A new generation of console is here! The big contenders, Sony and Microsoft, are gearing up to marvel us with their new releases. With their expertise in developing cutting-edge consoles, they are set to bring us a technological revolution in the next-gen hardware that they will bring to the table.
They both have one purpose – to enable you to play the best games – and they share a lot in common, looking at them technically. Not only is their CPU of the AMD build, but they also deliver efficient GPU, super-fast solid-state drives that ensure you have optimum performance. That said, there are differences between them, and that’s what we’d be talking about here.
The two tech giants have released details about their upcoming product (with Sony doing that just recently), which gives us clarity about what we’re expecting. These differences can be noticed in their backward compatibility, expandable storage, Exclusive games, subscription services, controllers, form factor. This makes both consoles unique in their own way.
You may be beaming with excitement and confused at the same time at which platform to choose, and it’s okay. While we may not know all details about the two machines like their release dates and cost, it is important you know some key things about them.
The Hardware- Xbox Series X
The Xbox Series X has impressive features as its sports custom AMD internals, which is similar to the one in the PS5. The CPU is based on the Zen 2 and RDNA 2 architecture, which the PS5 uses. The Xbox Series X beats the Xbox One X in this regard and stands as the most impressive gaming hardware for this generation when looking at it from the technical perspective.
For the GPU, what you have in the Xbox Series X is a graphics unit that boasts of 12 teraflops of compute performance, with 3328 shaders allocated to 52 compute units. The clocking speed is up to 1,825MHz. It features a customized AMD Zen 2 CPU, having eight cores and 16 threads. The console has capabilities of running content (if not games) at an 8K resolution, and at 4K it is capable of having 120Hz refresh rates.
Just like the PS5, the Xbox Series X will also support DirectX ray-tracing and it will possess a super-fast internal NVMe SSD. This SSD can also be used to boost load times by up to 40x. The Standard RAM of this console is the GDDR6 variant and is of 16GB size which is an upgrade from Xbox One X’s 12GB GDDR5. All these are pointers to the fact that Xbox Series X surpasses the PS5 in terms of performance.
The Hardware- PlayStation 5
There will be a third-generation AMD Ryzen chipset in the PlayStation 5 which is custom-built. This chipset possesses 8 cores and is based on Sony’s new Zen 2 architecture and Navi graphics. The CPU has a running speed of 3.5Ghz and boasts of 36 compute units running at 2.23GHz. This hardware will be made to work with 16GB of GDDR6 having a bandwidth of 4488GB/s. The machine will also have the ray-tracing capabilities.
Smart Delivery & Backwards Compatibility
With Smart Delivery, the Xbox Series X will download the best version of any game if there are multiple versions available for that game. It does this automatically, and the features also work for version on previous consoles.
Another aspect to look at is backward compatibility, which isn’t wholly confirmed on the Xbox Series X. Games on the Xbox One will work with Xbox Series X since the Xbox One has backward compatibility with many Xbox and Xbox 360 games. For the PS5, Sony is also adopting the backward compatibility feature. The details on how it will work exactly is sketchy.
The Controller
The Xbox Series has few unnoticeable changes in ergonomics, a new share button at the center, and a USB-C connection. For the PS5, there’s a big departure from DualShock. Now it is the DualSense having a built-in microphone, a revamped Share button that’s now called the Create button, adaptive L2 and R2 triggers, haptic feedback, and a USB-C connection.
