News regarding PlayStation 5 specs just came out recently. The PlayStation 5 appears to be rather a disappointment in comparison as compared to Xbox Series X for some. Though the Series X doesn’t stop there, Microsoft seems to have 44% more Ray-tracing hardware support.
Microsoft really went all out with its promising 12 Teraflops (Tflops) and a 52 CUs (Compute Units) RDNA 2 GPU. PlayStation 5 is obviously lagging when we look at those power numbers. There are speculations that Sony would release a more powerful variant later on just like Microsoft did with Xbox One X. But that’s for the future.
For now, data miner _Rogame have shared some interesting insights based on a patent which helps understand how the Xbox Series X powered by RDNA 2 ray-tracing works. The patent uses a texture processor-based method for ray-tracing through interconnected arrays of shaders, texture processors and cache.
The ray-tracing hardware support on the Xbox Series X contains a texture address unit, cache processor, filter pipeline and the ray intersection engine. The recent detailed leak on the specifications of the Series X gives us a better idea of its capabilities.
We already saw the PlayStation 5 coming up short against Xbox Series X. Due to its small number of 36 compute units (CUs), this may prove to be a huge disadvantage for Sony. While the Xbox Series X is packing 52 CUs, it is expected to have 44% more ray-tracing hardware. Even if the PS5 does have a higher core clock GPU frequency, It will still fall back due to coming short on the hardware side. Ray-tracing does matter in 2020 as it is the next-gen technology that most developers will make use of.
The Xbox Series X is holding up a solid stance thanks to its impressive hardware. It may even be able to hold up against a decent gaming PC. The 12 Tflops is a huge leap which is even more than the Nvidia’s RTX 2080 which has 11.1 Tflops. While Lead System Architect of the PS4, Mark Cerny was cautious of discussing ray-tracing or even variable-rate shading, further making Sony look weak, we witnessed Microsoft demonstrating the Series X GPU capabilities on Minecraft. It was quite noticeable as to how much of a difference does ray-tracing make.
With so far Microsoft putting up an overall better presentation, the PS5 feels rushed. With all the facts added to the case, Microsoft’s Xbox Series X will surely have more ray-tracing power than the Sony PlayStation 5.
