I assure you i am not trying to be one sided, just stating facts! i like both systems, so don't make this a flame war!

If you're a hardcore gamer, there's a good chance you care about how your games look. And that's all down to the power a console has on tap.

Which of the new consoles is more powerful? The simple answer is the PS4. We'll look deeper into the technical reasons why in a minute.

What this means in practice right now is that some cross-platform games, such as Battlefield 4, run at a lower resolution on the Xbox One than they do on the PS4. This may equalize over the life of the consoles as developers learn more about each consoles, but the PS4 definitely has a slight edge at launch.

Xbox One vs PS4 – Processor

Xbox One – AMD 8-core Jaguar CPU

PS4 - AMD 8-core Jaguar CPU

The Xbox One and PS4 use extremely similar CPUs made by AMD. Both use an APU setup, which links together both CPU and GPU into one package.

The CPUs are 8–core chips using ‘Jaguar’ cores – a term picked by their maker AMD to denote their chipset generation. The Xbox One runs at 1.75GHz, which was bumped-up from their original spec of 1.6GHz. Sony's runs slightly cooler at 1.6GHz, which may make some of you think the Xbox One is more powerful. This is not the case. The power of the GPU is much more important here.

PS4 vs Xbox One – GPU and RAM

Xbox One - Comparable to Radeon HD 7000-series, 8GB DDR3 RAM and 32MB eSRAM

PS4 - Comparable to Radeon HD 7000-series, 8GB GDDR5 RAM

The PS4 and Xbox One both use an AMD GPU.

image: http://static.trustedreviews.com/94/00002781c/eb96/amd-logo.jpg

At first glance it seems like their GPUs may be identical, but they are not. On paper the PS4 graphics processor is 50 per cent more powerful, with 1,152 shader processors against the Xbox One’s 768.

Realizing that this sounded pretty bad, Microsoft worked on upping the One's power a bit and on 2 August announced that its GPU speed from 800MHz to 853MHz. It's a nice tweak for the tech heads, but doesn't see the Xbox One match up to the PS4.

Having extra processing power will let the PS4 perform more tasks simultaneously – which should in theory allow for more impressive visual effects.

A more impressive GPU is matched with more impressive-sounding RAM. The PS4 uses GDDR5 RAM, while the Xbox One has more conventional DDR3 memory – and both have 8GB of the stuff.

GDDR5 has much higher bandwidth than DDR3, designed for intensive applications such as in graphics cards, while DDR3 is ‘bog standard’ system memory.

If DDR3 was all the Xbox One had, it’d be in serious trouble. But it also has an eSRAM buffer that should help to bridge the 100GB/sec bandwidth gap between the two RAM types. It has a 32MB chunk of eSRAM that will function as a frame buffer.

The news that the Sony PS4 is (almost) categorically more powerful than the Xbox One is one of the reasons why the PS4 pre-order sold out before the Xbox One's.

With a more powerful GPU and, seemingly, faster memory, the PS4 is clearly out in front on graphical specs.

But how do they pan out compared to PC graphics cards? The Xbox One is said to be on-par with a Radeon 7790, the PS4 a Radeon 7870. Unless you're a PC gamer, that's really not going to mean much.

Let's reduce it to cold hard cash. That the Radeon 7790 costs around £100 and the Radeon 7870 £150 tells you all you need to know.

Sincerely, Jagged

Sources: trustedreviews.com, microsoft.com, sony.com, playstation.com, xboxlive.com, microsoftgames.com

I assure you i am not trying to be one sided, just stating facts! i like both systems, so don't make this a flame war!

One of the most common questions asked is whether the PS4 is backwards compatible. Can I play my old PS3 games on my PS4? I've heard it a hundred times already. And for real gaming veterans, there's whether you can play original PlayStation and PS2 games on the PS4.

The answer is not a happy one. You cannot simply put a PS3 or PS2 game in your PS4 and play it. The systems are fundamentally not compatible with each other.

However, there is a solution. It’s called PlayStation Now, and it will let you stream older PlayStation games to your PS4 (and PS3) over your home internet connection.

You cannot use PlayStation now yet, though.

When it finally launches the world at large, PlayStation Now will offer games from the PS1, PS2, PS3 and PS Vita catalogues.

Why can’t the PS4 play PS3 games?

The PS3 and PS4 use completely different system architectures, which means the PS4 would need to emulate the PS3’s system in order to make the games work. The figure often quoted is that a system needs ten times the power of the thing it’s emulating in order to do so at full speed.

Sony does claim that the PS4 meets this ‘ten times’ more powerful mark, but producing a workable emulator also requires a whole lot of work when working with a system of the PS3’s complexity. And that means a healthy cash investment, too.

Sony decided not to do this, and it’s sure to be one of the most common complaints about the new console.

What about PS1 and PS2 games?

There is some good news, though. Sony is reportedly working on native emulation for PS1 and PS2 games in the PS4. This means you won’t need to use PlayStation Now to play your very old games, and will be able to simply put the disc in your PS4.

This rumour comes from Ashan Rasheed, an ‘industry insider’. However, it is certainly nothing more than a rumour at this point.

Rasheed says that the PS4 will be able to run older games at 1080p resolution too, rather than the much lower native resolutions of the older consoles – most PS1 games are designed to run at 240 x 320 resolution. This won’t mean 20-year-old will suddenly look fresh, but it will reduce the ‘jagginess’ in polygons in these older games.

references: http://www.trustedreviews.com

Latency is an unavoidable fact of online games, with that said lets talk about what causes online lag on mk9 and many others!

caused by not only network latency, which is largely out of a game's control, but also latency inherit in the way game simulations are run.

Mortal Kombat 2011 is ran at 30ticks per second with that said so is battlefield 3,4 and titanfall!

A lower tickrate also naturally reduces the precision of the simulation, which itself might cause problems if taken too far, or if the client and server simulations are running at significantly different rates.

Games may limit the number of times per second that updates are sent to a particular client, and/or are sent about particular objects in the game's world. Because of limitations in the amount of bandwidth available, and the CPU time that's taken by network communication, some games prioritize certain critical communication while limiting the frequency and priority of less important information.

now if these other games run at the same tick rate as MK9 why arnt they lagging while running heavier graphics and more bodies in each server.

the answer is the Netcode:

A game's choice of transport layer protocol can also affect perceived networking issues. Should the game use TCP, networking will have a high overhead cost and increased latency. Should it use UDP, the game engine may need to implement its own networking code to handle error conditions and other things that are handled by TCP; this increases the engine's complexity and might itself lead to issues.

the fact is if your experiencing lag only on mk9 and not on other games you are experiencing Netcode issues on there server.

you can try getting a new router, port forwarding your games known ports, make your router run through dmz mode, but if its a netcode issue, then the game server cant communicate properly between server and client and there is nothing you can do but talk with the creators and hope for the best.

i will say Mortal Kombat X is gonna run at 60ticks per second: with that said ill let you know how that may help:

A lower tickrate increases latency in the synchronization of the game simulation between the server and clients

so a higher tickrate decreases latency in the synchronization of the game simulation between the server and clients!

i do believe that MKX will be running a better online netcode maybe a UDP with a well built internal system!