It’s Durango vs Orbis: The Head to Toe Analysis.

Few weeks back we heard about the upcoming gaming consoles from Sony and Microsoft, where there were a lot of speculations and rumors about their features. So, here we have the both next-generation gaming consoles, Orbis and Durango respectively. Let’s do a quick head to toe analysis of both, finding what they have to offer and which one is better off.

An interesting fact about Durango and Orbis is that both consoles are very much similar. And that’s because Sony and Microsoft faced the exact same challenges and went to the same people to find the solution, resulting in very similar end-products. Talking about the similarities, both consoles feature same CPU – an eight-core AMD offering running at 1.6GHz and based on its forthcoming low-power, high-performance architecture, Jaguar.

RAM/ Bandwidth

Durango ships with 8GB RAM (with 6.5 GB for games) unlike 4GB RAM (3.5 GB for games) of Sony Orbis. A winner at this point, Microsoft’s hopes for the new Xbox to be more than just a games machine. While there are rumors of 6GB/8GB upgrades to Orbis, we believe it is unlikely to happen.

However, considering the Orbis has a non-split memory structure and a RAM that will not need a lot of optimization from developers, we could see games running better on the system until developers can learn how to take advantage of the Durango RAM structure properly.

CPU

As mentioned above, both Durango and Orbis run on 8 core CPU at 1.6 Ghz. While Orbis is rumored to be shipping with a shared 512MB L2 cache and on the other hand the Durango will have 4MB L2 cache.

Direct X 11 vs. LibGCM

With Orbis, Sony is using a new variant of the LibGCM library, which was also used in PS3 and Vita. On the other hand, Durango utilizes enhanced Direct X 11, the customized version of which, i.e., DX9, was utilized by 360.

Apps

Durango has allocated 1.5 GB to the operating system, so one can expect more social applications on the Durango during its life time. Sony on the other hand is allocating 0.5 GB to the OS, which should run a decent number of applications.

The Verdict

Taking a look at overall features of both gaming consoles, Orbis looks more powerful and more games-focused design. But Microsoft has livened up to its plans for the Xbox hardware extending beyond gaming, making it a next-gen media centre. We may need to wait for a few days more and get our hands of real consoles to answer which one is a better baby.

Looking at what we know about the Durango (Xbox720) it also has gobs of power planned for general-computing and entertainment, lending further credence to the hypothesis that Microsoft is making a move for the premium entertainment market–not unexpected with Xbox positioned in the living room so well already. The Orbis also shows some promise with the Sony Gaikai buy and the possibility this means inherent video/media streaming on the PS4.