PlayStation 5 vs Xbox Series X - Deep Dive: Part 2 - GPU & PC Gaming

A follow-up to last week's post with early impressions on the next-gen console specs. Now that the dust has settled and we have clarification on various matters, I can finally tackle the subject with a deep dive. Will include comparisons between the two next-gen consoles, but also PC and current-gen consoles. This is one is overly long, quite technical and pretty dry. I don't know if there's an audience for something like this on Hive Gaming (or Steem Gaming) but this is obviously something that deeply interests me.

But first, please read through Part 1 here.
GPU

Of all the improvements shipping with next-gen consoles, the GPU is probably the mildest upgrade of the lot. Relatively speaking, anyway, because it is still very impressive.

In the PC space, AMD has had a rather tough time since the last gen consoles shipped. After years of beating NVIDIA technologically, they simply failed to turn their tech lead into sales. NVIDIA kept cashing in, despite some dodgy products over the years (Fermi, anyone?). With an order of magnitude greater R&D budgets, it was only going to end one way. NVIDIA dropped two incredible advancements in Maxwell and Pascal. AMD were still competitive, but there was no doubt NVIDIA has carved a significant lead, particularly in power efficiency. There were signs of life with AMD's RX 5700 series, but there was always a doubt that NVIDIA would eventually move to 7nm and retain their domination. Then, AMD dropped the RDNA 2 bombshell. You can read more about it here.

And RDNA 2 is what powers both PS5 and XSX. Both consoles feature a plethora of futuristic tech. The most hyped of which is, of course, ray-tracing. Both consoles feature BVH intersection engines, which are dedicated cores to calculate the BVH structure of the rays casted. Microsoft claims that doing these operations on the GPU would require another 13 TFLOPS, which is pretty nuts. That said, everything else is still processed on the GPU, so there will definitely be a significant performance hit. I'd expect developers to be cautious with ray-tracing, perhaps have a separate mode. E.g. Ray-tracing on at 30 fps, off at 60 fps. More on the other new features later.

While the CPUs are pretty much the same, the GPUs on the two consoles couldn't be more different. Of course, both feature the same fundamental architecture (RDNA 2), but they go for two totally different approaches. The Xbox Series X GPU has 52 CUs, while the PS5 has 36 CUs. At first glance, this looks like a massive discrepancy, but looking closer, there' also a significant difference in clock speeds. The Xbox Series X runs at 1.825 GHZ, while the PS5 is variable at up to 2.23 GHz. Once again, Mark Cerny claims that the GPU will hang around close to its peak in most scenario, so we can assume it's a 2.1-2.23 GHz GPU. The end result is theoretical compute of ~12 TFLOPs vs ~10 TFLOPs.

But there's more to it. Since the PS5 GPU runs at a greater clock speed, the other units like ROP and front-end are actually more performant. The end difference is likely to be a slight difference in native resolution - let's say 1800p vs 2160p. Furthermore, with techniques like dynamic resolution scaling and temporal reconstruction, we have seen how native resolution isn't all that important anymore. So, while the XSX GPU is definitely significantly more powerful, the average gamer isn't really going to care.

How about the PC market then? This is where it gets interesting. The PC GPU market today is in a pretty bad shape. Prices are over-inflated due to a number of factors. The mining boom of 2018 led to crazy prices, and readjusted expectations. NVIDIA released Turing and sky high prices, and somehow, it stayed there. AMD then followed up with also releasing Navi at a much higher price than previous mainstream offerings. It looks very much like the GPU vendors are content to control supply while keeping the price high.

As a result, what XSX offers is unimaginable in the PC space. It is at least as powerful as a RTX 2080 Super - a $700 GPU - and in some cases, with console optimizations, it might even match up to a RTX 2080 Ti! Compared to the previous gen consoles, on paper, the XSX seems to be 2x as fast, offering 12 TFLOPs versus X1X's 6 TFLOPs. But RDNA 2 shaders are much more efficient, and the XSX is likely at least 2.5x as fast in terms of raw power. But there's more multipliers, in the way of new features. Variable rate shading, mesh shading, primitive shaders are all new features of RDNA 2 that are designed to make the GPU more efficient. So, overall, the XSX should offer something like 3x the effective performance of the X1X. As for the PS5, it could end up nearly 4x more capable than the PS4 Pro.
How does this affect PC gaming?

The next-gen consoles will have a dramatic impact on PC gaming. Sure, there'll be a cross-gen period over the next year or two where games run on both generations of consoles and PCs. During this time, we'll definitely see more demanding Ultra settings, but overall, it's not going to be a big difference. When the true next-gen games start shipping, though, is when PC system requirements will change dramatically.

Thanks to the slow Jaguar CPUs and HDDs, PC gaming has been all about the GPU. In almost every case, unless you're into enthusiast high-refresh rate gaming, a mainstream Ryzen 5 class CPU is more than enough for pretty much ever GPU. Same applies to SSDs - there was no need for super-fast PCIe 4 SSDs. Indeed, even HDDs are just fine if you can deal with the longer load times. It made sense to invest most of your money into the best GPU you can afford.

With the XSX and PS5 era, we are going back to the past, when it was important to have a well-balanced system across the board. For starters, you're going to need a fast multi-core CPU, an 8-core Ryzen at the very least. You'll also need a PCIe 4 NVMe SSD. Finally, we'll be seeing a huge upgrade to GPUs.

While all of these seem daunting today - it'll cost well over $2,000 to match the XSX spec, the good news is that PC component prices are finally set to balance out. A year from now, we can totally expect a 8-core Zen 3 CPU to sell for $200, and a RTX 2080-like GPU becoming the new mainstream $250 part. Call it RTX 3060 or RX 6700. SSDs are dropping in prices too. By the time true next-gen games ship in a year or two, you can fully expect a transformed PC gaming landscape.
Concluding

This generation is going to be the most exciting leap forward since at least the transition from PS1 to PS2. Moore's law has slowed down, and the spec bumps are nowhere near as impressive as in the past, but instead, what we are focusing is on fundamentally new capabilities. It's not just going to be the similar games with better graphics - kind of like we saw moving from PS3 to PS4; but rather completely new types of gameplay and worlds that are simply not possible today. After several years of stagnation, this also bodes well for the PC gaming space. Do note, though, that this generation's transition will be well drawn out, with a long cross-gen period. I wouldn't expect this generation to truly get going till at least 2022. Sure, there'll be some first party titles that'll push the boundaries right out of the gate, but a vast majority of titles will be cross-gen.

That's for the best, it'll give PC gamers some time to upgrade their rigs, while game developers will have ample time to get the most out of this new generation of hardware. Either way, can't wait!