Sony launched its PlayStation 4 (PS4) Pro last year, giving it a sizeable performance advantage over the Xbox One S. However, the Xbox One S boasted a few tricks of its own, providing slightly improved performance over the Xbox One in some situations, while also rocking a 4K UHD Blu-ray drive, giving it a bit of differentiation for those seeking to get into the 4K ecosystem.
With the Xbox One X on the horizon, here's a look at the numbers to help figure out how these consoles compare where it truly matters: performance.
| Console | Xbox One S | PS4 Pro | Xbox One X |
|---|---|---|---|
| Optical drive | 4K UHD Blu-ray | Blu-ray | 4K UHD Blu-ray |
| Hard drive | 500GB/1TB/2TB | 1TB | 1TB |
| Memory | 8GB DDR3 / 32MB ESRAM | 8GB GDDR5 | 12GB GDDR5 |
| Memory bandwidth | 64 GB/s (DDR3) / 219 GB/s (ESRAM) | 218 GB/s | 326 GB/s |
| CPU | eight Jaguar cores(1.75 GHz) | eight Jaguar cores(2.1 GHz) | eight custom"Jaguar-evolved"cores (2.3GHz) |
| GPU | 12 CUs (914MHz) | 36 CUs (911Mhz) | 40 CUs (1,172Mhz) |
| Teraflops | 1.3TF | 4.2TF | 6TF |
As you can see from the comparisons, the Xbox One X beats the PS4 in practically every way, giving it a sizeable performance advantage. Digital Foundry discovered that their 4K Forza demo, using Xbox One assets, was able to achieve a True 4K resolution with a 60 frames-per-second (FPS) frame rate, utilizing only 65 percent of Scorpio's raw potential.
The Xbox One X also features various other optimizations and refinements that coalesce to give it a general boost. Games that utilize DX12, including Battlefield 1 and Gears of War 4, should see further enhancements from the custom processors Microsoft baked into the Xbox One X's 'Scorpio' engine that dramatically reduce the amount of bandwidth required to process DX12 instructional information. According to Microsoft, similar hardware without these DX12 features would need double the processing power to facilitate DX12 rendering techniques. Microsoft has also boosted the amount of available RAM for developers from 8 GB to 9 GB, giving it even more of a boost over the PS4 Pro.
Game developers seeking to make visual enhancements to existing titles or future games should find themselves with a huge amount of graphical potential to play with, but it remains to be seen whether Microsoft can bring the software the Xbox ecosystem truly needs to catch up to Sony's sizeable lead. Time will tell, but one thing is for sure ...
The Xbox One X truly is a monster.
More: All about the Xbox One X
**Update June 20, 2017: We've updated this to reflect the latest information on the Xbox One X.
