Update: There was a lot of talk on social this week that Ubisoft had effectively gimped the PlayStation 5 version of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, after Digital Foundry discovered the game performed best on Sony’s console. That’s not quite the case, however.

Performance Mode, which targets 60 frames-per-second on PS5, is largely unchanged with new patch – outside of a couple frames difference during an early cut-scene. However, the game now holds a minuscule framerate advantage on Xbox Series X because the French publisher has dropped the dynamic resolution scaler on that console, meaning it bottoms out at a lower resolution than on PS5.

All in all, we’re still talking about microscopic differences between the two machines.

Original Story: PlayStation 5 was expected to perform slightly worse than the Xbox Series X in early next-gen comparisons, as Microsoft’s machine is marginally more powerful on paper. However, the first Digital Foundry face-off for a major new title in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla puts Sony’s new console ahead – even if the differences are, at the end of the day, incredibly minor.

According to the tech analysts, both consoles output identical resolutions at the same graphical settings. They both also target 60 frames-per-second, but this is where PS5 pulls ahead. The site reports: “At its worst, we noted PS5 delivering a 15 per cent performance advantage over its Microsoft equivalent in identical scenarios.”

It’s worth mentioning that both systems experience obtrusive tearing, which is something we’ve noticed in DIRT 5 as well. The new Xbox supports VRR with compatible televisions, which can minimise any issues encountered on the Series X. Sony’s yet to incorporate this feature, as we mentioned in our 10 Things PS5 Needs to Improve.

The bottom-line, frankly, is that both consoles are performing well here. The outcome may be surprising – some are putting it down to PS5’s development tools being more mature – but it’s perhaps a reminder that this is the smallest gap between two pieces of hardware we’ve ever experienced before. It’s great to see such solid early results for Sony’s new system, though!

[source eurogamer.net]