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It’s been over a year and a half since the Xbox One and PS4 first debuted here in the U.S. In that time, they’ve both earned their keep as the bearer of current-generation game consoles. Microsoft realized some months after release that it needed a $400, price-competitive version with the PS4 that lacked the Kinect camera, and has since remedied what was once a bit of a lopsided, apples-and-oranges comparison.

Since then, both the Xbox One and PS4 have sold pretty well, with the edge on Sony’s side — although January’s $50 price cut for the Kinect-less Xbox One is helping Microsoft catch up. That said, how do they directly compare with each other in 2015? If you’re thinking about buying one of these two consoles–or just want ammunition for bragging rights–here’s what you need to know.
One note before we get started: Unlike all previous console generations, the PS4 and Xbox One are almost identical hardware-wise. With an x86 AMD APU at the heart of each, the Sony and Microsoft consoles are essentially PCs — and their hardware specs, and thus relative performance, can be compared in the same way you would compare two x86-based laptops or ARM-based Android tablets. Read on for our Xbox One-versus-PS4 hardware specs comparison.

PS4 vs. Xbox One: CPUs compared



For the PS4 and Xbox One, Microsoft and Sony both opted for a semi-custom AMD APU — a 28nm part fabricated by TSMC that features an eight-core Jaguar CPU, paired with a Radeon 7000-series GPU. (We’ll discuss the GPU in the next section.) The PS4 and Xbox One CPU is virtually identical, except the Xbox One is clocked at 1.75GHz, while the PS4 is at 1.6GHz.

The Jaguar CPU core itself isn’t particularly*exciting. In PCs, Jaguar is used in AMD’s Kabini and Temash parts, which were aimed at laptops and tablets respectively. If you’re looking for a tangible comparison, CPUs based on the Jaguar core are roughly comparable to Intel’s Bay Trail Atom. With eight cores (as opposed to two or four in a regular Kabini-Temash setup), both the PS4 and Xbox One will have quite a lot of CPU power on tap. The large core count allows*both consoles to excel at multitasking — important for modern living room and media center use cases, and doubly so for the Xbox One, which runs two different operating systems side-by-side. Ultimately, though, despite the Xbox One having a slightly faster CPU, it makes little*difference to either console’s relative games performance.



PS4 vs. Xbox One: GPUs compared

Again, by virtue of being an AMD APU, the Xbox One and PS4 GPUs are technologically very similar — with the simple difference that the PS4 GPU is larger. In PC terms, the Xbox One has a GPU that’s similar to the entry-level Bonaire GPU in the older Radeon HD 7790, while the PS4 is outfitted with the midrange Pitcairn that can be found in the HD 7870. In numerical terms, the Xbox One GPU has 12 compute units (768 shader processors), while the PS4 has 18 CUs (1152 shaders). The Xbox One is slightly ahead on GPU clock speed (853MHz vs. 800MHz for the PS4).

In short, the PS4’s GPU is — on paper — 50% more powerful than the Xbox One. The Xbox One’s slightly higher GPU clock speed ameliorates some of the difference, but really, the PS4’s 50% higher CU count is a serious advantage for the Sony camp. Furthermore, Microsoft says that 10% of the Xbox One’s GPU is reserved for Kinect. Games on the PS4 will have a lot more available graphics power on tap. Beyond clock speeds and core counts, both GPUs are identical. They’re both based on the Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture, and thus support OpenGL 4.3, OpenCL 1.2, and Direct3D 11.2.

PS4 vs. Xbox One: RAM subsystem and bandwidth

Once we leave the CPU and GPU, the hardware specs of the Xbox One and PS4*begin*to diverge, with the RAM being the most notable difference. While both consoles are outfitted with 8GB of RAM, the PS4 opts for 5500MHz GDDR5 RAM, while the Xbox One uses the more PC-like 2133MHz DDR3 RAM. This leads to an absolutely massive bandwidth advantage in favor of the PS4 — the PS4’s CPU and GPU will have 176GB/sec of bandwidth to system RAM, while the Xbox One will have just 68.3GB/sec.




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