Series X Vs Ps5 Ssd

We finally know what Microsoft and Sony are bringing to the table inside their next-generation consoles, the Xbox Series 10 and the PlayStation 5. Earlier this calendar month — during what would have been the week of the 2020 Game Developers Conference, if non for the coronavirus — both companies laid out the total hardware specifications of their respective systems.

Now that the specs are available, it'due south possible to see how the PS5 and Xbox Series X stack upwards against each other — every bit far as the raw numbers become, at least. The numbers provide a window into each company'due south item arroyo, but equally has been proven in console generation afterward console generation, they only tell part of the story. There is withal much to exist revealed near Sony and Microsoft's respective next-gen plans, including what is arguably the most of import element: the games.

For now, though, allow'south dive in and compare the Xbox Series X and the PS5.

PS5 and Xbox Series X hardware specs: CPU, GPU, SSD, and more

We've put together a table comparing the key hardware components of the two consoles, and nosotros'll be updating it as the companies reveal more details (the PS5's port array, for example) betwixt now and the consoles' launches, which are both scheduled for vacation 2020.

PS5 vs. Xbox Series Ten

Category	PlayStation 5	Xbox Series 10
Category	PlayStation 5	Xbox Series X
CPU architecture	custom AMD Zen 2	custom AMD Zen 2
CPU	8 cores / xvi threads @ up to iii.5 GHz with SMT	viii cores @ 3.8 GHz (16 threads @ 3.6 GHz with SMT)
GPU compages	custom AMD RDNA 2	custom AMD RDNA 2
GPU	36 CUs @ up to 2.23 GHz (x.28 teraflops)	52 CUs @ 1.825 GHz (12.155 teraflops)
Retention (RAM)	16 GB GDDR6 / 256-bit bus	sixteen GB GDDR6 / 320-bit charabanc
Memory bandwidth	448 GB/s	ten GB @ 560 GB/s, 6 GB @ 336 GB/s
Internal storage	custom 825 GB SSD	custom 1 TB NVMe SSD
I/O throughput	5.v GB/s (raw), 8-9 GB/south (compressed)	ii.four GB/s (raw), 4.8 GB/southward (compressed)
Expandable storage	NVMe SSD expansion bay	1 TB NVMe expansion carte (proprietary)
External storage	USB HDD back up	USB 3.2 HDD back up
Optical drive	4K UHD Blu-ray	4K UHD Blu-ray
Video	HDMI 2.ane (support for 4K/120 Hz, 8K, VRR)	HDMI 2.one (support for 4K/120 Hz, 8K, VRR)
Spatial sound	Sony Storm 3D AudioTech	Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, Windows Sonic
Ports	TBD	HDMI 2.1 output, 3x USB 3.2, Ethernet, storage expansion slot, power input

Notation 1: The PS5's CPU and GPU both run at a variable frequency — hence, "upwardly to." Note 2: SMT stands for "simultaneous multithreading," the generic proper name for the feature you may know as "hyper-threading" on Intel CPUs. Note 3: CU stands for "compute unit," AMD's term for the smallest functional component of its GPUs.

a three-quarters view of the top of the Xbox Series X, with a green piece of plastic visible just beneath the system vents — The top of the Xbox Series X. (No, that'southward non a green light beneath the vents — merely a piece of plastic.)

Is the Xbox Series 10 or PS5 more than powerful?

From what we now know about the consoles' hardware specifications, information technology seems that at a top level — on paper — the Xbox Series X is more than powerful than the PlayStation 5. Just as you might expect ... it's complicated.

GPU

Sony and Microsoft are each using a custom GPU from AMD based on the visitor'south RDNA 2 architecture, just the specifics make for a major difference between the 2 consoles. The next-gen Xbox has a GPU functioning advantage of more than eighteen% over the next-gen PlayStation — 12.155 teraflops for the Xbox Series 10 versus ten.28 teraflops for the PS5. (A "teraflop" is the standard measure of graphics operation, in terms of a GPU's ability to exercise a lot of math quickly: One teraflop is 1 trillion floating-indicate operations per 2nd.)

It'southward worth noting that the PS5 figure refers to top performance: Sony went with a variable-frequency GPU, with clock speeds capped at 2.23 GHz for its 36 compute units, so the organization will not always operate at that maximum frequency. (Pb arrangement architect Marking Cerny did note in his presentation about the PS5 hardware that Sony expects the GPU to "spend most of its fourth dimension at, or close to, that frequency and performance.") Meanwhile, Microsoft opted for a constant level of performance from 52 compute units clocked at 1.825 GHz.

For its part, Sony believes that its variable-frequency arroyo volition pay dividends for PS5 developers (and past extension, players). Cerny suggested that the strategy was informed partly by issues with fan noise on the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 4 Pro, where ability consumption — and thus, the volume of the fans — varied significantly from game to game. Instead of that setup, the PS5 will supply a certain amount of constant power, with the panel'due south cooling solution designed specifically to support that particular power level, and let the frequency of the CPU and GPU vary depending on the workload. This immune Sony to raise the GPU speed well higher up 2 GHz, which is unusually high.

Mark Cerny standing behind a PlayStation-branded podium giving a presentation on the PS5 hardware specifications — Mark Cerny discussing Sony's variable-frequency approach to the PS5 CPU and GPU.

"Also, it'south easier to fully employ 36 CUs in parallel than information technology is to fully utilize 48 CUs," said Cerny during the presentation, speaking of the PS5 GPU and a hypothetical larger one. "When triangles are small, it's much harder to make full all those CUs with useful work." In other words, Sony is betting that the PS5 GPU's high clock-speed cap will exist more developer-friendly than the Xbox Series 10 GPU's power to spread computation across more than CUs — despite the PS5's lower overall operation capacity in teraflops.

CPU

Each side by side-gen console contains a custom eight-core CPU based on AMD's Zen 2 architecture, and the Xbox Series X also has an edge over the PS5 in this category, albeit a much smaller one. Microsoft chose a CPU that runs at a locked three.8 GHz when simultaneous multithreading (SMT) is disabled, and at 3.6 GHz with SMT enabled across the eight concrete cores and 16 threads. As with its GPU, Sony opted for a variable-frequency CPU, settling on a maximum clock speed of iii.5 GHz with SMT ever enabled.

Microsoft expects most developers making Xbox Series 10 launch titles to leave SMT disabled and simply plan for the seven concrete cores that are available to games. "For them to go wider, for them to go to fourteen hardware threads, it ways that they have the organisation to do it, but and so, you have to have workloads that divide even more than effectively beyond them," said Xbox system builder Andrew Goosen in an interview with Digital Foundry.

Goosen was referring to the fact that the bulk of video games these days don't have advantage of multithreading. While SMT can offer pregnant operation benefits, information technology requires more endeavor to optimize for information technology. And then it makes sense that developers early in the Xbox Series Ten'due south life cycle — especially those trying to become games finished for launch — would detect the extra 200 MHz of single-thread CPU clock speed more immediately valuable.

render of the Xbox Series X Storage Expansion Card's connection to the console's internal components, with renders of both sides of the card floating next to the console — The Xbox Series X Storage Expansion Card, a proprietary ane TB NVMe SSD produced in conjunction with Seagate.

SSD and expandable storage

The PS5 may autumn short of the Xbox Series X on CPU and GPU power, but Sony appears to have a trump card in the form of its unique storage solution.

The designers of both next-gen consoles accept spoken almost a fast solid-land bulldoze beingness mayhap the elevation request from game makers. Tedious storage access speeds have long been a bottleneck for developers, especially those building massive open-earth games, where the ability to quickly load assets from storage into system memory is vital.

Microsoft's solution is a arrangement dubbed the Xbox Velocity Architecture, through which the game installation on the Xbox Series X'due south 1 TB NVMe SSD functions every bit an extension of the organization RAM — "assuasive 100 GB of game assets to be instantly attainable past the developer," according to an Xbox Wire commodity. This setup produces read speeds from the SSD of 2.4 GB per 2nd of raw data and 4.eight GB/s of compressed data bandwidth, which "effectively eliminates loading times," according to Microsoft.

Sony was also on a mission to evangelize instant loading with the PS5. That goal led the company to pattern a storage interface with a data throughput of v.5 GB/s (raw) and 8-9 GB/due south (compressed) — more than than twice the read speeds of the Xbox Series X — for the console'due south 825 GB SSD. While makers of multiplatform titles may develop for the lowest common denominator, this gap between the two consoles could pay huge dividends for PS5-exclusive games.

a clip from Mark Cerny's presentation of the PlayStation 5 hardware specifications, with a demonstration of a game world loading as a character makes frequent turns — In this example from Cerny'south presentation, the PS5's screaming-fast SSD allows a game to load everything in a dissever second, as the thespian turns around.

In item, these SSD speeds could give developers an unprecedented level of freedom to build expansive, finely detailed virtual worlds — without the workarounds they've traditionally had to rely on. Cerny started with the example of 2003's Jak 2, saying that the game's hub globe was designed with "twisty passages" and so the PlayStation 2 had time to load sections of the city, and he noted that "not much has changed since then [in level design]."

Shifting to Sony'due south PS5 design philosophy, Cerny said, "What if the SSD is so fast that as the player is turning effectually, it's possible to load the textures for everything behind the thespian in that dissever 2nd? If y'all figure that it takes half a 2nd to plow, that's 4 gigabytes of compressed data yous can load." These SSD speeds are ii orders of magnitude faster than read speeds of hard drives in current-gen consoles.

The side by side-gen systems too differ in how they handle expandable storage. Both consoles back up USB external hard drives, but not for running PS5 or Xbox Serial X games, which volition require solid-state storage with the same speeds equally the internal SSD. Instead, USB drives can be used for backing upwardly PS5 or Xbox Serial X titles, and for running previous-generation games via backward compatibility.

Microsoft will offering a proprietary i TB NVMe SSD in the form of a memory menu-like device that goes into a slot on the back of the Xbox Series X. Sony opted for a more open solution, allowing PS5 owners to purchase off-the-shelf NVMe SSDs of any chapters — as long equally they meet the visitor'due south certification program, to ensure compatibility — and put them in the console's expansion bay. Neither option is likely to be cheap.

What exercise the PS5 and Xbox Serial X specs hateful?

To truly understand what the PS5 and Xbox Series X hardware tin can do, we'll have to look until some time subsequently the consoles are released. But it is possible, peradventure likely, that the next generation will represent an inversion of the current-generation situation.

Over the past 6-plus years, non-Pro models of the PS4 have generally outperformed the Xbox One and Xbox 1 South. For instance, many multiplatform games run at native 1080p on PS4 and upscale from a lower resolution, like 900p, on Xbox One. This time around, Microsoft is already saying that it may exist able to go Gears v's multiplayer component to run at 120 frames per 2nd on Xbox Series X. We haven't yet seen or heard about similar existent-world use cases from Sony, bated from a tech demo of load times.

Horsepower doesn't mean everything, though. As nosotros saw in the current generation, Sony was able to build a lead in panel sales largely because of the PS4's initial price — it was $100 cheaper than the Xbox One at launch — and its stable of exclusive games and content. Since then, Microsoft has worked hard to catch upward with offerings similar Xbox Game Pass; the company seems to exist building on that arroyo for the Xbox Series X, with features such as Smart Delivery for free upgrades of cross-gen games.

In other words, the numbers matter, but they aren't the be-all and end-all — merely await at Nintendo, which continued to become its own way with the underpowered Switch, to great success. There'due south room for everyone to practise well, despite what the specs say on paper.