You probably can guess the winner between PS5 and a high-end gaming PC in a graphical slugfest, but at least in Black Ops Cold War it's a closer fight than you may expect.
The latest Digital Foundry video puts the PS5 and PC versions of Black Ops side-by-side in a series of detailed, exacting comparisons. Since the PC version has a ton of customizable graphics settings and the PS5 version doesn't, Digital Foundry first sets out to see what PC settings - from volumetric lighting to screen space reflections to model detail - are closest to what you can see on PS5. You can skip to 11:50 into the video to see what settings line up the closest, with the caveat that in several cases even the lowest PC settings are still too high to make a perfect analog.
Then Digital Foundry took those settings, applied them to the game, and put the results next to PS5. It turns out the Trabzon Airfield scene is an especially good fit for this, since it's pretty much an on-rails shooter most of the time. A top-of-the-line RTX 3090 card performed about 80% better than PS5 in the scene, while an RTX 3070, which costs just as much as a PS5 all by itself, only did 8.6% better.
Again, this isn't a perfect comparison, since the PC version is still running with higher settings in several cases, and folks with Nvidia cards could always flip on DLSS for a big old performance boost. But it is close enough to show that PS5 is a visual contender even next to enthusiast-grade PC gaming hardware.
If you're still trying to buy a PS5 with stocks low around the world, make sure you check out our guide.
