The PS4 is more powerful than Xbox One….but

Microsoft and Sony both have unique hardware in their next-gen consoles. Sony opted for more raw power with the PlayStation 4. The DDR5 memory in the PS4 gives Sony the edge when it comes to their GPU, but that won’t necessarily mean that the best games are on that console.

PS4 is more powerful, but you can’t just write to the memory, you need to read sometimes

An article on Edge Online discusses just what these hardware differences mean, and that more raw power might not be enough to give Sony a big advantage in the next generation.

“DDR5 is basically 50 per cent more powerful than DDR3,” says Anton Yudintsev CEO of Gaijin Entertainment. “But the memory write is bigger on Xbox One. So it depends on what you’re doing. PS4 is more powerful, but you can’t just write to the memory, you need to read sometimes.”

“They maybe have a little more GPU,” says Lobb. “We have eSRAM [embedded memory] and crazy bandwidth to that eSRAM. Which is going to be better in the long run from a developer? We’re going to see as the games go head to head. A lot of it will come down to – as always – which exclusive teams push a piece of hardware best.”

These exclusive teams are the ones that are working with the first party games on both consoles. We aren’t likely to see huge differences in fidelity between third party games across both platforms, the major differences will be found on the games that are exclusive to each platform.