Sony PlayStation, which is better known as Sony PS is one of the all-time favorite gaming consoles offered by Sony Inc. In fact, PS and Microsoft Xbox is the revered gaming consoles offered for a long time, and because of that it has become a downright niche market for Sony and Microsoft. Their battle against one another is not as fast paced as the smartphone wars or even laptop or gaming PC wars. Instead, the improvements provided for these gaming consoles were stale. Both Xbox 360 and PS3 were revealed in 2005, and none has seen a major upgrade apart from upgrades to accessories. Of course, Microsoft has introduced a game changing accessory called Microsoft Kinect, which has boosted the sales of Xbox 360. They also released a slightly changed version of Xbox 360 in 2010 which wasn’t supposed to be a major upgrade. So technically speaking, none of these two main gaming consoles have been updated since 2005. Sony intends to change this by revealing their new Sony PlayStation 4, and we intend to make a comparison out of it.
Before we start with this comparison, we need to understand that PS is actually a gaming console and not a gaming PC. As such, directly comparing PS’s components with gaming PC’s component can be quite misleading as per actual performance. While a gaming PC is more versatile and capable of running numerous multiple processes at once, a gaming console would typical run 1 to 5 processes at once and hence is optimized in that aspect. Sony PS4 denotes a significant leap compared to Sony PS3 in terms of performance. If the evolution of these devices tells us anything, we can surely deduct that these gaming consoles are made to last a long time. All the major new games of 2012 have a PS3 version which was released in 2005. If we had a gaming PC setup in 2005, we wouldn’t have the slightest chance of playing the newest games in 2012 on the same machine, and that screams something at us. The developers take special care in making their games work in PS, so we have the element of sustainability if we buy a gaming console. There are plenty of other things you can do with PS as well such as view photos, play multiplayer online games, browse internet and watch 1080p BR movies. These were available even in PS3 and, with the additional elements in PS4, your entertainment turns out to be in a whole new level. As per connectivity options, PS4 offers a better Wi-Fi connectivity and faster Blue Ray rom. Sony PS3 used to have a Blue Ray 2x drive which was a bottleneck for many purposes. On the contrary, PS4 features 6x BR drive which will negate that bottleneck and provide a boost.
Sony PS4 also comes with USB 3.0 ports, as opposed to the USB 2.0 ports in PS3. This would mean faster transfer speeds from external devices and now you can easily hook up your external hard drive and use it with your PS4 at ease. USB 3.0 also can transfer up to 80% more power indicating that you can charge your USB powered accessories faster; especially your DualShock controller. As we are on the topic, PS4 comes with a new DualShock controller which is code named as DualShock 4 or DS4 accordingly. It has a heftier battery, so we are assuming it would consume more power than its predecessor DS3 in PS3. Like I mentioned earlier, Sony PS4 also offers a better Wi-Fi connection enabling faster browsing feeds and better latency on the online game play. Sony PS4 also supports Bluetooth v2.1, and we are hoping Sony PS4 would come with the support for the Sony One Touch Sharing feature they demonstrated when they revealed Sony Xperia Z. It would be an awesome addition to have in your PlayStation.
If we get down to more technical details, Sony PS4 will be powered by 8 cores AMD Jaguar processor along with AMD Radeon Graphics Core Next Engine in contrast to the Cell Broadband CPU and RSX Reality Synthesizer GPU from Nvidia that is included in Sony PS3. It’s both a performance leap as well as a usability lead we will turn to like. The RAM has got a significant boost as well having a beefy 8GB GDDR5 version as opposed to the 256MB GDDR3 VRAM PS3 had. That would sum up the major hardware revisions available in PS4 before we go down to a side by side comparison.
A Brief Comparison Between Sony PS3 and PS43
• Sony PS4 has eight cores x86 AMD Jaguar Processor while Sony PS3 has 3.2GHz Cell Broadband Engine.
• Sony PS4 has AMD Radeon Graphics Core Next Engine while Sony PS3 has RSX Reality Synthesizer from NVidia.
• Sony PS4 has beefy 8 GB of GDDR5 RAM while Sony PS3 has 256 MB of GDDR3 VRAM.
• Sony PS4 features USB 3.0 and Bluetooth v2.1 while Sony PS3 features USB 2.0 and Bluetooth 2.0.
• Sony PS4 features a faster Wi-Fi connectivity with Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n while Sony PS3 features Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g.
• Sony PS4 comes with a new DualShock 4 controller while Sony PS3 is offered with DualShock 3 controller.
Conclusion
We have waited for an upgrade for Sony PS3 for more than seven years, and that infers the conclusion of this comparison implicitly. Obviously, Sony PS4 offers a huge leap of performance compared to the Sony PS3 and also it offers better connectivity options along with a brand new controller. These features are lucrative enough for you to invest in a PlayStation 4 from Sony, but we are also hoping Sony to integrate their One Touch Sharing feature and if Sony does that, PS4 will be more versatile than ever. Hence to go for Sony PS3 or to go for Sony PS4 is not a question; obviously your choice would be Sony PS4. However, a potential question you might want to pose is to go for Sony PS4 or to go for a high end gaming PC. Like I pointed out in the introduction, a gaming PC and a gaming console are two things. We could not have used the same gaming PC we setup in 2005 as opposed to using the same PS3 released in 2005. As such, we can only assume that the sustainability factor of Sony PS4 would be as much as PS3 and hence certainly it would be beneficial to keep a PS4 instead of a high end gaming PC if you only want to game. However, if you want a multi-purpose power horse, I think you’ll be better left with a high end gaming PC than Sony PS4 because a Sony PS4 cannot emulate your typical PC power house and eventually you are bound to get frustrated. One good rule of thumb to remember is that Sony PS4 is extremely good for gaming and entertainment purposes, but do not consider it as a general purpose computer.