A lot of people are overlooking the fact the file IO takes MUCH longer the floating point ops. This seems to be a huge misconception between the the two systems. After writing a simple test on my computer with 1000000 floating point ops (using * as it's the slowest, and few optimized codes use /) and reading a file (newline char seperate file of int) of 1000000 ints, the floating point ops came to 34ms and the fileIO came to 555ms. If Sony's is IO speed is roughly twice what the XBSX is, or roughly half the time, the PS5 could perform Many more flops in the time that XBSX is still loading the file. I should also mention that the file I tested was not even in .obj format which would take much longer to parse; only a little bit longer if you thread. Meaning while rendering the same scene, the PS5 will have already have finished rendering by the time the XBSX has finished loading the file. With rough numbers, benefitting XBSX, the PS5 can load a file the file and preform 18M flops in the time that the XBSX can load the file and do 4M flops. However this does mean that at a certain point the XBSX can load a scene faster, but it'd be around 50 light sources with physics already accounted for (wouldn't be more than 1000000 ops).
Another thing people miss is that both consoles will have close to instantaneous seek time, meaning game sizes will stay about the same as (unlike HDDs) the developer won't have to put hundreds (literally) of copies of textures and models on the harddrive.
There are several considerations here, however. For one, 10GB of the XSX's memory has 112 GB/s faster throughput. Since storage will first need to load into RAM, this much faster space where visuals are stored will more than make up for the difference in I/O.
It's also a major assumption that the PS5 can achieve its theoretical speeds. It has been stated (and some devs I know have confirmed) that normal compute power sits at around 9TF for the PS5. It can boost, but it has to make sacrifices when it does so. The XSX is steady on pretty much all its measureables.
One thing MS stressed was that their storage solution was designed to stay cool enough that I/O bandwidth does not throttle downward. It is my understanding that the storage in the PS5 has a high theoretical capacity, but that even with a heat sink on the unit that performance degrades greatly over time, down to levels that are equal to or lower than what the XSX has.
This is really going to be the issue and, I've been told, may be why we'll see the PS5 delayed by at least 6 months because they have severe heat issues with the SSD and this causes data throughput issues. Engineering on the Xbox has been done for awhile and they aimed to deliver steady, predictable performance from all components. I've heard the XSX has been able to sustain its I/O speeds for days in their testing. While I've also heard that they haven't shown the PS5 off because they don't know how to cool it and their original form factor did not work to deliver performance.
They only put together their presentation for damage control, but they didn't tell you like MS did that their system could sustain its performance numbers over time.
The devs I work with have told me for a few months that they feel Sony really dropped the ball and felt that the PS5 would be delayed. Now they can pin the delay on the Coronavirus crisis, but that will be hard if MS can deliver the XSX at the end of the year.
We'll have to see when they reveal the look and allow outside testing and benchmarking. MS has already done that, just with NDAs. From what I hear, Sony has not and many of their partners are quietly concerned - though they won't say that publicly.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram