‘Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare’ Smoother On Xbox One Than PlayStation 4?

The console war between PlayStation 4 and Xbox One has a new casualty in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. A new analysis of the shooter’s campaign reveals that the decision to support a dynamic resolution on the Xbox One resulted in smoother overall gameplay than the PS4’s native 1080p.

As expected, Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry a comparison analysis between the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One releases of COD: Advanced Warfare. The analysis was solely limited to the first few levels of the campaign, though there was a brief mention of multiplayer.

This news was intriguing though, due to Sledgehammer co-founder Michael Condrey’s Reddit AMA explanation of how the Xbox One uses dynamic resolution as I covered for Inquisitir. He revealed that the Xbox One version of Advanced Warfare is a minimum 1360 x 1080 that “dynamically scales” to full 1080p (1920 x 1080).

Condrey also states that both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of Advanced Warfare run at “rock solid 60fps.” Unfortunately, Digital Foundry‘s analysis shows that doesn’t hold true for the campaign.

“With patch version 1.04 installed, the PS4 version’s constant 1080p output comes at a price. We catch dips between the 50-60fps lines during battles through Seoul’s streets – with drops to the high 40s caught when throwing the ‘threat’ grenades to scan the area for enemies. Even in perfectly matched scenes, the Xbox One’s performance tends to hold at a perfect 60fps by comparison.”

One question I noted in the original resolution news was how often the Xbox One was able to output Advanced Warfare at full 1080p HD. The Digital Foundry analysis states the console only does this during “subdued moments,” which are uncommon in the game.

The Xbox One also makes use of adaptive v-sync during play. While it helps the console keep up with rendering the necessary frames, it also can lead to screen tearing. Fortunately, Digital Foundry says this happens rarely.

Unsurprisingly, the COD: Advanced Warfare multiplayer also runs at the 1360 x 1080 resolution on the Xbox One. Only, there’s no dynamic resolution sizing here.

“[W]e briefly dipped into the multiplayer mode on both systems in order to gain some first impressions on resolution and frame-rate. We’ll need to test this much more thoroughly across a range of maps, but initial results suggest that the dynamic resolution switch is disabled on Xbox One, leading to a static 1360×1080 presentation throughout. Meanwhile, PS4 locks to native 1080p. This is significant, bearing in mind that multiplayer is the key focus for many COD fans, but the good news is that overall gameplay frame-rates seem just as solid as our recent testing on the Gamescom and EGX builds – a state of affairs that extends to both systems.”

There’s a deeper analysis of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare still to come from Digital Foundry. Until then, they closed with these final thoughts on their initial dive into the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One compassion.

“Running at 1080p, [the PS4] presentation remains king of course, while Microsoft’s hardware only occasionally shifts up to that resolution, typically in less demanding areas. However, the less consistent 50-60fps performance level on Sony’s platform is a surprising state of affairs, and bearing in mind that frame-rate is king in Call of Duty, we’re surprised that the dynamic scaling tech wasn’t deployed on both platforms.”

“On balance, it’s an impressive showing for both platforms, with few obvious asset-side differences caught during our initial testing.”

Have you picked up Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare for either of the two next-gen consoles? Let us know your impressions of how it looks in the comments below.

[Images via Call of Duty]