s (Compressed) |
| Storage | Custom 825GB SSD Storage Drive | 1 TB NVMe SSD Storage Drive |
| External Storage | NVMe SSD Slot, USB HDD Support | Seagate Proprietary External 1TB SSD Expansion Card, USB 3.2 HDD Support |
In a nutshell, and there is no denying it, the Xbox Series X is more powerful pretty much across the board. The PS5 has the edge when it come to storage speed. Perhaps this is the reason why Mark Cerny spent so much time touting it.
In the end, I’m sure everything will be fine. Look, Sony still has all their exclusives. While the PS5 is not as powerful, its no slouch either, according to Digital Foundry.
At the end of the day, PlayStation fanboys are taking this in stride.
Spieler Dad 