CoD: Black Ops Cold War Runs Better on PS5 in 120fps Mode, Better on XSX With Ray Tracing

Both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X are out in the wild now, and naturally, fans are curious to see how each console performs when playing multiplatform titles. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is a good test for this, as its one of the most polished multiplatform next-gen games available and offers both Ray Tracing and 120fps Performance modes. Now, we already brought you a simple CoD: Black Ops Cold War PS5 and XSX framerate test, but the tech heads at Digital Foundry have also put the game through its paces, and applied a bit more analysis to their findings. You can check out their video, below.

So, which console performs better? Well, it’s not as straightforward as you might think. While in the Ray Tracing/60fps mode, Xbox Series X comes out ahead, running at very solid 60fps, while PS5 occasionally dips as low as 40fps. Ah, but when playing in the visually stripped-down 120fps Performance mode, it’s the PS5 that comes out ahead, often tracking ahead of the XSX version by 10 or more frames during more hardware-challenging moments.

It’s hard to exactly say why this disparity between the two consoles exists, as both the PS5 and XSX offer more or less the same image quality – same dynamic resolution in both 4K and Performance modes, same assets. XSX doing better with ray tracing could certainly been seen as an example of its superior GPU grunt, but is PS5 doing better in 120fps mode evidence of what the system’s variable-frequency CPU can do? Perhaps! Or maybe the differences are just random porting quirks. At this point, we don’t know.

Digital Foundry also tested the Xbox Series S version, which obviously comes with some visual sacrifices – no ray-traced shadows like the other versions, a bit less environmental detail, and dynamic resolution that targets 1440p, but can fall as low at 1200p. That said, the system does manage to maintain a fairly consistent 60fps, with occasional dips in the mid-to-low 50s.

CoD: Black Ops Cold War is available now on PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, and PS5. You can check out Wccftech’s full review, right here.