Xbox One vs. PlayStation 4: Which game console is best?

• By Jamie Lendino 

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It’s been two years since the Xbox One and PS4 debuted here in the U.S. In that time, they’ve both earned their keep as the bearer of current-generation game consoles. Microsoft realized some months after release that it needed a $400, price-competitive version with the PS4 that lacked the Kinect camera, and has since remedied what was once a bit of a lopsided, apples-and-oranges comparison.

Since then, both the Xbox One and PS4 have sold pretty well, with the edge on Sony’s side — although January’s $50 price cut for the Kinect-less Xbox One helped Microsoft catch up. Both companies have released various bundles that may throw the price advantage in one direction or the other depending on whether you want what’s in a given bundle. That said, how do the two consoles directly compare with each other? If you’re thinking about buying one of these two consoles–or just want ammunition for bragging rights–here’s what you need to know.

One note before we get started: Unlike all previous console generations, the PS4 and Xbox One are almost identical hardware-wise. With an x86 AMD APU at the heart of each, the Sony and Microsoft consoles are essentially PCs — and their hardware specs, and thus relative performance, can be compared in the same way you would compare two x86-based laptops or ARM-based Android tablets. Read on for our Xbox One-versus-PS4 hardware specs comparison.

Processor

For the PS4 and Xbox One back in 2013, Microsoft and Sony both opted for a semi-custom AMD APU — a 28nm part fabricated by TSMC that features an eight-core Jaguar CPU, paired with a Radeon 7000-series GPU. (We’ll discuss the GPU in the next section.) The PS4 and Xbox One CPUs are virtually identical, except the Xbox One is clocked at 1.75GHz, while the PS4 is at 1.6GHz.

The Jaguar CPU core itself isn’t particularly exciting. In PCs, Jaguar was used in AMD’s Kabini and Temash parts, which were aimed at older-generation laptops and tablets respectively. If you’re looking for a reasonable comparison, CPUs based on the Jaguar core are roughly comparable to Intel’s Bay Trail Atom. With eight cores (as opposed to two or four in a regular Kabini-Temash setup), both the PS4 and Xbox One have plenty of CPU power on tap, even if neither measures up to what you can get out of a PC. The large core count allows both consoles to excel at multitasking — important for modern living room and media center use cases. Ultimately, though, despite the Xbox One having a slightly faster CPU, it makes little difference to either console’s relative game performance.

Graphics

Again, by virtue of being an AMD APU, the Xbox One and PS4 GPUs are technologically similar — with the simple difference that the PS4 GPU is larger. In PC terms, the Xbox One has a GPU that’s similar to the entry-level Bonaire GPU in the older Radeon HD 7790, while the PS4 is outfitted with the midrange Pitcairn that can be found in the HD 7870. In numerical terms, the Xbox One GPU has 12 compute units (768 shader processors), while the PS4 has 18 compute units (1,152 shaders). The Xbox One is slightly ahead on GPU clock speed (853MHz vs. 800MHz for the PS4).

In short, the PS4’s GPU is — on paper — 50 percent more powerful than the Xbox One. The Xbox One’s slightly higher GPU clock speed ameliorates some of the difference, but really, the PS4’s 50-percent-higher compute unit count is a serious advantage for the Sony camp. Games on the PS4 have considerably more graphics power available, and that shows up in real-world comparisons. Beyond clock speeds and core counts, though both GPUs are identical. They’re both based on the Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture, and thus support OpenGL 4.3, OpenCL 1.2, and Direct3D 11.2.

RAM subsystem and bandwidth

Once we leave the CPU and GPU, the hardware specs of the Xbox One and PS4 begin to diverge, with the RAM being the most notable difference. While both consoles are outfitted with 8GB of RAM, the PS4 opts for 5500MHz GDDR5 RAM, while the Xbox One uses the more PC-like 2133MHz DDR3 RAM. This leads to a massive bandwidth advantage in favor of the PS4. The PS4’s CPU and GPU have 176GB/s of bandwidth to system RAM, while the Xbox One has just 68.3GB/s.

Xbox One SoC block diagram. The 32MB of ESRAM (four blocks of 8MB) is at the bottom.

In Microsoft’s favor, the Xbox One has 32MB of super-fast embedded SRAM (about 102GB/sec in each direction, for a total of 204GB/sec of bandwidth). When ESRAM is used properly, as a cache, then the huge difference in main system RAM bandwidth can be ameliorated.

Storage

Both the Xbox One and PS4 have 500GB internal hard disks and Blu-ray optical drives, and you can get 1TB drives for each one as options. The Xbox One’s 1TB drive is actually a hybrid, with a solid state portion in addition to a spinning disk in order to improve access speeds, although real-world tests don’t show up as big a difference as you would think on paper.

Gaming

It’s nice to be able to compare hardware specs in a straightforward fashion — especially if you’re a PlayStation fan, as it beats the Xbox One on paper. When it comes down to it, though, the specs mean little on their own: It’s always down to how game developers actually use the hardware. To begin with, games on the PS4, with its beefier GPU and simpler memory subsystem, are usually a bit smoother and more attractive. And we’ve seen this borne out in a variety of titles that show slightly worse performance on the Xbox One side, including recent titles like Metal Gear Solid V and Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. Even so, both consoles deliver stellar graphics, especially if you’re coming from an older-generation console.

Despite the resolution difference and upscaling, there is visually not as much difference between the Xbox One and PS4. By virtue of being based on the same GPU architecture, games on both consoles will look similar — the same lighting, the same textures, the same smoke, and so on. If you are playing games from a reasonable distance — say, 10 feet — you are unlikely to see too much difference between the consoles. Nonetheless, purists will want the PS4 for its more consistent 1080p output and, on occasion, higher frame rates.

Gaming and Online Services

The other differences between the two consoles are well known at this point, such as the controller design — the PS4 clearly has the edge here — and the available games. The biggest, like Grand Theft Auto 5, Metal Gear Solid V, and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, are usually cross platform, but there are exceptions. Both systems have some compelling exclusives. Notable exclusives on the Sony side include Until Dawn, Dragon Quest Heroes, Bloodborne, and Infamous: Second Son, while the Xbox One has Halo 5: Guardians, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and Forza Horizon 2. The PS4 does much better on the indie game side, though, which is a key advantage.

Both models also do well as general-purpose entertainment devices. The Xbox One remains the better media set-top box replacement, thanks to its HDMI passthrough and live television capabilities, but most buyer’s don’t care for that, and the Ps4 has certainly caught up on the streaming service front. You can get premium Xbox Live Gold and PS Plus subscriptions for $60 and $50 per year, respectively.

Overall, the Sony PlayStation 4 remains our favorite two years later, thanks to its slight price advantage and better controller. But the games are the thing: If there’s an exclusive or two that you’re just dying to play, it’s better you buy that particular console; the differences in hardware just aren’t important enough here.

What do you think? Do you prefer the PS4 or the Xbox One? Let us know in the comments below — and please keep things civil. We know things get pretty passionate about these two systems

How to send and receive encrypted email for free

• By Graham Templeton 

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So you want to send an encrypted email. You criminal, you.

First, it’s necessary to make a few basic points. Programs like Outlook and services like Gmail will talk about offering “encrypted” email to their users, and they certainly do, but that’s not what we’re talking about. Their encryption keeps your data safe while it’s traveling through the various lines on its way from one user to another — very important. This can (often) stop eavesdroppers with access to the physical lines of communication from abusing that access to read the bits going through them. If that’s what you want (and it’s not a bad idea at all), that’s as easy as changing a settings option.

There are also a number of far more secure email services that offer aggressive end-to-end encryption methods. Those are a big step up in security, but as the saga of Lavabit showed, leaving your emails on servers owned by real humans means that those real humans might be compelled to take measures that will reveal your information. A good rundown of encrypted email services can be found here, though they almost always come with a monthly fee and sometimes only accept payment in cryptocurrency like BitCoin. The most secure I’m aware of at the moment is probably the Lelantos Project, but this space is changing virtually week to week.

The user-based encryption we’re talking about is far more robust, since it encrypts your messages even from the person who’s supposed to receive it, if they’re not prepared to open them. It doesn’t give Google or anybody else the option of encrypting or not — you’re the one doing the scrambling, so only you and your chosen recipient(s) can decide if you both feel like doing any unscrambling. If you receive a user-encrypted message in your Gmail account, Google can only ever read the garbled version, because that’s all the company ever actually received. It nullifies the trust element of security for everybody except for yourself and your recipient.

As a result, it’s significantly more bothersome to set up and use. Encryption isn’t perfect by any means, but with a good understanding of secure email transmission, you can make sure that nobody without significant time and resources can eavesdrop on you — and how many of us are, realistically, worth government-level effort?

First, here’s how computer encryption works in basic sense. In crypto, there is a problem called key distribution: it’s easy enough to lock a file, but for an intended recipient to be able unlock it and read it, you have to get them a copy of the mathematical key — and if you could distribute things like that safely, you could just use that key-distribution method to send the message itself, and keys wouldn’t be needed at all. The eventual solution was to use a so-called public-private key combo, in which one user can lock a file with a publicly listed key unique to a particular recipient, but then only a corresponding secret key held by the recipient can open it.

It’s a fairly simple idea that was held back for years by the sheer difficulty of coming up with a mathematical operation that could do this — lock with one key, then unlock with another. When such a method was first discovered, it was called RSA. RSA didn’t really come into its own until it was put into practice by a guy named Phil Zimmerman in 1991, with the release of a user-friendly software suite called Pretty Good Privacy, or PGP.

There are a number of similar solutions include, but not limited to, PGP, OpenPGP, and GNU Privacy Guard, often called GPG.

We’ll need to do three things to get started: install the system itself, generate a public-private key pair, and publish our public key somewhere that people can find it. There are some browser extensions that will automate some of this process — but frankly, if you’re willing to give away control of that much to unknown parties, you can probably just get by with a paid encrypted email service anyway. We’re trying to do it ourselves, here.

GPG makes things very simple. If you’re using a Windows PC, you might want to tryGPG4Win, on Mac GPGTools. The procedures for getting started with these systems are broadly similar, with only slightly different program names and on-screen prompts.

The GPGTools Suite is probably the most streamlined option. It uses a version of the Mac keychain called GPGKeychain to generate and manage any keys you make or encounter. When you make a new key-pair for your own use, or enter someone else’s public key so you can send them messages, GPGKeychain manages this information. This is the center of your security world from now on; someone with access to this program could get at your private keys, reading all encrypted mail just as easily as you do. Make sure you have a screen lock on any system with this program installed.

Creating a new key-pair is as easy as clicking “New,” and following the instructions. This is where you decide on what level of encryption you want (the default is almost always fine), as well as what actual email address will receive the encrypted messages and the alias that will be displayed. You can use your real name if you’d like (I do) but you don’t have to if you’d like to remain anonymous. Once you click create, you’ll have access to a public key for you to copy and host somewhere on the Internet.

The easiest way to do this is probably to right-click and Export the key in question as a text file. Open it up and copy-paste the full key (header/footer and all) into the submit box on this website. MIT hosts public encryption keys for anyone, for free — they’re not the only ones doing it, but they’re the most reliable. If you don’t want to trust MIT to keep the servers up indefinitely, try hosting it on your own personal webspace. You’ll have to publish the link somewhere, so people can actually find it to message you — Twitter bios are popular places to host links to public keys.

Now, actually making use of these public/private keys to send or receive emails takes another program from the GPG Tools Suite: GPG for Mail. If you receive an encrypted message without this installed, even one correctly encrypted with your public key, it will appear as gibberish. By installing GPG for Mail, you teach the Mail app to put those keys to use both encrypting and decrypting messages. This means that if you were to lose or break the system with the properly patched Mail client on it, you’d have to reinstall GPGTools to read your own encrypted messages — even those you’ve already opened and read in the past.

GPG4Win works much the same way, with its own key-managers and plugins for Outlook. Linux has by far the broadest set of encryption tools available, but they also tend to be the most complex.

In the end, real user-based encryption is still fairly opaque to most users. On the other hand, a well-designed personal encryption regimen is the best communications protection it’s possible to have right now, and unlike professional encrypted email services it doesn’t cost a thing to operate. You’ll need to do just a bit of DIY work to get it running, but honestly not all that much.

Now all you need is a real reason to be so secretive.

Windows 10: The best hidden features, tips, and tricks

• By Jamie Lendino on November

And if you’re a computer nut like me, tweaking the OS is always the fun part. Discovering and implementing power user tips are my favorite part of getting a major new version of an OS. I still remember back when DOS 5.0 came out, and I was running DOS 3.3, and I got to try all these new things to optimize my 286. And when I upgraded from Windows/286 to Windows 3.0, I felt like my life had changed. (We’ve come a long way.) Nostalgia aside, here’s what you need to know to amp up your Windows 10 install and take it to the next level.Now that Windows 10 is out and millions of people are already running it, let’s take a look at some of the best hidden features, tips, and tricks in the operating system. If you’re still on the fence, take note: You really do want Windows 10, despite a lot of the gripes we’ve shared over the past several months. It’s worth getting on the list for (or downloading the Windows 10 ISO directly). It combines the best of Windows 8 — super-fast startup, improved security — with much of what made Windows 7 familiar and easy to use, and without trying to force you to buy a touch screen or learn a whole set of hidden UI gestures.

Set up GodMode

The awesomely named GodMode brings up a special menu that puts lots of settings together in one place. To enable it, create a new folder anywhere on your root drive and rename it GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}. It will create a special icon that when you click on it shows you a beautiful advanced control panel.

Task view and virtual desktops

One of the best things about Windows 10 is how it handles virtual desktops. The fact that it finally handles them at all, out of the box, is a great step, since Mac OS X and Linux users have had that capability for a long time. It lets you set up a series of tasks and windows on your desktop, your email and Twitter window on another, and a third for general Web browsing and research. To get started, click the Task View icon on the taskbar (immediately to the right of the Search box), or hold down the Windows key (abbreviated throughout as Win) and Tab. You can also drag an app to a new virtual desktop by bringing it over to the +New Desktop option at the lower right. (Click to read more on Task View and Virtual Desktops.)

Configure privacy settings

When you’re first setting up Windows 10, make sure to select a Custom install so you canmodify the privacy settings, instead of going with the Express install. (If you already installed it, no worries; you can fix it all in Settings). Otherwise you’ll find yourself agreeing to all sorts of private data sharing — and while Windows 10 is free for Windows 7 and Windows 8 users, it’s not a free product in and of itself — so there’s no reason to share your personal information when it’s not required.

Make the desktop more stylish

Windows 10 lets you personalize your desktop more thoroughly than before. Head to Start > Settings > Personalization > Colors, and choose Show color on taskbar and Start Menu. You can also tell it to automatically pick a color from your wallpaper and apply it underneath icons of open apps, and you can remove the Start Menu’s translucent option.

Print to PDF

You can finally print a document (or rather, save it) as PDF without using a third-party utility. This makes it much easier to save and distribute documents that aren’t easily modified. Another long overdue feature makes it in under the radar.

Make sure WiFi Sense is off

You may feel differently about this, but I certainly don’t like the idea of allowing access to my WiFi network unless I specifically give out the password. Here’s how to make sure your computer isn’t doing that — and if it is, how to turn it off.

Schedule Windows updates

Instead of getting ambushed whenever Microsoft decides to push out a patch, you can schedule restarts to install updates by going to Start > Settings > Updates and Recovery > Windows Update. You can do this for future updates as well by selecting Notify to Schedule Restart.

Run it in a virtual machine

If you’re thinking of taking the Windows 10 plunge, but don’t want to disturb your machine that’s currently running just fine, here’s how to install Windows 10 in a virtual machine first. Note that this is different than the virtual desktops I mentioned above; it’s virtualizing the entire OS within another OS (your existing one).

Windows Explorer Home tab and Quick Access

Windows Explorer windows are a lot more useful this time around, thanks to a new Home tab (pictured above). It makes file copies a cinch. If you look at the top left of the window, you’ll see a new Quick Access group that lets you navigate to recently accessed folders. That makes it much easier to maintain a fast workflow as you navigate around your computer’s file system. And while File Explorer defaults to the Quick Access view, if you don’t like it, you can set it back to This PC by choosing View > Options > Open File Explorer > This PC.

Customize the Start Menu

The new Start Menu is such a huge improvement over what came with Windows 8.1 that it’s almost impossible to describe the relief. It combines the best elements of Windows 7 and Windows 8. And it’s also fully customizable. You can resize tiles in the Start menu by right-clicking them and choosing Resize, and then selecting a size from the pop-up menu. You can also unpin them or uninstall them completely. I admit the first thing I did is unpin all of Microsoft’s tiles and then shrink the size of the menu so it looks a lot like Windows 7 (pictured).

For a while, during some of the Windows 10 Technical Preview builds, you could pin the Recycle Bin to the taskbar, which makes it a bit more like OS X. Unfortunately, that functionality seems to be gone in the release version, though you can still pin it to the Start Menu as a tile.

Command prompt tweaks

A lot of Windows 10 utilities underneath the service still look the same as they did in Windows 7 and Windows 8. But one of the hidden tweaks is in the Command Prompt — head over to Properties and you’ll suddenly find you can enable a host of customizations, including a transparent background, resizing the window, and word wrap.

Battery saver

If you’re on a laptop and your battery is running low, Windows 10 is smart enough to begin throttling back background services and other threads so that you can squeeze the last bit of battery life out of your machine. To enable Battery Saver, click the Start menu, and head to Settings | System | Battery Saver.

Background scrolling

Ever notice how when you hover your mouse cursor over a window and try and scroll, you still can’t, because the window wasn’t active? Turn this feature on in Settings | Devices | Mouse and Touchpad and you’ll be able to do just that.

Keyboard shortcuts

Here are some keyboard shortcuts you may want to be aware of — ones that will really help your daily workflow:

• Windows Key-Tab (Task View)
• Windows Key-Right-Up (Moves app to top right quadrant)
• Windows Key-Ctrl-Left or Right (virtual desktop)
• Windows Key-Ctrl-D (new virtual desktop)
• Windows Key-Ctrl-C (Cortana listening)
• Windows Key-S (Daily Glance for weather, news, sports)
• Windows Key-Ctrl-F4 (closes virtual desktop)
• Windows Key-Up and Down (snap apps to top or bottom of screen or maximizes)

OneDrive integration

Free cloud storage is a godsend these days, and Microsoft makes it super easy in Windows 10 with OneDrive. You can use it to store files for mobile device access from iOS or Android, and you can even set it to let you access any file on your PC remotely — not just the ones you drag over to your OneDrive folder.

Amp up Cortana

If you’ve got a laptop, or a desktop with a microphone attached, click the search field and select the Notebook icon on the left. Then click Settings and click “Let Cortana respond to “Hey Cortana.” Now Cortana will listen for your commands. Cortana can also use Google instead of Bing, even though Microsoft really wants you to use the latter. Install the Chrometana extension in Chrome, or just install Firefox and make that your default browser; both will accomplish the task of removing Bing from Cortana’s brain.

Use Maps offline

The new Maps app lets you work offline (Remember those old Microsoft Maps programs?); click Settings > Download or Update Maps, and then select the continent and country you want.

Xbox Streaming

Windows 10 finally shows some real Xbox integration, and you can use it to log into your Xbox Live account. But more importantly, you can use it to stream Xbox One games locally on your PC. You’ll have to enable it first on the Xbox One under Settings | Preferences | Allow game streaming, and then on the PC in the Xbox application. (Interestingly, Microsoft is also going the other way and adding keyboard and mouse support to the Xbox One — not that you’ll need that, since you’ve already got a PC.)

Record games and app videos

You can now record videos of apps or games using the Game DVR function. Press the Windows Key + G, click ‘Yes, this is a game box,’ and then you’ll see options to manipulate the recording.

Find the original Control Panel (and other goodies)

The new Settings panel is easy to navigate and makes more sense than the crufty old Control Panel, but you’ll still need the latter to access some deeper options in the system. It’s easy to call up, even though it’s hidden; just right click on the Start button on the bottom left of the screen and choose it from the pop-up menu, or type Control Panel in the Search bar at the bottom left in the taskbar. When you right-click the Start button, you’ll see all kinds of useful things there, such as Computer Management and Disk Management; for what it’s worth, those options bring you right back to the familiar Windows 7-style apps in each case.

Tone down Notifications

Notifications are a giant pain in Windows 10; there’s just too many of them, and some are unnecessary. Turn ’em off by heading to Start > Settings > System > Notifications and actions, and turn off Windows tips and specific app notifications (you’ll need to scroll down for the latter).

Nix the Office ads

Are you sick of the occasional Office ads that pop up on the desktop? So are we. To kill them, right-click on Get Office in the Start Menu and uninstall it

Chrome will soon pause auto-playing Flash ads by default

Chrome developers have announced that an upcoming version of Chrome will prevent video ads from automatically playing when a website loads. The new feature has already been pushed out to beta builds and can be manually enabled by opening Chrome’s content settings and adjusting the plugin content options. This push comes as part of an overall effort to improve Chrome’s performance on modern laptops.

Apple brings its Metal API to OS X 10.11, kicks Vulkan to the curb

At WWDC today, Apple announced that its Metal API will be coming to OS X in the next version of that operating system (codenamed El Capitan). Previously, Metal had been reserved for iOS. Uptake of the API doesn’t appear to be huge — while there are certainly titles that use it, it doesn’t command the lion’s share of iOS gaming. Apple may be hoping that extending the API to OS X will help change that, and building a common graphics standard between iOS and OS X is certainly in keeping with its strategy of bringing the two platforms into alignment.

Extending Metal to OS X, however, is going to require considerable under-the-hood support from Apple, which doesn’t have the greatest track record of supporting new graphics capabilities. At present, Apple’s own developer page shows OGL support at 4.1 for OS X 10.9, which was released in 2010. Meanwhile, Khronos released the OpenGL 4.5 specification last August.

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