PS5, Xbox Series X Comparison: Design, Specs, Features, Price, and Everything Else

With Sony announcing the price and availability of the PlayStation 5, we are finally in a position to compare it to Microsoft’s competitor console, also known as Xbox Series X, more or less on a T. Of course, how these consoles compare. in terms of the actual performance will be decided in November; But it’s safe to say that by now, looking at their hardware, console games have never looked more exciting. Plus, with Nvidia recently releasing its next-gen GeForce RTX 3000 series GPUs for PCs, 2020 surely looks like the year gaming took center stage.

The PS5 and Xbox Series X may have “drastically” different designs, and there’s a distinct difference in how they approach next-gen games, too, but under the hood they have a lot of similarities. Both consoles are based on the same silicon. It’s how they are going to use this silicon to power upcoming (and existing) games that will set them apart. There’s also the “exclusives” angle that Sony has mastered over the years (even when the Xbox Series X is slated to launch without any AAA exclusives), but Microsoft’s backward compatibility means that most Your existing Xbox games will still be playable on the next one. gen, and some of them will play even better.

Read also Sony to launch the PlayStation 5 on November 12; this is what it will cost you

Since there’s a lot of ground to cover, let’s quickly jump into it and try to decode the PS5 and Xbox Series X, and how they stack up against each other.

PS5, Xbox Series X prices

Microsoft beat Sony by first revealing the full details of the Xbox Series X, something that could have been a factor for Sony in deciding the price of the PS5.

In the United States, the Xbox Series X will cost $ 499. The PS5, on the other hand, will cost $ 499.99. The PS5 digital edition, which is basically a PS5 without a 4K Blu-ray drive, will cost $ 399.99. Sony has the upper hand here with its all-digital option, so if you’re someone who is okay with buying and playing your games digitally, you can say you can get a PS5 at an instant $ 100 discount (that makes it cheaper too. than Xbox Series X).

In India, the Xbox Series X will be available at an estimated retail price of Rs 49,990. Sony has yet to announce the Indian pricing for the digital edition of the PS5 and PS5.

Also read Xbox Series X to launch on November 10 alongside Xbox Series S priced at Rs 49,990; All the details

PS5, Xbox Series X availability

The Xbox Series X will launch globally, including in India, on November 10. Pre-orders will start from September 22 (although this is not yet confirmed for India).

The digital edition of PS5 and PS5 will launch on November 12 in the US, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea with pre-orders starting September 17 from select retailers. Worldwide, the digital edition of PS5 and PS5 will be available from November 18. Sony will bring the console to Europe, the Middle East, South America, Asia and South Africa. It is not known when the PS5 will be available in India at this time.

PS5, Xbox Series X hardware, features

The PS5 (and PS5 Digital Edition) and Xbox Series X include an AMD Zen 2 CPU. Based on a 7nm manufacturing process, the AMD Zen 2 CPU inside the PS5 has 8 cores at 3.5 GHz each. That’s 3.8GHz on the Xbox Series X. With the Simultaneous Multiple Threading (SMT) factor, however, the difference in clock speed here is negligible, at least on paper.

It is the GPU side that is particularly interesting. Both the PS5 and Xbox Series X use an AMD RDNA 2 GPU. The PS5 has 36 compute units running at up to 2.23GHz, effectively capable of delivering 10.28TF of peak performance. The Xbox X Series X can boast 12 teraflops and 52 compute units, but its clock speed is slower at 1,825GHz each.

Now here is the technical part. Unlike the Xbox Series X, the PS5 opts for “variable” frequencies, for the CPU and GPU. The frequency may vary depending on the workload (and not the power that remains constant). The PS5 has a set power budget that is tied to the console’s thermal management system, which means its performance can vary depending on how demanding a game is. This implies a console that can, in theory at least, extract more performance from the 36 available RDNA 2 compute units. Sony claims that the PS5 can achieve GPU frequencies “much, much higher than we expected.”

Also read Feast your eyes! This is the Sony PlayStation 5 console

Also, by offering fewer compute units (than the Xbox Series X) but each with a variable frequency, Sony hopes to get more performance out of the console. Ideally, this should give developers more flexibility to tell their story in the way they envisioned it, rather than being limited to a fixed ballpark figure.

Moving on, both the PS5 and Xbox Series X have solid state drive or SSD storage. Sony offers 825GB of onboard storage and 5.5GB / s peak throughput, while the Xbox Series X has a 1TB NVME SSD that can only do 2.4GB / s. Another thing that works in the PS5’s favor is that the console will support expandable storage with regular NVMe PC drives. The Xbox Series X, on the other hand, will support custom expansion cards. Only Seagate seems to be making them for now and we still don’t know how much they will cost, but proprietary storage can be expensive.

PS5, Xbox Series X games: new and existing

The Xbox Series X will launch with “thousands” of games spanning four generations, but without AAA exclusivity. Microsoft was supposed to release Xbox Series X and Halo Infinite together, but the game was delayed until 2021.

Instead, Microsoft highlights its Xbox Game Pass subscription service along with more than 50 “new” games, including Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Dirt 5, Gears Tactics, Yakuza: Like a Dragon, and Watch Dogs: Legion with optimizations for Xbox Series X. To be clear, all these games will also be available for the PS5. Over 40 existing games such as Destiny 2, Forza Horizon 4, Gears 5, Ori, and Will of the Wisps, will also be optimized for Xbox Series X at launch.

Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S

Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War, and Demon’s Souls will launch alongside the PS5 on November 12. Unlike Microsoft, Sony has also confirmed pricing for next-gen games and it’s not good news. Sony has announced that its own Worldwide Studios titles will be priced from $ 49.99 to $ 69.99. That’s in line with the supposed $ 10 jump we’ve been hearing for some time now, which means that in India, PS5 games could be priced at over Rs 5,000. Xbox Series X games should be priced similarly, though we’ll have to wait and be careful about that.

Also read Xbox Series X you can play your older games in HDR and up to 120 fps; here’s why it’s important

Sony has also announced PS4 versions of some of the PS5 exclusives. Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Sackboy A Big Adventure, and Horizon Forbidden West will also be released on PS4 and will come with a free update in the next generation. Sony has also announced the PlayStation Plus Collection, which will allow PlayStation Plus members to download and play a select library of PS4 games, including Batman Arkham Knight, Bloodborne, Fallout 4, God of War, Monster Hunter: World, and Persona 5 on the PS5. All of this is meant to support the existing PS4 community.

Although compatibility with existing games is where Microsoft takes the lead. The Xbox Series X will be compatible with all Xbox and Xbox 360 games and Xbox One titles that are backward compatible. And unlike Sony, Microsoft has also revealed the benefits of playing older games on the Xbox Series X. The Xbox Series X will be able to play backward compatible games natively “with the full power of the CPU, GPU and SSD.” . Not only will these games run at peak performance, but in some cases they will be able to do even better.

The Xbox Series X will allow some of these older games to run in HDR and up to 120fps without developers having to do anything to achieve HDR and 120fps in their games because Microsoft has put these capabilities on the platform itself. Some of these games will also support hardware-accelerated DirectX ray tracing, higher and consistent frame rates, reduced in-game load times, and Microsoft’s new Quick Resume feature that will allow gamers to switch between multiple titles quickly. .

While it would be interesting to see how all of this translates into real-world use, surely the Xbox Series X and PS5 have their unique selling points. Let the console wars begin.