PS5 Game Boost vs Xbox Series X FPS Boost: which plays your old games best?

PS5 Game Boost vs Xbox Series X FPS Boost: which plays your onetime games best?

(Image credit: Microsoft/Sony)

With the PS5 and Xbox Series X placing a greater accent on improving erstwhile games, both Microsoft'southward FPS Heave and Sony's Game Boost have been revolutionary in enhancing older games. Consumers can expect a larger library of improved experiences, some of which could be transformative depending on the game.

On Xbox, the first two batches showed promise, especially considering information technology required little-to-no developer intervention. Unfortunately, the 3rd batch of 74 games highlighted the feature'southward limitations, often requiring dramatic resolution and settings sacrifices to boost performance.

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While Sony doesn't take this feature, it has been rolling out framerate patches to PS4 games running nether a backwards compatibility layer. This approach has its own drawbacks, even so, limiting the number of games consumers can await. Given the two different approaches to boosting concluding-gen games, how do the PS5 and Xbox Series X compare in performance?

Examining Xbox Series X FPS Boost

FPS Boost rolled out in Feb with New Super Lucky'south Tale, Far Cry four, Sniper Elite four, UFC 4 and Scout Dogs 2. The following month brought Dishonored: Definitive Edition, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition, Fallout 4, Fallout 76 and Casualty. Today, FPS Heave supports 97 games. How did such a huge list amass within a three month bridge?

This gets to the heart of FPS Boost'due south "magic," as some might call information technology. Microsoft often partners with developers to ensure stable operation without unintended bugs, simply all engineering piece of work is handled by the Microsoft backwards compatibility team on a platform level. Co-ordinate to Digital Foundry'southward chat with Jason Ronald, FPS Boost works by sending data from Direct3D, the console's graphics API, to the game faster than it can recognize what's happening. Through this method, game lawmaking thinks information technology'southward running at its original frame charge per unit target.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider — (Image credit: Square Enix)

This sounded like a breakthrough as information technology could allow a huge range of improved titles. With the electric current listing of games, withal, FPS Heave's limitations are apparent. Without modifying game lawmaking, these backwards uniform titles are limited in terms of how much of the platform's features and efficiencies can be taken reward of. Considering of this, quite a few games have FPS Boost turned off by default on Series Ten. Some noteworthy examples include Battlefield 1, Battlefield 5, and Titanfall ii. These are all Xbox One X enhanced games that apply dynamic resolution scalers with a 4K (or 6K in Titanfall two's case) ceiling and a 60 frames per second target. In standard backwards compatibility, Serial 10 offers more than stable performance than One 10 while running at the upper bounds of the DRS range. DRS, or dynamic resolution scaling, is a technique that adjusts resolution based on rendering load. Native resolution drops dynamically to forbid or minimize frame rate drops.

This excellence diminishes when yous enable FPS Boost. Past targeting 120fps, Serial Ten's raw grunt under a backwards compatibility layer can only practise so much. Considering no code is beingness modified, the only other option to brand the framerate boost possible is dropping to the original Xbox 1'due south settings. This is where the feature falls apart. Playing online shooters at 120fps is keen, but resorting to sub-1080p resolutions with 2013 console settings on the 2020 premium console doesn't sound so premium.

There are other curiosities such as Gears of State of war 4. FPS Heave only applies to Series Southward, which can now run it at 1080p 60fps, whereas the 1 10 already had that mode in identify. Ane would hope Series X would enable FPS Heave in the graphics mode like Shadow of The Tomb Raider and UFC 4, but that's not the case. Because Gears 5'south impressive dedicated Series X patch, Gears of State of war iv should be able to run at 4K at a locked 60fps, merely doing so would require touching lawmaking. This is a big ask of The Coalition, as the team is knee joint-deep into transitioning workflow to Unreal Engine 5 while supporting Gears 5's multiplayer.

Examining PS5 Game Boost Patches

To this mean solar day, Days Gone, Ghost of Tsushima, Ratchet and Clank, The Last of Us: Part 2 and God of War take gotten 60fps updates on PlayStation 5. This is a much more than anemic listing than its competitor despite introducing some of these upgrades months before FPS Heave launched.

On a positive notation, it'due south reliable. None of Sony's framerate boosted games require visual sacrifices. There are ii reasons for this — the generational jump and applied science efforts.

The hardware discrepancy betwixt PS4 Pro and PS5 is greater than that of the jump from Xbox 1 X to Series X. PS4 Pro was a retention bandwidth-constrained automobile. This oftentimes limited its resolution and settings, with Ane X sometimes getting higher resolution texture packs not offered on Pro on top of the college rendering resolution. Because of this, running raw Pro lawmaking on a PS5 volition usually run into more than of a performance uptick than One X lawmaking on Series X. Beyond this, the aforementioned patches were handled by the developers themselves, modifying lawmaking to remove the framerate caps and making optimizations to ensure the smoothest experience possible.

Ghost of Tsushima review — (Image credit: Sony)

Games that used checkerboard rendering or similar techniques actually benefit from improved prototype quality on PS5 despite developers not changing the resolution.

Because checkerboard rendering and Insomniac's temporal injection work by using information from previous frames, at 30 frames per second, there's less information to work with. Without getting too technical, Temporal injection and checkerboard rendering typically render one-half of the pixels each frame, using different methods to achieve final output resolution. Checkerboard rendering uses an alternate pattern between frames to fill-in the spots whereas temporal injection accumulates information from previous frames to inject into the current frame. A game's return time might also occasionally go over or under budget, which will lead to artifacts or ghosting. With more temporal data, every game on Sony's boosted list except The Last of Us Part 2, which opted for straightforward 1440p rendering, gets a minor upgrade to image stability.

Framerates are as locked as they can exist, too. Days Gone is the most prone to dropping due to its big globe with more than dynamic elements than Ghost of Tsushima, equally shown in this frame rate test, but it still runs extremely well. Sony'southward games are as locked to frame rate targets as you tin expect a console game to.

Xbox Serial X FPS Heave vs PS5 Game Heave: verdict

Sony'southward arroyo to framerate intervention is more reliable for the consumer as it results in near-flawless operation without visual losses. Unfortunately, because of the resources required, you won't see many more than PlayStation iv hits receive this treatment. With the leaked Uncharted 4 PC port, nosotros'd love to see a framerate patch for that. Horizon: Zero Dawn would be some other welcome add-on, considering its existing PC port, but Guerilla is decorated with full-scale Horizon: Forbidden W development.

Microsoft's FPS Heave, on the other manus, allows for more games to see performance upticks. The downside comes from the limited admission to game code. If Microsoft determines a game isn't stable enough, the only options are to not whorl out FPS Boost at all or revert to base Xbox One code. Microsoft can't find a resolution/settings middle-ground betwixt Xbox One and Xbox One X. The Xbox state of affairs is made confusing due to how inconsistent its sacrifices are. Prey, UFC 4, Skyrim, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider retain Xbox 1 X enhancements at 60 frames per second, but Canticle cuts downwards to Xbox 1'south dynamic 900p for 60fps as an example.

Neither approach is inherently better. Both are as successful and disappointing for different reasons. When FPS Boost works as expected, it soars past Sony's closest equivalent. Because of Ane 10's i.eight teraflop advantage over PS4 Pro, oftentimes resulting in up of 2.25x's the resolution in best cases, multiplatform games that get FPS Boost without losing enhancements make the Pro versions experience obsolete. It'south a shame it doesn't work this way often. Of the 97 boosted games, twenty have it off by default, signifying a reversion to original Xbox One code.

It's too a shame Sony doesn't have a dedicated squad that could piece of work on more framerate patches for PS5. While Sony can't exercise much to mitigate the issue short of altering its business concern strategy to focus more on backwards compatibility, Microsoft is in position to implement the simplest solution. Not anybody is equally sensitive to framerate drops, meaning Microsoft should offer the option of keeping Xbox I X settings with FPS Boost enabled. Implementing this user choice would make FPS Heave the clear winner.

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David loves playing discussing games every bit much every bit he loves playing them. When he'south not invested in a 200+ RPG, he'southward probably watching a ii 60 minutes video essay on an obscure game. He also has an unhealthy obsession with brownies.