No Mr Spencer, A $600 GPU Is 6 Times Faster Than The Xbox One

[UPDATED March 3rd, 2022 @ 6:45 PM EST] Phil Spencer has only tweeted an update retracting his argument regarding PC gamers having to spend 2X what the XBOX Ane costs to play at the aforementioned resolution.

@FlaxeLaxen No and the 2x comment is incorrect, my mistake. My point is from a performance/price standpoint console is a bang-up value.

— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) March 3, 2022

Original commodity as it was published on March 3rd 2022 at 04:45 PM EST :
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If you lot have read the title and you're not sure what we're talking about then let me fill you in. Phil Spencer is Microsoft's head of the XBOX division, he also happens to lead all of the company'southward teams for games and entertainment including Windows.

Phil Spencer Microsoft XBOX

In an attempt to court PC gamers in an interview on IGN'due south "Unlocked" prove Spencer made one of the most outrageous comments we've e'er seen him make about PC gaming. I'm going to quote the entirety of his answer and so our readers know nothing is being taken out of context. The question was "What do you lot want to say to the folks who, in light of Quantum Interruption coming to PC, say 'There's no reason to buy an Xbox One anymore if all this stuff is coming to PC?" and this is what Spencer had to say :

We call up that there'southward a fundamental departure between a gaming experience on a PC and a gaming experience on a televesion. And there's certain either people or time that you decide I desire to play in front of my idiot box. I want XBOX ONE to be absolutely the best panel gaming experience nosotros tin create. We're committed to that today and nosotros'll be committed to that for many years. Nosotros're also Microsoft we also wait at windows apparently as something that's critical to the success of the company. And frankly every bit the states the gaming group we look at windows and we think we can really have a positive bear on on Windows 10 every bit a gaming platform.

The argument that people requite me that "hey I'm merely going to sell my XBOX ONE and play all these games on my PC" I get the emotion around that argument. Bluntly from a financial standpoint, absolutely the most toll effective style to go play these games is to own an XBOX one - IGN interviewer interjects "yep it's a $300 box" . Yeah the graphics card alone is probably 2X what the XBOX [costs] to run at a like resolution. Just we as well know that people beloved gaming rigs and they've got them setup. So I look at that customer and absolutely I desire to bring XBOX alive. we're committed to bringing our biggest franchises with XBOX and windows, we've said that.

Doesn't mean necessarily that every game ends up on both platforms cause there could be some differences in merely the play infinite and how things play. What it'south going to mean for my console customers is more games to play. We're already seeing that, we're seeing more than developers focusing on XBOX as the ecosystem gets bigger. Then more people that they can sell their games to and can play. Means more people playing, more games nether evolution. I think those are actually strong things for the XBOX 1 community.

Hither'southward a time-stamped link to the interview in question which volition take you straight to Spencer'due south comment.

PC Gaming Is Nowhere Every bit Expensive As Spencer And IGN Are Portraying

Lets start with one of Spencer's earliest remarks in the quote to a higher place. He said that he thinks that at that place's a fundamental difference between a gaming feel on a PC and a gaming experience on a television. As if they're mutually exclusive, as if PC gamers can't plug their systems into televisions and play using whatever peripheral device they wish to play with, an XBOX controller even. I'll return to this annotate a bit later, but let'due south move over to Spencer'southward other eye brow raising remark.

Spencer claims that from a financial standpoint it's more cost effective to game on an XBOX ONE. He connected to say that the graphics card alone volition cost twice as much equally the XBOX ONE only to play on a similar resolution. Bluntly, as a PC gamer I found these claims, being touted equally truth, securely outraging. The level of ignorance that these remarks display is only appalling. Remarks that were fabricated by no other than the caput of Microsoft's gaming platforms and the homo responsible for catering to both XBOX I and PC gamers. A human that evidently has a deeply flawed and distorted understanding of what PC gaming is about.

Before I move on any further allow me quickly dispel both claims made by Spencer ,which is going to be incredibly easy for me to do thanks to the vast torso of technical data and testing that be done by endless respected tech outlets all over the web. Which adds fifty-fifty more than mystery as to how Spencer would even spread such misinformation. This is the same person that has seemingly tried to build bridges with the a PC gaming customs that'south growing always more disgruntled with Microsoft's disregard for their needs.

The same person that non long agone was quoted maxim :

Phil Spencer speaking with PCGamer.
"I expect at the piece of work we're doing on the platform as an enabler for u.s.a. becoming relevant in PC gaming..."
"I love investing more in PC games."

Phil Spencer speaking with Gamespot
"I tin can tell you definitively that our squad has never committed more resources to making Windows better for game developers and gamers, and that ways whatsoever gamer on Windows ten, regardless of storefront or device."

Phil Spencer speaking with PCGamer
I" don't want people to look at this as a passing fancy on our part of "can we just rapidly port some console games over to PC and hope to brand a little scrap of money?" It's not all virtually that. We are the Windows company, and ensuring that the Windows gaming ecosystem is potent is important, and that means supporting these features."

Permit's examine the starting time claim showtime, that the XBOX ONE is the most cost effective solution. This ane is hands refutable and we'll cite Digital Foundry'due south budget PC frame rate comparison to the XBOX ONE and the PS4 which you can watch hither or below. A build that features a $99 graphics card, 1 tertiary what the XBOX Ane costs. We'll also cite our own upkeep PC build which we published last twelvemonth. A build that'south fifty-fifty more powerful than Digital Foundry'southward upkeep PC. And a build that can be fabricated faster and cheaper today cheers to the continuous evolution in the PC hardware space.

No Mr. Spencer A GPU That Costs 2X The XBOX One Would Be Six Times More than Powerful

Digital Foundry's video alone easily dispels the second claim as well that you need to spend twice equally much as the XBOX Ane on a graphics carte alone to play on a similar resolution. But we're going to entertain this notion and actually expect at how $600 graphics cards that yous can buy today actually fare against the XBOX I. In fact, nosotros'll exercise i amend than that. We'll go down to $500 graphics cards. For $500 today you can buy an AMD Radeon R9 Nano, an 8.19 TERAFLOP/S graphics card. That's six times more computing ability than the XBOX ONE's integrated GPU which is rated at one.31 TERAFLOP/S.

Pitcairn Vs. Bonaire Comparison Chart
	Xbox One (Bonaire)	PS4 (Pitcairn)
Stream Processors (SP)	768	1152
Raster Operation Processor (ROP)	16	32
Texture Mapping Units (TMU)	48	72
GPU Clock	853	800
Retentivity Clock (Effective)	1066Mhz (2132 Mhz)	1375Mhz (5500 Mhz)
Retentivity Passenger vehicle	256	256
Rated Floating Point	1.31 TFLOPs	one.84 TFLOPs
Unified Retention	8GB DDR3	8GB GDDR5
eSRAM	32MB (192GB/s)	N/A

The XBOX 1's integrated GPU is based on the "Bonaire" graphics bit from AMD. Still there are several important differences between the Bonaire based graphics cards that were sold on the desktop under the R7 260X and HD 7790 brands and XBOX Ane'due south Bonaire. For 1 Bonaire features 896 GCN - Graphics Core Next - stream processors, the GPU inside the XBOX One has 128 units disable to improve manufacturing yields.

Secondly the panel version operates at a frequency that's ~twenty% below the desktop version which sold at a reference clock speed of 1100Mhz. Thirdly the console version has a tiny frame buffer that'due south limited to the integrated 32mb eSRAM cache. Making information technology significantly more complicated for developers to work with, an issue that developers have actually brought up on more than one occasion. A Pitcarin based R7 370 graphics menu which you tin purchase today for $130 on Amazon.com not only is faster than the XBOX ONE's graphics chip, just even faster than the Playstation 4'southward integrated GPU.

Allow's put these numbers into context and actually show you what a half dozen fold delta in performance ways. It means that a game that would usually run at 30 FPS 1080p on the XBOX ONE like Far Cry 4, an R9 Nano or equivalent card would allow you to savor at 5K on the PC. With five times the visual crispness and clarity.

In that location's certainly a fundamental difference between the gaming experience on a panel be it an XBOX One or Playstation 4 and the gaming experience on PC. Nosotros love it because we get to decide what framerate, what resolution and what graphical settings to play on. We love information technology because we get to dictate how we play our games and what peripherals to utilise. Nosotros love information technology considering the boundaries by which nosotros tin invest to ameliorate our experience are virtually limitless.

Nosotros love it considering when games become more demanding and nosotros demand more functioning we tin but upgrade a function and proceed going rather than terminate upward with an obsolete box. We love information technology because information technology pushes technology, games and the entire entire industry to strive for betterness. We love it considering it's ours, we mold it to be what nosotros desire information technology to exist, we construct it in our image. Information technology's not a one size fits all bargain, it's non about what the folks at Microsoft or Sony recall is best for me. It's virtually what I know is best for myself. Every gaming PC is unique because every gamer is unique. The PC gaming community is one of the most welcoming, diverse, well-informed and vocal. Gaming on the PC is an experience that'south all about liberty, choice and pushing the limits of what's imaginable and what's possible. Information technology'south an experience that I urge anyone and everyone who hasn't experienced to thoroughly examine.