DF aren't biased IMO.
Do they have biases? sure they're people, course they do. Can you discern their biases? To some degree. That doesn't make them biased and their reporting is both awesome and professional.
The reason people see them as biased -- I think -- is because when you are sufficiently invested in a product which competes with another product, then it becomes super important that your product receives no "unfair" slight, and on the other hand that faults in the competing product MUST be held to full account: and by that measure its easy to find fault with them. But by any objective measure they are completely professional and clearly love video games technology.
Now on the issue of "tools" causing the XSX to underperform in high FPS comparisons, which DF seem currently to think is what is likely to be going on, I disagree with them.
The idea that tools, AKA the GDK, was causing problems for XSX coalesced around the time that some games announced XSX ray tracing would be enabled via patch after launch. Given that AFAWK both consoles use the same RT tech, this didn't make much sense technically, and all summer we had been hearing that the GDK was not as easy to use as Sony's API, so that all made sense and seemed reasonable to me
Now the idea that the GDK was causing performance issues for XSX in DMC's 120FPS mode was first aired by DF, I can understand why, but I'm really not convinced. I think they went there because XSX CPU is simply faster than the PS5's and is essentially the same, so it just doesn't make sense on the surface.
My problem is that this is an unsubstantiated leap too far. There may be architectural reasons why PS5's SOC is less troubled by high FPS CPU bound games, e.g. more efficient caching, more offloading to dedicated helper hardware. Also while an immature API may cause optimisation issues, the actual symptoms are related to CPU performance, very specific, and apparently repeatable - which looks very much like hardware. The most parsimonious explanation is that its architectural within the constraints we see. That's not to rule out the GDK as a cause, but we'd need actual evidence to make that jump, and we recently had an interview with a developer, where he was pushed in that direction and he pushed back. Given that developer is working on a 120 FPS game across the consoles he would likely be aware of a defect in the GDK that caused the API to develop performance issues at high frame rates, and would have responded "no comment" - not definitive, but it does not help the cause of "its the tools". If true this doesn't mean the PS5 has a better CPU architecture, non cross-gen games using SMT mode might see XSX performing better at high framerates?
We know the XSX has better paper specs. That does not mean it is the better performing machine -- as an absolute fact -- just that its likely to be. The proof of whether the XSX is superior will be determined by games performance. The evidence so far indicates the two console are equivalent -- a very different situation from that we had with PS4 and XBox one.
The XSX may pull ahead, I think it likely will, but if it does probably not by much, that is also what the evidence is saying! Hopefully for most games the consoles will lock at 60FPS in performance mode and scale resolution, in which case the PS5 will average a bit lower. And whichever way it goes, supporters of both have plenty to be happy about, this approximate equivalence is a good thing.
Looking forward to my PS5 arriving tomorrow, hoping my adapter turns up quick so I can play Star Wars Squadrons on my PSVR with much improved graphics (I'm mon an original PS4 at the mo).
