Xbox One vs PlayStation 4 Specs & Features: Who Has the Better Hardware?

Now that Microsoft has revealed its next-gen console, the Xbox One, discussion has turned to whether it's superior to Sony's PlayStation 4. Many have been comparing the lineup of launch titles or the peripheral features, but how do the consoles stack up on a technical level?

Both devices will utilize a Blu-ray optical drive, a feature that gave the PlayStation 3 an edge toward the end of the last console cycle. In addition, both of them will also feature an internal hard drive, allowing for game installations. The Xbox will weigh in at 500GB, while the PlayStation's capacity has not been announced.

Both consoles will use 8 GB of RAM, however, this is where the first major difference can be found. The Xbox One will use GDDR3 RAM, while the PlayStation 4 will have GDDR5.

This presents a two-generation gap in the system memory. To put it into numbers, the PlayStation 4 will have a maximum memory bandwidth of 176 GB per second, while the Xbox One will be capped at 68.3 GB per second.

To widen the divide even more, the Xbox One will dedicate 3GB of its memory to run three simultaneous operating systems. This will allow the Xbox to seamlessly transition between apps, but will also limit the console to having no more than 5GB of RAM available for gaming.

The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One will both run on an 8-core AMD x86-64 processor. The PlayStation 4's processor will be based on the upcoming Jaguar CPU architecture from AMD.

Not many details have been released about either of the components, so it is difficult to draw comparisons at this time.

But the GPU components represent a significant difference. The Xbox One will utilize 12 compute units, giving it a theoretical peak performance power of 1.23 TFLOPS.

The PlayStation 4 meanwhile will feature 18 compute units, bringing its theoretical peak up to 1.84 TFLOPS.

In addition, the PlayStation 4 will feature a secondary chip that will handle all of the downloading, uploading and social gameplay tasks, freeing up all of the computing power for gaming. In essence, it will allow Sony to handle these processes in the background without effecting game performance, or even while the console is in sleep mode. Microsoft has not yet announced if it has developed a similar technology.

Obviously both consoles will support HD resolutions, but in terms of 4K, early reports indicate that Sony's may not be able to read quad-layer 100 GB Blu-ray discs. The console will support videos and photos in the 4K resolution, but will likely not be able to render games beyond 1080p.

Microsoft meanwhile has stated that "there's no hardware restriction" for running games at a 4K resolution, although they have not revealed what tech they have implemented to support that.

In less interesting comparisons, the Xbox One will only feature HDMI input and output, while the PlayStation 4 will allow for HDMI, analog and optical S/PDIF connections.

Both consoles will also ship with a motion detection peripheral—PlayStation Eye from Sony and the Kinect 2.0 from Microsoft. Microsoft's will not be optional to use, however, as the console has been designed around its use.

All in all, on a technical level at least, the hardware in the PlayStation 4 is at least a step ahead of the Xbox One. The PlayStation 4 features a much more powerful GPU and a more future-proofed RAM setup. In addition, Microsoft's OS memory needs, coupled with Sony's proprietary download/upload/share chip, continues to broaden the gap.

To be fair, neither console is available to the public for strenuous testing and we only have the released numbers to go on. Likewise, the functionality of the consoles' peripherals and controllers will be a big deciding factor, as well as for the price point and exclusive games.

We'll hopefully find out more at E3 in two weeks.