While rumors have indicated that there might be a power difference of around 30 percent between the upcoming next-generation consoles – the PS6 and Microsoft’s Project Helix – a new report by Moore’s Law is Dead indicates that this difference will end up becoming more of a “frame rate” war between the platforms. When it comes to image quality, however, both consoles are expected to be on par with each other.
In a video analyzing the potential performance of the PS6 and Project Helix based on the hardware specifications that have been leaked so far, Moore’s Law is Dead drew comparisons like Project Helix having 70 compute units, compared to the PS6’s 54. Similarly, there is also some speculation on their respective processors’ clock speeds.
The YouTuber brought up the fact that, in the current console generation, while Xbox Series X has “better compute” than the PS5, Sony’s console was helped by the fact that it has better cooling systems, allowing it to run at higher speeds for longer times before heat becomes an issue. He noted that the difference between the two consoles in terms of horsepower came down to arguing about the Xbox Series X’s 12.1 teraFLOPS versus PS5’s 10.3 teraFLOPS.
“That’s a 30 percent difference. That’s a bigger teraFLOPS difference than last-gen; that’s notable,” said Moore’s Law is Dead when comparing the next-generation consoles. “But we don’t know the clock speeds. Maybe the XBOX Helix runs at 2.5 GHz, and the PS6 runs at 3 GHz. Then it’s pretty much a wash. Maybe it’s the other way around though. Maybe Sony wants to save on cooling, because I know it’s a 160-watt design; maybe Sony’s is 2.5 GHz and Microsoft’s is 3. In that scenario, Microsoft actually has a substantial win in compute.”
After discussing the differences in how the two next-generation consoles will handle memory bandwidth, he went on to note that “All I can tell you without knowing the clock [speeds] is that the bandwidth difference is smaller than last time, and the compute difference is a little larger. Net-on-net, it’s kind of similar to last-gen. And so, for me, that sounds like one of them is meant for 4K 144 [FPS], and one of them is made for 4K 60.”
Ultimately, Moore’s Law is Dead doesn’t believe the hardware differences between the PS6 and Project Helix will matter too much in the long run once games start coming out for them. Depending on the skill of developers and how much they can optimize for the software and hardware of the next-gen systems, it will largely come down to differences in frame rates. He also brought up the fact that consoles are typically used on displays that only go up to 120 Hz, which means that the PS6 wouldn’t lose out on much against Project Helix and its capability of higher frame rates due to having more compute units.
Sony hasn’t yet made any announcements regarding the PS6, and just about everything we might know about it largely comes from rumors. In case you’re interested, here are the biggest rumors you should know about. As for Project Helix, Microsoft has been talking about its next-generation console, noting that its ray tracing capabilities are well beyond what Xbox Series X/S is capable of.
