What’s Inside the PS4 and XBox One?
Both new games consoles are glorified PCs under the hood
The game console wars are about to start again. Sony has just launched their PlayStation 4, and Microsoft has their XBox One ready to go. So what’s inside these gaming consoles that makes them special? Both consoles are closer to your desktop PC than you might think…
You might be forgiven for thinking that your gaming console was something special, featuring some sort of unusual technology inside it that wasn’t found elsewhere. That was the case with some consoles (such as the PS3, which had an unusual CPU called the cell processor), but the insides of the current generation of consoles bear more than a passing resemblance to a high-end gaming PC. In fact, they share many of the same components as these fast computers.
The CPU
Both the PS4 and the XBox One are built around the same type of processor as your desktop PC. Both systems use CPUs built by Intel arch-rival AMD, which are built around their Jaguar microarchitecture. These SoCs (System on a Chip) are x86 processors, but are heavily customized for Sony and Microsoft by AMD. The Sony version runs at 1.9GHz, while the Microsoft version runs at 1.75GHz. Both have eight cores, double the number present on most desktop PCs.
The Memory
The two game consoles have slightly different approaches to memory. The PS4 uses 8GB of very fast DDR5 memory, which is usually found on graphics cards, while the XBox One uses slower DDR3 memory. This means that the PS4 can throw data into and read data from the memory much faster (Sony claims a speed of 176GB per second, while the XBox One has about 68GBPS according to leaked info). However, the XBox One has a trick up its sleeve: the CPU chip includes a small amount of very fast memory built into the chip itself, called ESRAM which can be written to at about 100GB/s.
The Graphics Processor
Both companies have made much of the graphics capabilities of their consoles, and the graphics processing unit (GPU) that does this magic has been the focus of much of their development effort. Again, the two consoles are more similar than they are different, both using a GPU designed by AMD that is built into the processor. These use a new architecture from AMD that goes under the rather Apple-eseque name of Graphics Core Next, which is also being used on some of the companies high-end graphics cards for desktop PCs. But Sony has put more into their system, with a GPU that runs faster and has more processing power than the XBox One. The power of these GPUs is measured in what is called Compute Units, which are the basic elements of the processor. The more of these, the more graphics processing can be done, and the PS4 has 18, while the XBox One has 12.
Optical & Hard Drive
Both consoles include an optical drive and a hard drive, with both offering support for playing Blu-ray and DVD movies. Games can also be loaded from these discs, then installed onto the hard drive. The hard drives are also similar, with both units using 500GB drives that can be used to hold saved games and other data.
4K support
Both systems support 4K displays, which run at a higher resolution than current HDTVs (3840 by 2160 pixels,against the 1920 by 1280 pixels of current HDTVs). However, at present, you can’t play games at this resolution: none of the games available at release support this. In fact, some games actually run at lower resolutions, then scale the game up to fill the HD screen.
Future Proofing
From the details above, it is obvious that the Sony Playstation 4 is the more powerful (and probably more expensive to make) console. It has faster memory and a faster GPU that makes it a faster system overall. That provides it with some level of future-proofing: as the requirements of games increase, the PS4 has some room to expand. The XBox One doesn’t have a lot of spare performance capacity: modern games may stretch this system to the limit.
However, pure computing power has very little to do with success in the game console market. That’s a lesson Sony may have learned with the PS3, which struggled against the XBox despite being much more powerful. What is more important is how the designers and programmers use this power to make better and more compelling games, and both systems offer plenty of power and features for them to use.
In fact, the primary driver behind the design of both systems seems to be standardization rather than uniqueness. Most modern games are written for multiple platforms, for Windows gamers as well as consoles. Using the same components makes this process easier: it is easier to convert a game to another platform (called porting) or to develop a game for multiple platforms if these platforms share components in common. Having these shared components means that the different versions can share more components, and this makes developing games cheaper. And that’s the real name of the game here.
