Don't be insecure about it, I know MS are trying to remove bottlenecks, as any console manufacturer should, they're not stupid.
It just seems they have been outmanouvered spending too much of their transistor budget on increasing CUs when a more effective use of silicon would be to include space of fixed-function accelerators, like PS5.
No one is insecure, it's just a little crazy the kind of things coming out of you guys, it reads like it was written by robots.
It's clear that most of you don't understand basically anything you're talking about so you're mixing and matching lines, throwing out buzzwords from other things you've read on the internet, are ripping lines from Cerny's speech, and are trying to formulate discussion based upon that to appear more intellectual on the subject. Anyone who has even the least bit of hardware and systems knowledge can see right through it. What's more sad about most of the discussion here is so few can actually facilitate an argument based upon ingrained knowledge which they possess, there's a lot of running to other people.
For the Series X it doesn't at all appear like anything was wasted, on the contrary it appears as if every aspect of the system was intentionally chosen to fulfill a certain function. Higher CU count not only increases the rendering capabilities via higher levels of raster compute, it also increases the amount of RT hardware on the die.
Why is this important? Well the fact that the GPU has such an uplift in rasterization ability means it can not only render more than the PlayStation 5 in regular use cases, but when RT is in effect the surplus of compute can take the brunt of the impact and continue to operate efficiently. It will be able to handle render workloads and levels of Ray Tracing the PlayStation 5 simply cannot.
The memory subsystem is also more efficiently used here by parsing the pool into a hierarchy for priority usage. Not only is there more bandwidth in general spread across the RAMDAC's, there's a wider bus, and there's a higher uplift in bandwidth where it can be most effectively used and less where requirements are more limited. Things like this are done with explicit intention, they know exactly how this system operates, how it will be used, and to ensure the GPU gets ever ounce of bandwidth it needs. They could have put a uniformed pool of lesser memory in and called it a day but it would not only get them less bandwidth for the GPU, it would grant them more bandwidth for things that simply don't need it.
Sony's system isn't elegant, it's not more thought out, it doesn't have technological advantages which Microsoft isn't doing in their own ways not to mention several others which they've extensively outlined. It's merely taking much lesser hardware and pushing it to its operational limits while Microsoft's system is doing everything within safe operating parameters. Yes one is more expensive, but it's going to run cooler, it's going to run quieter, it's going to operate with less risk of instability or hardware failure, and it may even require less power. Sony using variable rates and shifting frequencies is extremely odd, because there's no practical need for it, it factually produces a less performative compute scenario. The only reason this would even be a factor is as I outline previously, they have exceeded the limitations of their bus so the machine must scale to not bottleneck.
You think that Microsoft has created this super expensive machine but completely fail to account for the cost of Sony's SSD. From what Microsoft has outlined the way they handle the storage relative to the rest of the system they have eliminated all the I/O bottlenecks themselves with a lesser SSD implementation, and with the velocity architecture there's 100GB's instantly accessible. Their drive is slower but it appears the way in which it is being used and the systems put in place for it have rendered intelligent workarounds which net them instant access regardless.
So Sony has this considerably more expensive SSD, and for what? It not only seems like a diminished return on so many levels, that SSD probably offsets the additional system cost MIcrosoft put into their memory interface and the GPU making them likely around the same cost.