Microsoft’s director of product planning, Albert Penello, is confident the Xbox One is a misunderstood workhorse. In a post on NeoGAF, Penello elaborated on his earlier tweet that sent the interwebs in a tizzy saying the way the Xbox One and PS4 are compared in terms of performance isn’t completely accurate.
I do want to be super clear: I’m not disparaging Sony. I’m not trying to diminish them, or their launch or what they have said. But I do need to draw comparisons since I am trying to explain that the way people are calculating the differences between the two machines isn’t completely accurate. I think I’ve been upfront I have nothing but respect for those guys, but I’m not a fan of the mis-information about our performance.
The original tweet that got the ball rolling is posted below:
In the post on GAF, Penello got much more into the details of the claim stating, “I was hoping my comments would lead the discussion to be more about the games (and the fact that games on both systems look great) as a sign of my point about performance, but unfortunately I saw more discussion of my credibility.”
Breaking down his argument by points, Penello makes the following cases:
1. [PS4's] 18 CU’s vs. [Xbox One's] 12 CU’s [does not equal] 50% more performance. Multi-core processors have inherent inefficiency with more CU’s, so it’s simply incorrect to say 50% more GPU. (Note: CUs are ‘compute units’)
2. “Adding to that, each of our CU’s is running 6% faster. It’s not simply a 6% clock speed increase overall.”
3. “We have more memory bandwidth. 176gb/sec is peak on paper for GDDR5. Our peak on paper is 272gb/sec. (68gb/sec DDR3 + 204gb/sec on ESRAM). ESRAM can do read/write cycles simultaneously so I see this number mis-quoted.”
4. “We have at least 10% more CPU. Not only a faster processor, but a better audio chip also offloading CPU cycles.”
5. “We understand GPGPU and its importance very well. Microsoft invented Direct Compute, and have been using GPGPU in a shipping product since 2010 – it’s called Kinect.”
6. “Speaking of GPGPU – we have 3X the coherent bandwidth for GPGPU at 30gb/sec which significantly improves our ability for the CPU to efficiently read data generated by the GPU.”
If this seems a little technical to you – it is. However, the TL;DR version is basically that the Xbox One is a much better performer than people think and the design team needs a little more credit for being, “some of the smartest graphics engineers around – they understand how to architect and balance a system for graphics performance.”
Penello sums up his case by stating both machines are good performers and adds, “…each company has their strengths, and I feel that our strength is overlooked when evaluating both boxes.”
Apparently there will be benchmarks published soon which should clarify the issue even more – but to the average consumer who doesn’t give a shit, most of us just want to see dat framerate nice and solid with beautiful lighting and textures, and full bars when playing multiplayer online.
Source: NeoGAF