1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:04,440 There's a new console war brewing, again. 2 00:00:04,440 --> 00:00:07,640 But it's gonna be quite different from the ones we've seen in the past. 3 00:00:07,640 --> 00:00:13,920 The Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 will be going head to head during the 2020 holiday season. 4 00:00:13,920 --> 00:00:19,280 And unlike past consoles where PC gamers have sneered at the lack of power under the hood, 5 00:00:19,280 --> 00:00:22,720 these two newcomers are packing some serious chops. 6 00:00:22,720 --> 00:00:25,720 Both consoles will have graphical power on par 7 00:00:25,720 --> 00:00:29,680 with a high-end gaming PC. But relative to each other 8 00:00:29,680 --> 00:00:33,000 is one console technologically superior. 9 00:00:33,000 --> 00:00:37,740 And is it going to be in a way that will actually affect your gameplay experience? 10 00:00:37,740 --> 00:00:40,960 To answer, we spoke with Ryan Smith over at Enantech, 11 00:00:40,960 --> 00:00:44,320 and we'd like to thank him for his contributions. Love you, Ryan. 12 00:00:44,320 --> 00:00:48,920 To start, let's take a closer look at how each CPU and GPU is designed. 13 00:00:48,920 --> 00:00:53,360 Both systems use custom chips based on AMD's RDNA2 architecture, 14 00:00:53,360 --> 00:00:56,840 but the design philosophies behind each one are slightly different. 15 00:00:56,840 --> 00:01:01,320 The Xbox Series X generally runs at the same clock frequency all the time, 16 00:01:01,320 --> 00:01:05,440 3.8 gigahertz on the CPU, or 3.6 with multi-threading enabled, 17 00:01:05,440 --> 00:01:08,680 and 1.825 gigahertz on the GPU. 18 00:01:08,680 --> 00:01:12,280 Unless you're running your system in some sort of insanely hot environment, 19 00:01:12,280 --> 00:01:15,320 gonna have to skip the LAN party at the volcano, I guess. 20 00:01:15,320 --> 00:01:20,000 You shouldn't see any throttling. And the Xbox Series X also has more memory bandwidth 21 00:01:20,000 --> 00:01:23,300 and more CPU clock speed headroom than the PlayStation. 22 00:01:23,300 --> 00:01:27,660 So clearly, the Xbox is superior, right? 23 00:01:27,660 --> 00:01:32,780 Well, maybe not. The PlayStation 5 has a higher base clock on its GPU 24 00:01:32,780 --> 00:01:35,820 at 2.23 gigahertz, but unlike the Xbox, 25 00:01:35,820 --> 00:01:41,340 it's designed to throttle if it's getting hit hard. However, keep in mind that with GPU throttling, 26 00:01:41,340 --> 00:01:45,740 you don't have to lower the clock by much to keep the chip within its thermal design limits. 27 00:01:45,740 --> 00:01:49,340 So you can expect the PS5 to be running at a higher clock most of the time. 28 00:01:49,340 --> 00:01:52,460 So here's what this might end up meaning for you, 29 00:01:52,500 --> 00:01:55,780 the gamer. Those higher clocks on the PlayStation 5 30 00:01:55,780 --> 00:02:00,940 will favor high polygon counts. Think about highly detailed character models, for example. 31 00:02:00,940 --> 00:02:06,060 However, the Xbox Series X, with its greater overall performance and consistency, 32 00:02:06,060 --> 00:02:10,680 might enable slightly nicer visual effects, which are driven more by the shader, 33 00:02:10,680 --> 00:02:15,300 the part of the GPU largely responsible for applying effects to pixels and vertices. 34 00:02:15,300 --> 00:02:19,820 A good example of this is the shimmering effect you see in games that try to replicate 35 00:02:19,820 --> 00:02:24,740 real world heat distortion you'd see on a hot day. Looks like this, just like this. 36 00:02:24,740 --> 00:02:27,740 Ultimately, which game will look better on which console 37 00:02:27,740 --> 00:02:31,540 will depend on what the developer is trying to emphasize visually. 38 00:02:31,540 --> 00:02:36,140 But let's change gears here for a bit and talk about storage, which is radically different 39 00:02:36,140 --> 00:02:39,840 on both of these new machines than on past generations consoles. 40 00:02:39,840 --> 00:02:43,840 Gone are the days of consoles shipping with slow mechanical hard drives. 41 00:02:43,840 --> 00:02:48,300 Not only do both the Xbox Series X and the PS5 come with solid state drives, 42 00:02:48,340 --> 00:02:52,220 they use NVMe SSDs for huge amounts of storage bandwidth. 43 00:02:52,220 --> 00:02:55,900 Indeed, the PS5 will have 5.5 gigabytes per second 44 00:02:55,900 --> 00:02:59,180 of storage bandwidth, compared to 2.4 for the Xbox. 45 00:02:59,180 --> 00:03:02,940 That's less than half. Regardless though, both systems will still have storage 46 00:03:02,940 --> 00:03:07,740 quick enough to enable rapid switching between multiple games, so you can pause one 47 00:03:07,740 --> 00:03:11,440 and quickly jump to another that you're also in the middle of, for some reason. 48 00:03:11,440 --> 00:03:15,460 As the memory contents of the game you're pausing can quickly be dumped to the SSD, 49 00:03:15,460 --> 00:03:20,440 then reloaded once you resume playing. Now the advantage that the PS5 might have here 50 00:03:20,440 --> 00:03:25,880 could be most noticeable when playing games with very high resolution textures and assets. 51 00:03:25,880 --> 00:03:30,480 The higher memory bandwidth might enable them to load more quickly to avoid popping 52 00:03:30,480 --> 00:03:33,520 where objects just seem to appear out of thin air. 53 00:03:33,520 --> 00:03:36,720 Happens to me all the time. Whoa! 54 00:03:36,720 --> 00:03:41,100 The PS5 will also allow you to expand its storage with standard NVMe drives, 55 00:03:41,100 --> 00:03:46,380 meaning you could just go buy an M.2 SSD and slot it into your system, but there's a caveat. 56 00:03:46,400 --> 00:03:50,140 You need a PCI Express 4.0 compatible drive. 57 00:03:50,140 --> 00:03:53,540 The Xbox, on the other hand, will also support expandable storage, 58 00:03:53,540 --> 00:03:55,680 but it's proprietary. 59 00:03:56,780 --> 00:04:00,680 However, you'll get the added convenience of being able to slot in the additional storage 60 00:04:00,680 --> 00:04:04,380 from the outside of the console, and you'll probably be able to get your hands 61 00:04:04,380 --> 00:04:07,460 on these mini drives much more quickly. 62 00:04:07,460 --> 00:04:10,780 So the answer as to what console should you get 63 00:04:10,780 --> 00:04:14,700 isn't cut and dry at this point as it never is. 64 00:04:14,700 --> 00:04:18,460 And of course, there's a lot more to talk about than just processors and storage. 65 00:04:18,460 --> 00:04:23,880 So let us know if you'd like to talk about things like ray tracing, controllers, online play, 66 00:04:23,880 --> 00:04:27,060 insulting other people's moms, all these things. 67 00:04:27,060 --> 00:04:31,260 And whichever way you go, remember, they don't come out until late this year, so... 68 00:04:32,700 --> 00:04:35,900 PCs are pretty cool too. All right, that's it for this video, guys. 69 00:04:35,900 --> 00:04:39,980 Thanks for watching. I had my thumb ready to tell you to like the video 70 00:04:39,980 --> 00:04:43,960 or dislike it, you know? I'm not telling you what to do, 71 00:04:43,960 --> 00:04:47,720 just that you should do one of those things only. Check out our other videos, 72 00:04:47,720 --> 00:04:52,200 and comment below with video suggestions if you wanna hear us talk about something else. 73 00:04:52,200 --> 00:04:55,600 You know, maybe we forget what we wanna talk about, 74 00:04:55,600 --> 00:04:57,300 so let us know. 75 00:05:00,960 --> 00:05:04,760 Oh, I didn't say subscribe. That's fine, leave it.