Rumour: The PlayStation 4 Will Be 50% More Powerful Than The Xbox 720

Let the console fan boy wars begin! VG247 has been told that Sony’s PlayStation 4 has a 50% raw power advantage over Microsoft’s Xbox 720, according to information out of CES.

VG247 were told by developer sources, speaking after meetings at CES, that the next PlayStation, codenamed Orbis, will have a run-capability of 1.84 teraflops, while the next Xbox, codenamed Durango, will have a capability of 1.23 teraflops.

If the rumours are to be believed, then what this means it that the PlayStation 4 will have a 50% raw, computational power advantage over the Xbox 720.

But here’s where it gets interesting. While the PS4 will pack a bigger punch, the Xbox 720 has much more RAM, sitting at 8GB. According to the source, 3GB is reserved for the OS, apps and security, so games will make use of the remaining 4-5GB.

On the other hand, the source says that the PS4 will have 4Gb of RAM, of which 1Gb will be reserved for for OS, security and apps, and 3GB will be used for games.

Apparently, both the PS4 and Xbox 720 will be able to read 100Gb Blu-ray discs.

On graphical power, apparently the new Xbox is based on the Radeon HD 8770 GPU, while the new PlayStation has been rumoured to be built on AMD’s A10 APU.

Recently, it was claimed that the consoles will be unveiled in late March, with many speculating that they’ll actually be launched in November of this year.

VG247 believes that a number of media outlets are currently in possession of important documents relating to Durango from CES, and right now are working on some pretty big leak stories.

Right, dissecting this information, let me first clarify that the PlayStation 4 being more powerful than the Xbox 720 won’t really affect multi-platform titles, as they will be developed to the same standard across consoles. What it does mean, however, is that exclusive titles on the new PlayStation will be extremely interesting, and exciting, with regards to their capabilities. Hopefully the RAM isn’t a limitation, or there’s more than what’s rumoured. But it makes sense since exclusives are Sony’s strength.

I still feel that the consoles will only launch next year in 2014, especially given all the new releases we’re still anticipating. Then again, November could very well be realistic because we currently don’t have any idea whether the games scheduled for those windows are current or next-gen, and it’s sort of ambiguous  I think this year’s E3, happening in June as usual, will be extremely important for the current generation consoles, and if we’re going to learn anything about where they stand and what’s going on with next-gen, it will be at that expo. But all we can do right now is wait to find out more.