Over the past few months we’ve seen numerous “leaks” about the hardware inside Sony and Microsoft’s next consoles. Now the dust is beginning to settle and while all of these rumors should be taken with a grain of salt we’re starting to get some pieces to the puzzle.
For example, last year there were multiple “leaks” stating that the Wii U had 1GB RAM for games and that ended up being true. Remember that not many predicted that the Wii U would have 2GBs of RAM total but we heard a lot about the console’s tri-core CPU and 1GB gaming RAM before E3 and even more so after.
Let’s summarize some of the most important rumored specs that we currently know about the next Playstation and Xbox:
Xbox Durango:
- Eight-Core AMD Jaguar CPU clocked @ 1.6Ghz
- 8GB DDR3 RAM (68GB/s)
- 800Mhz GPU, 1.2 Tflops
- 32MB ESRAM (102GB/s)
- 50GB 6x Blu-Ray drive
Playstation Orbis:
- Eight-Core AMD Jaguar CPU clocked @ 1.6Ghz
- 4GB DDR5 RAM (pegged by most over 100GB/s, some saying as high as 192GB/s)
- 800Mhz GPU, 1.843 Tflops
- High-speed Blu-Ray drive
Chances are that parts of these rumored specs wouldn’t be coming up so often if there wasn’t at least a small bit of truth to them. It seems like the general consensus is that the next Playstation will have less RAM than the next Xbox but it will have a higher bandwidth cap.
He’ll be in your next-gen consoles, pushing those polygons.
It also seems like both consoles will possess GPUs and CPUs clocked relatively the same but with the PS Orbis achieving a large number of Teraflops.
We obviously can’t deduce which console will produce better visuals or in-game physics until we get these devices into our homes for personal use. I’m not saying that we can call it a match right now. But some things are starting to take shape.
On paper it does look like both consoles will be very similar, much like the 360/PS3 were this past generation. If rumors about the RAM type and teraflop count in the PS4 are true than it does sound like it will have a slight edge on the next Xbox. We can’t rule Sony could split the memory pool at all times like the 256MB split in the PS3. Maybe this will work to the new Xbox’s advantage if Microsoft allows developers to do what they want with that 8GB.
There are also rumors of the new Xbox using 3GB or more of that 8GB RAM pool for OS functions. Perhaps Microsoft is coming up with their own Miiverse type service and something else that will hog memory. Maybe we’ll be pleasantly surprised and the OS won’t take up that much space and will leave us with 6GB-7GB RAM for gaming.
Our verdict: On paper with 10 months until release (presumably) it looks like the next Playstation has an edge on the next Xbox in terms of raw specs based on recent leaks. Admittedly this doesn’t mean much since these numbers can still change leading up to release or some of the information may be false.
We’ll have to wait a few more months (hopefully weeks) to see these consoles in action to judge for ourselves. It is fun to analyze these specs and compare them but everyone must remember that everything is still subject to change. Everything except that next-gen feeling in the air.
Breaking down whether the PS Orbis or Xbox Durango will be more powerful,
