The RTX 30 made the PS5 and Xbox Series X “obsolete”.

The presentation of the RTX 30 exceeded all of our expectations. From the information that appeared and in all the renderings with details of the Ampere architecture at the silicon level, I was convinced that the jump in raw power would be very large compared to the RTX 20 series, but that it would be it was really important in the new RT cores and tensor cores.

In the end, we weren’t wrong, but NVIDIA did Bend shading motors and in spite of all adversities to keep the configuration of one RT core per SM unit and four tensor cores per SM unit. As our advanced readers will know, this basis is the same that we saw in Turing, but that doesn’t mean we’ll find the same performance in ray tracing and artificial intelligence.

The RTX 30 uses second generation RT cores Double the rate of triangular intersections, add triangular interposition. and they ride Third generation tensor cores this doubles the math rate that works with sparse matrices. In simpler terms, the performance of ray tracing and workload related to artificial intelligence, inference, and deep learning has increased exponentially.

By applying the new generation RT cores and tensor cores, the RTX 30 can generate a frame with ray tracing and DLSS in just 6.7 ms. A GTX 1080 Ti, the clamping cores and RT cores are missing, would take 91 msand 12 ms if we remove ray tracing from the equation. It is impressive without a doubt.

The improvements that the new RTX 3090, RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 bring in terms of gross performance are huge, so they represent a huge leap over what we saw with the arrival of Pascal (GTX 10 series) . The RTX 3070 offers performance slightly better than an RTX 2080 Ti, the RTX 3080 doubles the performance of the RTX 2080 and the RTX 3090 exceeds TITAN RTX by 50%.

NVIDIA didn’t limit itself to performance though. The RTX 30 offer a complete ecosystem of next generation technologies This isn’t limited to ray tracing and smart rescaling, and by and large has exponents. RTX IO.

RTX IO technology allows the GPU to be used to speed up the workload when decompressing data from the SSD. So far, this task has been performed on the CPU and is so impactful that it can easily consume up to two full cores. By shifting the workload to the GPU The duty cycle is optimized and one of the most important bottlenecks game developers face today is almost completely eliminated.

Contrary to what Sony said at the time, The loading times are not lost, even with this major breakthrough. I have told you more than once before and as you can see I was not wrong, but it is evident that the difference has been enormous since then We’re going from 5 seconds to 1.5 seconds. If we look at the results with a traditional hard drive, the difference is huge.

NVIDIA dealt a heavy blow to PS5 and Xbox Series X with the RTX 30

So much so that we can say that made them “obsolete” before they even hit the market. I know this won’t appeal to die-hard PS5 and Xbox Series X fans, but it’s such an obvious and huge reality that it’s impossible not to see it.

Over the past few months we’ve seen a lot of rumors about both consoles, and lots too crazy information. It has been said that the PS5 and Xbox Series X would mount graphics cores at the level of an RTX 2080 Ti, packed with technology not yet available on PC. that could move games in 8Kthat they would work with ray tracing with no issues and that 4K and 60 FPS would be the new norm, although in many cases we would see 4K and 120 FPS.

All of this misinformation created a huge bubble that gradually starts to explode. A few months ago we shared an article with you on how to find the approximate equivalent of the PS5 GPU and Xbox Series X GPU. Our conclusion was very clear. The first offers half-way performance between RTX 2060 and RTX 2060 Super, while the second will be more in the league of RTX 2070-RTX 2070 Super.

In terms of gross performance, we already assumed a significantly lower base than the RTX 2080 Ti. But what about RDNA 2’s own technologies? With that in mind, we also find another dose of reality that punctures that bubble a little more.

AMD’s RDNA architecture The extended functions of DirectX 12 Ultimate are missingIt does not speed up the hardware ray tracing function and does not support intelligent rescaling technology. All of these technologies are supported by the NVIDIA RTX 20 series, which has been in the market since 2018. Yes, since two years ago.

With the release of the RDNA 2 architecture, AMD will fully support DirectX 12 Ultimate The integration of RT cores in the texturing units accelerates the hardware ray tracing function. We’ll have to see what level of performance it can offer, but as I told you at the time after seeing the Minecraft RTX result on Xbox Series X, the predictions are not good at all.

Unless AMD pulls something completely revolutionary and unexpected out of its hat, RDNA 2 GPUs will be at best It is on par with the RTX 20 series in terms of advanced features and support for new technologies. This doesn’t mean they can’t compete with the RTX 30 in terms of raw performance, but as we saw recently in this article, NVIDIA is clearly going to stay at the top.

We must also keep in mind that, according to one of Sony’s key engineers, the console PS5 does not have all of the features of the RDNA 2 architecture. We can say that it uses RDNA 1.5 or RDNA 1.8 or an incomplete version of RDNA 2, whatever you want to call it, as the important thing is not the name, but the fact that a new generation console has key functions within the new Generation is missing at least according to the comments of the named engineer.

In terms of hardware, the Xbox Series X looks better than the PS5. I’ve said it before and confirm again, but games like The Medium confirm it The generation leap will be far below expectations.

The title works in resolution 4K at 30 FPS, and yet Unclear if you’re actually using ray tracing, as the official website for Xbox Series X. removed all references to such technology at the timeThe same goes for the section dedicated to the game in the Microsoft Store. I don’t think it’s a coincidence, and I don’t think Microsoft removed one of the most interesting technologies from the game for no good reason.

Processor, memory and storage unit: an innovation that already existed in the PC

Someone could tell me that next generation consoles have a very balanced design at the CPU and GPU level and that the unified memory architecture has its advantages, but they are compelling arguments for it They are nowhere near the weight they were when the first rumors began on PS5 and Xbox Series X.

The Ryzen 3000 processors, based on Zen 2 that we use in PCs, offer much higher performance than the semi-custom Zen 2 CPUs that make up the PS5 and Xbox X Series. two big reasons this helps us to understand:

• The Zen 2 processor used by PS5 and Xbox Series X only has 8 MB L3 cacheWhile a Ryzen 7 3700X adds 32MB of L3 cache. Most cache of the second surpasses the monolithic core design of the former in terms of performance.
• The working frequencies of the PS5 and Xbox Series X processors only reach 3.5 and 3.6 GHz, each with 16 active threads. Zen 2 processors can maintain frequencies between 4.3 and 4.4 GHz.

It is important to note that in addition, if both consoles arrive, AMD will likely have already introduced the Ryzen 4000 processors based on Zen 3. A new generation that promises to improve Zen 2’s CPI by 15-20% and that will also have higher working frequencies.

If we look at the memory configuration, we find a significant jump compared to PS4 and Xbox One, but not compared to PC. PS5 and Xbox Series X have 16GB of unified GDDR6 designed for sharing between CPU and GPU data. This task is divided between RAM and VRAM memory on the PC. The Xbox series will have 13.5 GB for free, but every current mid-range gaming PC already has 16 GB RAM and 8 GB VRAM. The difference is clear.

When it comes to the SSD, there is no question Sony has a high performing custom drive It was a success, but SSDs have been part of the PC world for yearsand with the introduction of the standard PCIE Gen4 and technologies like RTX IO, which will be compatible with the RTX 30 and theoretically the RTX 20 as well, this obvious advantage of the Sony console disappears completely.

It is clear that developers must support RTX IO in their games in order to use it, but since it is compatible with RTX IO Microsoft Direct Storage, and the This API is also used on Xbox Series X.We can assume that you will receive a great deal of support over the next few years.

Play in 4K at 30 FPS? The RTX 30 brings us straight to play in 8K

It’s very curious. We started talking about 8K gaming when we were speculating about the possible hardware of the PS5 and Xbox Series X, but we ended up Both consoles are 4K and 30 FPS systems and may not achieve this goal in all cases Without rescaling or dynamic resolution, a reality that affects the Sony console to a greater extent as it has a less powerful GPU.

There is no doubt that 8K is beyond the reach of next-gen consoles. An RTX 2080 Ti cannot move smoothly Death Stranding with 8K and maximum quality, but when we go back to DLSS 2.0 things change as we saw in this article. The presentation of the RTX 30 allowed us to confirm that gaming at this resolution is finally becoming a reality thanks to the greater performance of this new generation of NVIDIA The magic of DLSS 2.0 technology.

The top class RTX 30 series, the RTX 3090, has enough movement power Death Stranding smoothly in 8K and maximum quality without DLSS 2.0 and reaches 78 FPS with this active technology. In other games like Destiny 2, for example achieved 60 FPS in 8K without DLSS 2.0.

What can I say. Some said that the new generation consoles would take over the world, that they would turn the sector upside down, that they could move 8K games without any problems, that they would make loading times disappear, and all of that would only cost us 400 euros. To say that this ain’t nobody to believeand that will obviously not come true.

PS5 and Xbox Series X are a giant leap from two long-outdated consoles that have overwhelmed developers but will hit the market with a hardware configuration that in reality does not represent a revolution if we compare it to a mid-range gaming PC bought in the past two years.

With that in mind, it’s no wonder we’re already noticing symptoms that suggest it “premature” exhaustion, something that already happened to PS4 and Xbox One at the time. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is one of the best examples as it is a cartoon graphic type game that will be limited to 4K (we don’t know if native) and 30 FPS on PS5, and that is only works at 60 FPS with a lower resolution.

We’ll see how this new generation develops, but I’m pretty sure of that In two or three years, we’ll see improved versions of the PS5 and Xbox Series X.