re: For those of you hating on the X1

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The DDR5 is a much better solution for gaming. Just look at it this way. If DDR3 actually was competitive. Graphic cards would still use the much cheaper. There are many sites out there to get technical, basically the DDR3 lacks the bandwidth and overall speed in what is important to gaming programmers and developers.

The memory win is that Sony got lucky.

Originally it was suppose to be faster PS4 (unified so easier to program for) Memory but Xbox has more.

PS4: 4GB of DDR5 vs Xbox One: 8GB DDR3 and Esram (Used only to help the memory performance gap between the two)

This would of made things more interesting. PS4 uses less than 1GB of memory and the Xbox One uses 3GB. So what was predicted at the time was 3.5GB of DDR5 vs 5GB DDR3 and 32MB Esram. Then the DDR5 market crashed. Sony was able to buy DDR5 on the cheap, got a deal...and PS4 will have 8GB of DDR3 and all they had to do was get double density ram. This couldn't be done on the Xbox One because they'd have to change the motherboard and the processor as Esram would no longer be necessary. The only thing Esram does is help fill the gap between DDR3 and DDR5. It does not do anything else and is expensive. 32MB is also limiting. Really the fact that Sony was able to change from 4GB to 8GB was a lucky break due to market conditions. It was a gamble that paid off.

I was against the Esram solution for the start because it means.
GPU would be significantly weaker
Lower Yields
Generally Runs hotter

All my engineering fears came to life. The GPU is significantly weaker, we have reports of lower yields because more PS4 units are available, and it must run hot as it needs and external power brick and the system itself is bigger than the PS4.


Now as you know with PC gaming. The GPU makes a huge difference. On the same CPU you could get 50% more gaming performance from the GPU alone. Because the Esram solution took up precious die space. That is exactly what happened. The PS4 has a much faster on-board GPU as it didn't have to sacrifice the space for it.


CPU wise the PS4 is slightly better. This is an insignificant win as because the GPU will not be bottle necked on either CPU.


Knowing the significant hardware differences between the two. Microsoft is trying to mask it with the power of the cloud. Which is funny because Sony has been using the cloud for years with MMO's. Gaika is owned by Sony and has so many patents it'd make your eyes spin. The cloud improving gaming performance is a joke. The technology is not there it's all PR talk outside of streaming games.

Sony and a couple 3rd party developers are saying if you compare games side by side they will run smoother and look better on the PS4. Sony even recommends you compare third party games visually before you buy. That's how secure they are.


Then we had the E3 showing. Developers were busted when people took pictures that there games running on Hewlett Packard high end computers to make them look better. With an unknown CPU be cooled by Cosair H100 and a 700 series GTX card. All while the PS4's side were running on PS4 development kits. This shows developers are programming for the PC first as they have similar architecture then tailoring it to the systems from their. This is probably why the PS4 games will always look greater. Similar architecture but with more power.

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