What is a Teraflop and how important it is for gaming?
Gamers would have heard of the term teraflop more often than not, but how many understand what it means? We are going to explain all of this in the best possible way for your understanding. Now, for those who have never heard of a Teraflop before, well, it is one of the reasons why the Xbox Series X is more powerful than the Xbox One.
People who are looking to purchase new desktop GPUs for gaming and professional work should understand what a teraflop is. For example, a GPU with a higher teraflop count does not necessarily mean it is more powerful than another competing brand.
If we look at the Xbox One X, it has a 6-teraflop GPU when compared to the 4-teraflop graphics processing unit found in the Xbox Series S. However, we can safely say the Series S is the more capable seeing as its GPU is faster and is based on a newer architecture called Zen 2.
What is a Teraflop?
Before we explain what a teraflop is, we should first note that a FLOP means floating-point operations per second. A floating-point operation includes decimal points and irrational numbers, which means they are more complex when compared to fixed-point operations.
Furthermore, floating-point operations are primarily used to measure the computing power of a computer system, or better yet, the system’s overall performance capability.
To break things down even further, a teraflop means a computer has the ability to process up to 1 trillion floating-point operations per second. Therefore, we can safely say that since the Xbox Series X is pushing 12 teraflops, it should be able to hit 12 trillion floating-point operations per second.
So, the higher the teraflop of a GPU, the faster it will crunch through data, predominantly if that data consists of 4K textures.
Read: Tips to Optimize Windows 10 for gaming.
How much do Teraflops matter for gaming?
The answer to that is yes, but whether or not we will see a generational leap in gaming performance in every area with the new consoles from Microsoft is yet to be seen. You see, with a higher teraflop count, it should be a lot easier for the Xbox Series X to play video games at 4K.
Teraflops are not really important when comparing gaming consoles. But they do tell which console has the more powerful specs.
But it doesn’t end there, because that 12-teraflop number could also improve raytracing a great deal. Not to mention, Microsoft is using variable-rate shading (VRS) to improve performance, so the Xbox Series X may very well in the future punch above its weight.
Additionally, a higher teraflop count can help with increasing the frame rate in games. However, if the processor is not up to scratch, then it wouldn’t matter a great deal in real-world performance.
Developer tools are essential as well
With the release of the Xbox Series X/S and the PlayStation 5, we are seeing where the Sony console is outperforming the Xbox in several games. This has come as a surprise to many because Microsoft touted the Series X as the most powerful console, and rightfully so, it is from a spec-sheet point of view.
Still, the power of a console Windows 10 computer means nothing if the game developer tools are not mature enough. As we can see from multiple reports so far, the PlayStation 5, while the weaker console on paper, is performing better with several games over the Series X.
This is because developers have access to PlayStation 5 developer tools long before Microsoft released updates for the Game Developers Kit (GDK). As it stands, things will more than likely get better in future games.
