Digital Foundry's Callisto Protocol's Analysis PS5 vs XBX/S

[thelastword]

What hardware advantage? Both have advantages in some areas. One has the teraflop advantage and a very small CPU advantage, the other has an advantage everywhere else.

The crazy thing about this is PS5 has a massive IO advantage, cache scrubbers, the geometry engine and of course better interconnects. Yet if we look at some pure math, XSX has more CU's, but clocked at a much lower rate, it has divided memory pool rates. It's CPU advantage is negligible since it's OS and three pronged layers consumes much more CPU time over PS. To understand this, PS even have the advantage in CPU bound scenes because it has less bottlenecks overall. You look at most open world games which are mostly CPU bound and PS5 excels. Look at Elden Ring, Valhalla till they butchered it with a patch and many others. Yet, here are some advantages Ps has.

Triangle rasterization
PS5 - 4 x 2.23 = 8.92 BT/s
XSX - 4 x 1.825 = 7.3 BT/s
20% advantage for PS5

Culling rate
PS5 - 8 x 2.23 GHz = 17.84 BT/s
XSX - 8 x 1.825 GHz = 14.6 BT/s
20% advantage for PS5

Pixel fill rate
PS5 - 64 x 2.23 - 142.72 GPixel/s
XSX - 64 x 1.825 - 116.8 GPixel/s
20% advantage for PS5

Now combine such advantages with cache scrubbers, the geometry engine and a large and consistent ram pool, you begin to see how smoother games can run on PS over XSX in many scenarios. Obviously different engines favor different archs, but if the system is advanced and if the system can integrate the PS's IO system strengths like we saw in Ratchet and soon to boost world generation and texturework like in Nanite, we will see some really impressively detailed games at a very stable framerate down the road on PS.

 

[ethomaz]

true, very true. idk what microsoft was thinking with that ridiculous setup.

Cut costs… they wanted a 320bits bus but for that they needed 20GB RAM that was a non go in cost terms so they reached that aberration of split buses.

 

[PlacidusaX]

It's 30% on here, 40% on GAF

The RAM issue was mentioned a while back, as was how the PS5 makes use of cache scrubbers, but I think those people had their fingers in their ears.

PS5's GPU clock speed is a significant advantage and actually clocks @rdna2 speeds unlike the XSX...

 

[KiryuRealty]

PS5's GPU clock speed is a significant advantage and actually clocks @rdna2 speeds unlike the XSX...

Ah, remember the hilarity of "PS5 isn't TRUE RDNA2!!!!"?

 

[thelastword]

PS5's GPU clock speed is a significant advantage and actually clocks @rdna2 speeds unlike the XSX...

That's right and RT loves high clocks and a consistent large pool of memory.

Also, another advantage PS has is a superb DualSense implementation, even John Linneman is swooning about it...

 

[KiryuRealty]

That's right and RT loves high clocks and a consistent large pool of memory.

Also, another advantage PS has is a superb DualSense implementation, even John Linneman is swooning about it...

It's almost as if there's more to a generational leap in consoles than just bumping up the processor spec and the RAM...

 

[anonpuffs]

That's right and RT loves high clocks and a consistent large pool of memory.

Also, another advantage PS has is a superb DualSense implementation, even John Linneman is swooning about it...

What makes you think RT likes high clocks (over other performance indicators like memory bandwidth)? Take the 2070 8gb vs 2080 8gb for example. in pugetbench's v-ray benchmark the 2070 matches the 2080 in raytracing performance despite the 2080 having higher core clocks and more tensor cores.

 

[Hezekiah]

No, I'm a punchline because people love to spout off how superior a particular console is and don't like hearing anything that puts it in a "normal" category. I'm sorry but I'm not going to participate in the circle jerking.

30% superior

 

[Darth Vader]

What makes you think RT likes high clocks (over other performance indicators like memory bandwidth)? Take the 2070 8gb vs 2080 8gb for example. in pugetbench's v-ray benchmark the 2070 matches the 2080 in raytracing performance despite the 2080 having higher core clocks and more tensor cores.

I believe higher clocks allow for more ray bounces, but I may be wrong. I think read that a while ago

 

[Darth Vader]

The crazy thing about this is PS5 has a massive IO advantage, cache scrubbers, the geometry engine and of course better interconnects. Yet if we look at some pure math, XSX has more CU's, but clocked at a much lower rate, it has divided memory pool rates. It's CPU advantage is negligible since it's OS and three pronged layers consumes much more CPU time over PS. To understand this, PS even have the advantage in CPU bound scenes because it has less bottlenecks overall. You look at most open world games which are mostly CPU bound and PS5 excels. Look at Elden Ring, Valhalla till they butchered it with a patch and many others. Yet, here are some advantages Ps has.

Triangle rasterization
PS5 - 4 x 2.23 = 8.92 BT/s
XSX - 4 x 1.825 = 7.3 BT/s
20% advantage for PS5

Culling rate
PS5 - 8 x 2.23 GHz = 17.84 BT/s
XSX - 8 x 1.825 GHz = 14.6 BT/s
20% advantage for PS5

Pixel fill rate
PS5 - 64 x 2.23 - 142.72 GPixel/s
XSX - 64 x 1.825 - 116.8 GPixel/s
20% advantage for PS5

Now combine such advantages with cache scrubbers, the geometry engine and a large and consistent ram pool, you begin to see how smoother games can run on PS over XSX in many scenarios. Obviously different engines favor different archs, but if the system is advanced and if the system can integrate the PS's IO system strengths like we saw in Ratchet and soon to boost world generation and texturework like in Nanite, we will see some really impressively detailed games at a very stable framerate down the road on PS.

You forgot something. RDNA 2 GPUs have Shader Arrays with 5 double compute units each, making it 10 CUs per Shader Engine.

The PS5 maintains this architecture, but disables 1 double computer unit in two of the shader arrays.



The Series X however, uses 14CU long Shader Arrays, with the same arrangement where a couple of Arrays have a double CU pair disabled

The PS5 has architecture compatible with RDNA cards, the Series X uses a shader arrangement which is like an hybrid of Vega and RDNA. Vega here

Why am I talking about this? Because not only the Series X is splitting more L2 across more CUs (the 5 vd 4MB difference between the XSX and the PS5 benefits the later, not the former) but also they are using an unconventional (and potentially less optimal and efficient) arrangement.

By the way, both consoles use heavily customized APUs that pick and choose what they want from the several different RDNA architectures (RDNA 1 and 2, plus some stuff exclusive to them) but interestingly enough the PS5 seems to have the more heavily customized APU, going as far as having a smaller footprint than expected.

 

[Gediminas]

I believe higher clocks allow for more ray bounces, but I may be wrong. I think read that a while ago

Yeah, SX can cast more rays but it bounces less times compared to PS5.

 

[Yurinka]

I'm not sure how a company can't reach parity using a universal graphics engine like Unreal. It boggles my mind actually. There shouldn't be any "custom" coding going on here for the platforms as the engine is multiplatform to begin with. Devs need to polish it up before I pour money into it.

SIDENOTE: Props to the consoles at least getting more than 1 RT feature in a game (i.e. Metro: Exodus).

Not sure if it also has it also in consoles, but in the latest update they added UE5.1 to fortnite including Nanite and Lumen with real time global illumination, shadows and reflections. I assume they may use RT for it even if in a different way than in pre-Nanite and Lumen.

I don't know if they already use it on Fortnite, but they could partly reuse that for 3d audio.

 

[Old Gamer]

You forgot something. RDNA 2 GPUs have Shader Arrays with 5 double compute units each, making it 10 CUs per Shader Engine.

The PS5 maintains this architecture, but disables 1 double computer unit in two of the shader arrays.



The Series X however, uses 14CU long Shader Arrays, with the same arrangement where a couple of Arrays have a double CU pair disabled

The PS5 has architecture compatible with RDNA cards, the Series X uses a shader arrangement which is like an hybrid of Vega and RDNA. Vega here

Why am I talking about this? Because not only the Series X is splitting more L2 across more CUs (the 5 vd 4MB difference between the XSX and the PS5 benefits the later, not the former) but also they are using an unconventional (and potentially less optimal and efficient) arrangement.

By the way, both consoles use heavily customized APUs that pick and choose what they want from the several different RDNA architectures (RDNA 1 and 2, plus some stuff exclusive to them) but interestingly enough the PS5 seems to have the more heavily customized APU, going as far as having a smaller footprint than expected.

Thread worthy. Just saying.

 

[ethomaz]

Not sure if it also has it also in consoles, but in the latest update they added UE5.1 to fortnite including Nanite and Lumen with real time global illumination, shadows and reflections. I assume they may use RT for it even if in a different way than in pre-Nanite and Lumen.

I don't know if they already use it on Fortnite, but they could partly reuse that for 3d audio.

Fortnite uses Lumen software RT because the setting is high instead Epic. That is how UE 5.1 archives 60fps with Lumen.

For comparison Matrix Demo uses Epic with hardware accelerated RT.

Most visual improvements in this game is due it being a PS3 looking game that now received a new visual coat with UE 5.1… it will indeed looks impressive.

 

[thelastword]

Apparently, a new patch dropped for Callisto Protocol. How X fares now with RT reflections should be interesting. I've seen patches that made games which run better on PS5 over Series X actually get downgraded with worse performance, well it's mainly Ubi, but we shall see....

 

[Gediminas]

Apparently, a new patch dropped for Callisto Protocol. How X fares now with RT reflections should be interesting. I've seen patches that made games which run better on PS5 over Series X actually get downgraded with worse performance, well it's mainly Ubi, but we shall see....

that's why my 'update game' is Off on console. i first check what kind of update it is before i downloading it.

 

[Old Gamer]

Nat

Apparently, a new patch dropped for Callisto Protocol. How X fares now with RT reflections should be interesting. I've seen patches that made games which run better on PS5 over Series X actually get downgraded with worse performance, well it's mainly Ubi, but we shall see....

Naturally, DF will rush to analyse the patch. They always do so as long as it's in xbox benefit.

 

[thelastword]

No doubt, if this runs decent on X now with reflections on, DF will do a video ASAP.

 

[Old Gamer]

I would like some confirmation on this. Ray tracing was enabled though. That obviously was a configuration mistake.

 

[thelastword]

I would like some confirmation on this. Ray tracing was enabled though. That obviously was a configuration mistake.

Oh boy, they wanted RT reflections didn't they, now they have it, but I always wondered at what cost? since without those reflections it was already dropping heavily on Series X. People said it was an oversight on the devs part, but I very much doubt a dev would leave an entire feature out. I guess we shall see.

Series X had a slight resolution advantage over PS5 in the quality mode, I guess that quickly goes out the door when they have now introduced RT reflections to Series X. What I really want to see is framerate and tearing stats though. If X performs worse and drops lower than PS5 John Linneman and DF will have a hard time keeping their pants sanitary....