Microsoft’s Xbox One finally gets a bit of good news, as the company announced today it will be upgrading the clock speeds of the console’s graphics processing unit. The modest 6.5% boost sees clock speeds rise from 800MHz to 853Mhz.

While it’ll be a welcome increase for game developers, who now have a little more horsepower for their visual feasts, the boost in speed has more to do with pulling closer to the PlayStation 4. Sony’s console has a vastly superior graphics setup, with some estimates putting it at 40% more powerful than the Xbox One. That’s largely down to the PlayStation 4 having a third more shader units, but it also has the upper hand when it comes to memory bandwidth.

Microsoft chose a slightly more complex memory setup, where it has ESRAM complementing more ordinary DDR3 memory, while Sony has super pricey, but also super speedy GDDR3 memory – the same RAM chips found on modern graphics cards.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has the upper hand with the Xbox One running a Windows core, and using Direct X – the same software technology powering all Windows computers, and is the basis for tech development on graphics processors. The familiarity of a Windows environment could make it a hit with developers, despite Sony’s hard work to have the PS4 as developer-friendly as possible.

As The Verge points out, though, the proof will be in the pudding – we won’t know how the two stack up until they’re available to play with, and developers start taking advantage of their true power a few years down the line.