Playstation 5 vs Xbox Series X; Who Wears The Crown
The ultimate console shootout, the PS5 vs the Xbox Series X
When it comes to console gaming, the question of which one is better than which seems to focus mostly on Sony’s Playstation and Microsoft’s Xbox – a story that repeats itself with every update of the two. And the same goes for the latest, the PS5 and the Xbox Series X. Everyone wants to know which one wears the crown.
The past of Playstation and Xbox
For many years Sony pretty much held the title of the “best” console following the launch of the first Playstation consoles and the subsequent update. However, when Microsoft introduced the first iteration of the Xbox a year after Sony launched the PlayStation 2, the world of console gaming would never be the same again.
Since then, it has been an endless game of one-upmanship between the two contenders. This is the case even though Sony seems to win consistently when looking solely at the market share. That said, the debate is always heated and consumers will always pit the two against each other. Because people are competitive by nature and we always want to be sure that we are getting the best for our money.
So when it comes to comparing consoles or any other competing products for that matter, it invariably leads to a comparison of their inner workings. The same goes for the Sony PS5 and the Xbox Series X.
PS5 v Xbox Series X, the titans go head to head
Looking at the technology that runs the PS5 and Xbox X, both competitors came ready to bruise and are quite evenly matched. Both companies chose to stay with chipmaker AMD on their latest offerings.
The PS5
The PS5 uses a third-generation variant of AMD’s Ryzen CPU, an 8 core chip that has been tailored to Sony’s exact desires.
The story is very much the same when it comes to the GPU. It is a tailored version of the Radeon Navi which supports ray-tracing and 3D audio simulation. When coupled with the PS5’s 16GB of GDDR6 RAM, players have up to 10.28 teraFLOPs at their disposal.
As for storage space, the PS5 ships with an 825 GB SSD (Solid State Drive) that runs at 5.5GB per second, which makes for some ultra-fast loading times.
Xbox Series X
Much like the competition, Microsoft’s work with partnership with AMD was an endeavor to customize components to suit the latest version of Xbox.
The Xbox also features an 8 core CPU, however, this version clocks higher at 3.8GHz – a tad higher than the Sony PS5’s 3.5GHz.
The GPU that Microsoft runs in the latest Xbox also leaves the PS5 wanting. More specifically Xbox Series X buyers have up to 12 teraFLOPs hidden “under the hood” that are paired with an exact match of 16GB GDDR6 RAM.
To top it off, the Xbox SX comes standard with an impressive 1TB SSD That runs at 2.4GB per second. If that is not enough for you, all you need to do is get your hands on an Xbox Series X Storage Expansion Card to get yourself another 1TB of storage.
Tallying up the score of PS5 vs Xbox X
When looking at the figures, the Xbox Series X has a clear hardware advantage over the Playstation 5. However, a closer inspection might reveal a few more important facts.
For one, the Xbox SX’s CPU figures only reach that high when the simultaneous multithreading feature is active, the gap between the two is otherwise a marginal one.
The GPU differences are another point worth paying a little extra attention to. Though Xbox Series X owners can boast about the higher teraFLOP figures, they might not really matter all that much beyond the platform’s exclusive titles like Gears of War.
That said, the asking price for the two competitors is similar – both with an MSRP of $500. So the question of which of the two is “better” is a very personal one, most probably determined by brand loyalty and which exclusive games one cannot go without playing.