That 32mb of esram will always be a bottleneck that will hamper the growth of the xbox one.

Yes it will get better over time but it will never meet the ps4. This is not like the cell of the ps3, the cell had way more potential than that 32mb of esram.

This is the result of microsoft trying to design an entertainment machine instead of a gaming machine. They could have done so much better with the xbox one, sigh.....

@Rashid Sayed

Theoretically speaking (which is not theoretical at all) the ps4 has a higher peak output.
It has been confirmed by AMD (WHo better?) and the first batches of games. What else do you want? i mean really, what else?

eSRAM does not have "much wider bandwidth", in fact it's lower. 100GB/s vs. 176GB/s. The 200GB/s sec are a pure theoretical number just to have something to boost about. It is 100GB/s in one direction - and in the best case in a practical application it might (!) reach 170 or something - for a very small amount of data and time. To say this clearly: XBO eSRAM can only offset the (PS4) GDDR bandwidth advantage at best but not exceed it.

I said yesterday in the teardown that Xbox One probably had a larger APU than PS4 despite being slower. It takes up more die area but it is effectively slower.

Even without kinect, Microsoft have built a machine that costs as much as PS4 to build but it's quite a lot slower. Wow.

They saved 18 dollars on using DDR3 and a larger die instead of a faster chip like PS4 and buying GDDR5. For a massive performance hit.

Talk about an unlucky/poor design choice

amiga-man, i was about to say xbox one but that clue was helpful.

is it WiiU?

why are we still beating a dead horse. PS4 is more powerful #dealwithit.

What are you on about.

PS3/360 has same peak output, but cell helped take tasks from it's GPU.

Both were 4.4gigapixels.

This new gen.

PS4 25.6 gigapixels
XBOXONE 13.1.

They are not close.

I do know the xboxone will improve somewhat. But the same can be said of the PS4.

Something tells me the ESRAM isn't the only bottleneck here. Even if Microsoft's APU was hooked up to GDDR5 with unified access to that memory, the fewer GPU compute units would mean that it would lack fillrate. And as we will see, new games will only increase the geometry, texture filtering and lighting workloads over time. Maybe it's just me but I think even when the ESRAM is utilized to it's best case (NOT the theoretical max MS is so quick to toss around) developers will still be left with less fillrate to work with because the GPU can only push so many pixels, less than Sony's design.

I don't understand why you got so many disagrees.

@Rashid:

Why do you have a negative slant on the Xbox One console, whereas a positive slant on PS4?

PS4 you say:
"The GPU has 20 compute units, out of which two are inactive to increase yield."

Xbox One you say:
"urthermore the Xbox One’s GPU has 14 compute units out of which two are redundant, just in case there is an issue with manufacturing."

The difference is blaring! On the PS4 you are saying it is a positive thing to increase yield whereas you are suggesting Xbox One might have production issues, when both has disabled CU's for the very same reason. It is standard practice!

Also, you say:

"[On Xbox One]Such an architecture, although complex and annoying for developers, makes it easier to..."

It is not annoying simply because there is an easier way to do things. This is how a winning architecture was only 8-years ago to deal with bandwidth issues. This is an evolution of that, with more flexibility.

What I would like to see is a more technical analysis of describing what the *real* bottlenecks are on all systems (PC, PS4, XB1 and so on) instead of parroting the old and tired 12 CUs vs 18 CUs. That is just a simple measure of epeen.

More quality articles like Eurogamer, and less mis-information, nil bias and more proper detailed analysis would earn more views from me and likely other readers.

Also, a tip! The video ads with loud noises are extremely annoying!!

^exactly...

it surprises me how complex an issue some make this out to be...

the xbox one is using a gpu that is a full series lower, if going by what AMD names discrete cards...

its a significantly less powerful gpu...plain and simple...

all other design choices between the two systems are irrelevent...the bottleneck for the xbox one vs. the PS4 will ALWAYS be its on board gpu...

Just pointing out; the xbox one likely doesn't need DDR5 to begin with, as there is no memory bottleneck in that department...The main point is that the ~7790 gpu in the xbox one is by no means a full HD gpu...and many desktop versions of that gpu are still around with ddr3 memory for the budget PC sector...if you can settle for 720 buffers, those cards still perform fine with 'slower' memory...

the PS4 on the other hand, that gpu probably would start to ring out GDDR3 memory...if it too had GDDR3, THAT would be the bottleneck, instead of the gpu itself...

both new consoles are extremely gpu centric...the gpu's are truly the most powerful parts of the consoles, as the jaguar based cpu is by no means powerful by today's standards...The xbox one is very cleverly balanced around that gpu, as is the PS4...The xbox one will never be starved for memory, but it'll also never match a PS4's gpu...which is more powerful from the get go...

2.75? Hahahaha umm no! Not even 1.75ghz. They'd be best to stay at 1.5 or 1.6 do to overheating and poor cooling due to last minute gig upgrade. But 2.75 hahaha never possible.

So Rashid gets 57 disagrees for breaking down the specifics of the two architectures, which even still is in PS4's favor, but amiga man rright below him gets 90 something agrees and a well said, just for..what? All BS aside, what is wrong with this community? It's nuts lol. And yea my PSN is KwietStorm.

Kwiet storm, Rashid is incorrect in his assertions, maybe that is why he got the disagrees.

As for the people agreeing with me all I did was point out the reality there really is nothing to disagree with.

PS4 CPU speed is said to be 1.8ghz if you look up the serial number imprinted on PS4's APU. It is also rumored to support AMD's turbo-core tech, which enables it to disable some cores and overclock the remaining cores for jobs that need a lot of performance per core and do not scale well across multiple cores. So, it can run 8 cores at 1.8ghz, but say 4 cores at 2.4ghz, assuming the rumors hold up.

As for the GPU... this is where the real difference lies.

Texture units: PS4 = 72 Xbox One = 48
Render Output Pipelines: PS4 = 32 Xbox One = 16
Compute Units: PS4 = 18 Xbox One = 12

"B.. but! The ESRAM! The Move engines!"

Both are there as a stop-gap solution to the bottlenecks in Xbox One's architecture, not as an advantage over PS4. They are disadvantages. The move engines help make getting data from main RAM to ESRAM a little bit easier for developers, but it does not change the fact that the developers are having to use a split pool of RAM (what held PS3 back so much) and that the second pool is only a tiny 32mb in size, making it essentially worthless for many functions that the GPU needs. The ESRAM, in peak performance, enjoys an ever-so-slight bandwidth advantage over GDDR5, but is crippled by its tiny size making any advantages useless.

You can't just put high performance parts on a low performance machine and expect it to outrun a high performance machine. You can't turbocharge a 4 cylinder honda into going faster than a McLaren F1.

@ju the 176 gb/s are theorical number too..
the xb1 average read/write is around 150/160 gb/s
the ps4 is around there too...

@fr0sty

The ESRAM isn't really worthless per se, it's just inadequate for deferred rendering on a 1080p frame buffer as has been shown in several articles (although it's fine for 720p), and like you said, it's a stopgap measure. Seems like MS banked on the same thing happening with devs as last gen- that they would be happy to adapt to using the ESRAM because the competition's console would be harder to use. In hindsight that was a really poor gamble- they should have known through their channels that Sony was pinging devs to find out exactly what type of architecture they'd like to see- I really don't understand how they came up so short hardware wise. CRITICAL error in my opinion. Down the road I see a Kinect-less XB1 bundle for $400 or less. The market will speak for itself regarding slower hardware for more money, and streaming video services people already pay for behind a paywall.

@Kleptic

I didnt know they invented DDR5 RAM. Also, which console uses GDDR3 RAM? You should probably get the correct terms.

I do not think the ESRAM on the 360 and "teh C3ll" are comparable situations.

Cell was more powerful than the 360 CPU. There is absolutely no question about that. However, the PS3 was held back by a split pool of RAM (which hindered development and made development "harder" for a lot of games).

On the other hand, the only reason why ESRAM exists in the XBox One is to compensate for deficiencies in the DDR3 RAM pool in the XBox One. Without the ESRAM, the X1 would be even further behind in terms of hardware power. ESRAM is not some kind of "ultimate power" waiting to be unlocked. ESRAM is not "teh c3ll". ESRAM is a countermeasure to the inherently-inferior Xbox One hardware.

The esram won't make much difference. It's still basically the same memory architecture as the 360 so there is no excuse for developers not knowing how to make the best use of a small pool of fast ram.

Also the eSRAM accounts for 0.4% of 8GB. There isn't enough of it to make up for the slower RAM. Copying of data between DDR3 and eSRAM does away with much of the speed advantages unless that data will stay in eSRAM for quite a while. I expect it will mainly be used as a framebuffer, just as the edram was used on the 360.

Not quite right, also and the main reason graphics look best on Xbox One is the move engines.

@Xgamer I bout choked on my own spit did you just say "the main reason graphics look best on Xbox One" ? I've said it before I'll say it again, did you just get out of a time machine from May 2013?

I think what we'll end up seeing is that X1 graphics will hit a wall as the generation goes on. The ESRam does help a bit, but at some point, that RAM may go towards other functions than graphics. As games start providing stronger AI and more complex subroutines to handle increasing demand for more complex gameplay, that data is going to be parceled more into the cache in order to make it more responsive.

There is some merit to why MS is pushing cloud so much, and it is because they didn't really make a future proof console. They made a pretty standard multimedia box that could play games, but only games that only marginally better than what we have now. Even Ryse, while nice looking, isn't anywhere close to what we'll be seeing in a few years time. Something to really think about.

The fact that the PS4 has a more powerful GPU is good for Sony, but the fact that it has unfettered access to the system memory means that much more can be done with it, since no bottleneck is being made up for.

On top of that tiled resources will mean a lot more as the generation goes on and developers start using it. Tiled resources are still in their infancy in gaming now because no one is really using them, but all trends seem to point that it's going to be the big thing for this generation of gaming. Despite what many here claim, the ESRAM is completely counter-intuitive to that principle, and it's going to show up big time in 3-4 years time.

Bring on the disagrees, wonder who can actually dispute that last part with intelligent discussion though.

'Slaps forehead'

Of course!
No one's looked in the power brick yet!

Isn't the power brick powered by the cloud ?

The Cloud powers the super secret GPU....

awesome, when can we expect those native 1080p/60fps games again ??

Well, it sure is. It connects with a cable to the world. Who knows what it transmits over that line...

But what about the "local cloud?"

(just one of the more recent and utterly idiotic claims by the MisterXinsider)

dat secret DGPU is within the Kinect, it helps communicate with the cloudz, the power brick is backup processor for game installations

Tell her to wrap a game or extra controller, or just use the puppy dog eyes on her lol

@SirBradders - buy your woman some sexy underwear for x-mas. Then once she opens it, ask her to slip into it in the bedroom. Voila, you now have something to unwrap yourself on x-mas day, problem solved.

@MoonConquistador You might be onto something here.