The presentation of Sony's PS5, and Microsoft'sXbox Series X and Xbox Series S, has sown many doubts.
Not everyone is clear on which is the most powerful console, and the presence of Xbox One X and PS4 Pro has led to a very marked uncertainty centered around how those improved versions of the current generation position themselves against the new generation (especially vs. Xbox Series S).
To help you solve all these doubts, we have decided to give shape to this article, where we will review and analyze in depth the specifications of each of the systems that are currently on the market to determine not only which is the most powerful console today (including the new generation models), but we will also see how they position one against the other , and what we can expect from each of them.
Our goal is that you have a clear vision of what we can expect from the next generation consoles, and that you can dispel your doubts about how they compare with PS4 Pro and Xbox One X, two consoles that marked an intergenerational renewal, and that do not they have nothing to do with PS5 and Xbox Series X, neither in terms of power nor support for advanced features, as we are going to see below.
I will try to be as clear as possible, but if you have any kind of doubt you can leave it in the comments and we will help you solve it. Without further ado, we begin the most powerful console.
Xbox Series X is the most powerful console out there
And I'm not saying it, its specifications say it. Those of you who read us daily already know that teraflops do not define the real power of a system dedicated to videogames , but that this is determined by a set of keys that, in a simplified way, we can group into the following points:
Processor: influences both the IPC and its cores and threads, and obviously the working frequency.
Graphics unit: its raw power matters, but also its architecture, its support of advanced functions and its specialization.
Memory: in consoles we have a unified memory structure. Quantity matters (more is better), but also bandwidth and its management.
Storage– A very powerful console with a slow storage drive will have a huge bottleneck.
Cooling system: all of the above will be useless if it does not have the support of a good cooling system that avoids thermal throttling problems.
Balance: it is a key piece so that all the components can give their best and are not weighed down by the shortcomings of other components.
In the current generation consoles, both the processor and the storage unit have ended up being two major bottlenecks. All consoles, including Xbox One X, which is the most powerful console of the current generation, have used AMD Jaguar processors and 5,400 RPM hard drives.
AMD's Jaguar processors have a very low IPC , comparable to the Intel Atom, and the 5,400 RPM hard drives that mount both consoles barely reached 100 MB/s, a ridiculous number that forced developers to duplicate files on the game facilities to reduce access and loading times.
With the new generation consoles both bottlenecks are completely overcome . Both Xbox Series X-Series S and PS5 use Zen 2 processors, whose IPC is light years ahead of the AMD Jaguars, and come with SSD drives that reach speeds of 2,400 MB/s and 5,500 MB/s , respectively. The numbers speak for themselves.
Why is Xbox Series X the most powerful console?
Well, very simple, because its CPU works at a higher frequency , and without resorting to any "dynamic mode", which PS5 does, and because its GPU is also much more powerful. We could get carried away by the teraflops and think that there is only a distance of 2 TFLOPs between the two consoles, but as I have already said, that is just one more number.
Microsoft itself has confirmed that the Xbox Series X (and Xbox Series S) GPU is the only one that offers full support for the RDNA 2 architecture , something that I have maintained for a long time , and that could have unforeseeable consequences on the game.
Current PS5 performance in games. All in all, and despite the fact that we still do not have concrete details, the numbers do not lie, and they place Xbox Series X as the most powerful console, while PS5 is in second place.
Below we leave you a complete list with the specifications of each that will allow you to understand, in a simple and clear way, why Xbox Series X is the most powerful console.
Xbox Series X specifications, the most powerful console
3.8 GHz Zen 2 processor with 8 active cores and SMT disabled. With SMT activated, it moves 16 wires but works at 3.6 GHz.
Semi-custom Radeon RDNA 2 GPU with 3,328 shaders, 208 texturing units and 80 raster units running at 1,825 MHz with a power of 12.15 TFLOPs.
If the division of one ray tracing core for every four texturing units is confirmed, we would have a total of 52 ray tracing cores. Ray tracing cores and texturing units cannot work independently at the same time.
Hardware accelerated ray tracing.
16 GB of unified GDDR6 memory on a 320-bit bus: 10 GB with 560 GB/s bandwidth and 6 GB with 336 GB/s bandwidth.
1TB 2.4GB/s NVME SSD.
4K Blu-ray disc player.
3D sound chip.
Target performance: 4K and 60 FPS (120 FPS possible), according to Microsoft. These forecasts are not being fulfilled, since this console is also having to rescale.