Digital Foundry Puts Stray Through Its Paces, And One Xbox Console Turns In Surprising Results

Not quite purrfect, but close

by Ben Kerry Mon 18th Sep 2023

Stray made its way to Xbox last month after a year of being PlayStation-exclusive, and outlet Digital Foundry has taken a look at how the new Xbox versions stack up in comparison.

The new-gen versions of this cat-tastic adventure are perhaps as we expected here - Xbox Series X runs at full 4K 60FPS while Xbox Series S sticks to the same frame rate target at 1080p. Both versions are pretty smooth as well, outside of the odd hiccup mostly limited to cutscene playback.

However, the last-gen Xbox consoles throw up some interesting results, especially Xbox One X. Microsoft's 2017 mid-gen console aims for 60FPS at an even higher resolution than Xbox Series S, but the results are wildly inconsistent. In practice, One X rarely hits 60FPS at all and the resolution still drops all the way down to the 1080p range, as you can see in the video up above.

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"Overall, Xbox One X offers an ambitious, but on balance unsuccessful trade between performance and image quality. For those without VRR-supported displays, it would benefit hugely from a 30FPS cap option."

In truth, we're glad the team decided to go for consistency over pure number-chasing on current-gen consoles - both Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S look very consistent running at their 60FPS targets!

DF has delivered the technical results then, and Stray remains a very impressive indie outing on Xbox. If you'd like some thoughts on the game itself, we'll drop last month's hands-on impressions down below.

Are you surprised by Xbox One X here? Let us know your thoughts on these findings down below.

Ben is a News Writer at Pure Xbox, and is a fan of action, racing and straight-up shootin' in any Xbox game he can get his hands on. When he's not clutching an Xbox controller like his life depends on it, Ben spends his time listening to music that's far too old for him, watching football on the telly and probably eating somewhere.

1
BAMozzy
Mon 18th Sep 2023

Well the Series S - with its 4TF GPU - delivers a consistent 60fps at 1080p, whilst the PS4 Pro with its 4.2TF GPU only offers a 1080/30 experience. Despite on paper, a weaker GPU, is actually delivering twice as many frames per second and even the XB1X with its 6TF GPU can't hit a Consistent 60fps even though the res can drop to the same 1080p.

Which just goes to show that you can't gauge a console based on GPU teraflops alone....

2
InterceptorAlpha
Mon 18th Sep 2023

@BAMozzy Of course not, you never could.
Before the GPU can do anything the CPU has to process everything and build what the GPU is going to render.

The Series S has a 8core, 3.6ghz processor. Whereas the PS4 Pro has a 8 core 2.6ghz processor.

What you can do, is if you have enough GPU left over, is off load, albeit inefficiently, some CPU cycles.

This is why the One X is pull 60 FPS as it has a 6.0tflop GPU. Versus the PS4 Pro's 4.2tflop. When compared to the Series S's 4.0tflop.

3
BAMozzy
Mon 18th Sep 2023

@InterceptorAlpha I know that CPU is the 'brains' of a game and is important too in performance - as is latency and bandwidth of the system.

However, my point was to highlight that for others who only see the Series S as a 'weaker' system than the 1X and maybe more on a par with a PS4 Pro because of the theoretical max number of Compute they can reach - whether its 1.4, 1.84, 4, 4.2, 6, 10, 12 or 20TF's...

There is still this narrative around the Series S as being worse than a 1X and maybe not better than a PS4 Pro because of its GPU despite having virtually the same CPU as a Series X and more available RAM than a PS4 Pro too...

4
Ricky-Spanish
Mon 18th Sep 2023

The series s is a grand next gen machine obvious drawbacks yes but at the price it's a steel and has sold more units than the series x because of that so the majority of this generations Xbox owners are on series s to much is made of its lack of power

5
themightyant
Mon 18th Sep 2023

@BAMozzy There are some specific situations where a Series S IS worse than a Xbox One X, especially in terms of resolution or frame rate. But in almost all cases Series S will beat it in all other areas.

As @InterceptorAlpha rightly said you couldn't ever compare just TF, or compare one generation to another. Doing that would be like comparing HP on a car and expecting that to tell you which can get round a track quicker. It's all the components working together that gives a unit it's power. Series S is truly amazing considering the price.