Devil May Cry V: Special Edition is the first game that can be accurately used to compare features across both Xbox Series X and the new PS5 consoles.
As you already know the Xbox Series X has already graced us with its presence and the PS5 is set to launch today.
Devil May Cry V: Special Edition is one of only a handful of games that make use of both new consoles, which means that it can be used to compare features between the two next-gen consoles.
Digital Foundry has tested the game for just such a comparison and some of the findings might actually surprise you.
Such findings include that despite the Xbox Series X’s better performance on paper the real-world gap is larger in some areas and smaller in others.
First, of all we should mention that despite Capcom’s earlier statement that the Xbox Series X would not ship with ray tracing support, both consoles come with the exact same features across the board, RT included.
Devil May Cry V features several rendering modes and these all seem to be identical between both systems.
We have several rendering modes available such as a standard ‘normal’ native 4K option, ray traced quality, and performance modes, plus a high frame-rate mode aimed at 120Hz gaming. Also, when run on a 120Hz screen, all modes operate with an unlocked frame-rate, this means that every game variation has the potential to break the 60fps barrier. In other words, this is as close to the benchmark as is possible.
In the game’s normal mode, both the consoles are tasked with rendering the game at a native 4K with an unlocked frame rate. In this situation, both of the consoles performed well and had only minor dips below 60 fps. It was also here that the Xbox Series X had its largest performance lead, with an average of 8% more fps than the PS5.
This is where things started to get strange with the High Frame Rate mode, which knocks the resolution down to 1080p to try to push the frame rate up to 120fps.
It was found out that in reality, neither of the consoles can reach 120fps, with both of them hovering around 100fps. The PS5 curiously manages to be notably faster in most of the tested gameplay scenarios. Digital Foundry seems to think this is because of some unknown API bottleneck.
They found that the other two visual modes enable rat tracing, with either performance or quality in mind.
When Performance is selected the resolution is still at 1080p, with both consoles performing in a similar fashion.
The Xbox Series X was found to feature some advantages but this gets reduced when compared to Normal mode.
When Quality was selected, they found that the resolution was knocked back up to 4K, and ray tracing really took a toll and the game barely hit 60fps at this point.
In this regard, the PS5 again managed to best the Xbox Series X, but overall, they noted that the difference between the two consoles is usually as small as 2-3 fps.
This initial test has given us some food for thought and surprises about the overall performance of each console in-game that only experience could render. Time will tell us a lot more about the performance differences of these two next-gen consoles as more and more exclusives are coming our way soon.