W3[Update] Since publishing our post, the interview with Ali Salehi has been removed from Vigiato due to personal reasons. Luckily, the interview has been archived and can still be accessed here.

I must say that Ali Salehi doesn't confirm the content of the interview anymore due to personal reasons. — . (@man4dead) April 6, 2020

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[Original story] In a new interview, Crytek rendering engineer Ali Salehi talks about the specs of the PS5 and Xbox Series X and developing for the next-gen consoles.

Speaking to Persian gaming website Vigiato (and translated by Twitter user @man4dead), the rendering engineer talked about the power difference between the upcoming consoles from Sony and Microsoft. A lot has been said and written about the specifications of both consoles over the past month. Theoretically, the Xbox Series X clearly has the advantage when it comes to raw computing power, but according to Crytek’s rendering engineer, not all is what it seems.

If Salehi is to be believed, developing for PS5 is extremely simple, something that PlayStation lead architect Mark Cerny has pointed out on various occasions, and reaching the console’s peak performance is easier than it is on the Series X.

"The developers are saying PS5 is the easiest console they have ever coded on to reach its peak performance”, he said. “Software-wise, coding for PS5 is extremely simple and has so many abilities that make the [developers] so free. In total, I can say PS5 is a better console."

While TFLOPs are important, reaching peak performance on the Series X will only be achievable under the most ideal and theoretical conditions. If all of the components inside Microsoft’s console can work together efficiently alongside the GPU, the series X can hit its peak performance of 12TFLOPs, but this just doesn’t seem to be possible.

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That's why you can't care much about these numbers.

But if all parts can work efficiently in Xbox Series X alongside its GPU, It can hit that number in practice, Which doesn't seem so possible. Beside all these, there's a software part too. — . (@man4dead) April 6, 2020

Developing for the Series X might be somewhat challenging, Salehi explains. One of the reasons for this is the console’s software, and another one is its use of two different RAM parts, differing in bandwidth.

The thing we saw in PCs, was DX12 and Vulkan. Without change in hardware, with change in the architecture of the software you can use the hardware better.

This is applicable to the consoles too. Sony runs PS5 on its own OS but Microsoft uses a custom version of Windows — . (@man4dead) April 6, 2020

According to Salehi, developers will want to use the higher-bandwidth as much as possible, which might cause some issues.

Because the the total amount of things we want to put in the fast part is so much that it may cause problems. And if we want to support 4k it will be another whole story.

So there will be somethings that will hold the gpu off. — . (@man4dead) April 6, 2020

The engineer was also asked about the difference in compute units between the PS5 and Xbox Series X. While the PS5’s GPU has less compute units than the Xbox Series X, the TFLOPs difference isn’t that big.

Therefore, despite the huge difference in CU count, They don't have that much of Tflops difference. An Interesting thing that one of IGN's journalists said. He said XSX is like a V8 motor and PS5 is like a V6 one turbo boosted to the max for best efficiency. — . (@man4dead) April 6, 2020

Despite having locked CPU and GPU frequencies, the Series X will only reach its full potential under the most ideal circumstances, whereas the PS5 will mostly work on its peak 10.28TFLOPs.

Than XSX. This will make the console work mostly on the 10.28 Tflops. But in XSX, since the other parts of the gpu work slower due to the lower clock speed, it actually works a lot at lower Tflops most often and reaches 12 only at ideal situations. — . (@man4dead) April 6, 2020

Quite an interesting take on the PS5 and Xbox Series X from the Crytek engineer. Last week, we already covered some quotes from Quantum League designer Balthazar Auger, who said that the raw power difference between the Xbox Series X and PS5 won't make that much of a difference for multiplatform titles as developers working those titles will be bound to the lowest common denominator.

Can you agree with Salehi on the Xbox Series X being bottlenecked by other components? Will it be easier to reach peak performance on the PS5? Please discuss below.