Nvidia’s presentation at a GDC (Gamers Developer Conference) 2013 keynote speech showed some interesting things in terms of console vs PC graphics. The graph Nvidia produced tracks the history of PC and Console GPU performance through time. The graph shows that the first Xbox console was twice as powerful as the best GeForce 3 Series graphics card on the market. This was rapidly corrected within about two years. Five years later and the Xbox 360 is released which again leapfrogs slightly over the GeForce 7800 series of graphics cards. However, it takes just less than a year this time for the PC Graphics market to overtake. Fast forward again another 8 years and the PS4 and Xbox 720 come onto the scene. The Nvidia GTX Titan is now 3 times more powerful than the consoles.
What this shows is a couple of things. First is that the PC market is accelerating away from the console market in terms of performance. We can see that the console is no longer leapfrogging the PC platform. However, the most important thing that this graph shows, is that the PlayStation 4 is reportedly better than the Xbox 720 in terms of graphics performance. We don’t actually know the specific details of this, or where Nvidia got their data from but if this is true it is an interesting development to say the least. It has been speculated that the Xbox 720 has been put just below because they don’t actually know the specifications of the Xbox 720 so it is a conservative estimate if you like. The only indications we have so far in terms of comparative performance between the two is of Jon Peddie Research who said the next generation Xbox will be a little closer to the casual in terms of gaming performance when compared to the PS4.
What are your thoughts on the PS4 being faster than the next-gen Xbox? Do you think it is realistic? Let us know your thoughts.
The fact that consoles are no longer going to be more powerful than current-gen PC graphics is the most important thing this graph shows – the comparative performance of PS4 vs Xbox 720 is almost irrelevant!