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[Reg]

A lot of pent-up shittastic comparisons about the wiiu here. But anyways if the ps4 is Beyonce and the wiiu is Miley Cyrus, then who would the xbone be?

 

[Klocker]

Some of the work traditionally done by the GPU is being done by other custom chips in this unit. Swizzle matrix maths is something the traditional Vertex shader does, if they have put the GPU but still in the pipeline, that gives the actual GPU a little bit more free grunt to do other work.

Yep, Helper chips, an audio processor more powerful and esram all add up to make these machines a lot closer than some are stating, especially considering the cpus in each

 

[Caddle]

Don't jump to conclusion about the ps4, that's reserved for the xbox one.

 

[Metfanant]

Show me where it states that PS4's CPU and GPU can access and allocate anywhere in the systems virtual memory space which is would have to do to be "full-hUMA capable".

its never been specifically stated...but certainly hinted at...

"The 'supercharged' part, a lot of that comes from the use of the single unified pool of high-speed memory," said Cerny. The PS4 packs 8GB of GDDR5 RAM that's easily and fully addressable by both the CPU and GPU.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/191007/

Digital Foundry: I seem to recall you might have talked about a toolchain where code could be compiled either for CPU or GPU. Is that right or have I got that completely wrong?

Mark Cerny: Such a toolchain does exist. It's AMD's HSA [Heterogeneous System Architecture]. That's very exciting but our current strategies are about exposing the low-level aspects of the GPU to a higher-level language. We think that's where the greatest benefit is in year one.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-face-to-face-with-mark-cerny

 

[cyberheater]

I don't understand why you insist on me showing things. The APU spec on the PS4 is capable of this, as to whether or not it's going to happen is nothing but a rumor. The point I'm trying to make is that the Xbox One cannot do the same if it wanted. The PS4 could.

Because you categorically state that PS4 is full hUMA whatever the hell that means. I'd like to know how you know because if you can't show me an official source of your information than it's pure fud and speculation on your part.

 

[Melchiah]

Absence? We have no idea if the PS4 has flash memory or not, don't jump to conclusions.

Well, I presumed there isn't flash memory, as it hasn't been mentioned, eventhough Sony has been very forthcoming with the specs. So, just out of curiosity, I'm interested in knowing how its supposed absence would affect the fluidity of the system.

 

[Andronicus]

Yep, Helper chips, an audio processor more powerful and esram all add up to make these machines a lot closer than some are stating, especially considering the cpus in each

not knowing whats in the ps4 lol whoa dere

 

[hydrophilic attack]

A lot of pent-up shittastic comparisons about the wiiu here. But anyways if the ps4 is Beyonce and the wiiu is Miley Cyrus, then who would the xbone be?

Britney

 

[twobear]

It was a PR move to discredit MS's number. It's a fight bullshit with bullshit kind of thing.

...wat?

 

[kaching]

Which proves my point. A marginal difference but it's clear that they are focusing on platform parity to keep customers happy.

That really just proves that they'll talk around/down the differences and performances gaps as much as they can, but not necessarily translate that into development. If the performance gap is really as significant as is suggested by the data, developers are going to have an increasingly difficult time maintaining parity because they'll be doing more work to restrain the performance on one platform. I don't really think anyone's interested in that for the sake of "keeping customers happy" which amounts to only the most obsessed on either platform who will care about DF rundowns. The vast majority will either have a PS4 or an XBO and not care a wit for the performance of a multiplat game on the other platform they didn't buy. Those are the customers that devs/pubs most want to keep happy.

 

[PopcornMegaphone]

I didn't mention graphics. So I don't know what you're talking about.

Well, you said the PS4 is geared for better longevity. I assumed you meant due to horsepower.

 

[Piggus]

No. It's in their best interests to keep customers happy and platform parity is one way to do that.

How exactly does that make customers happy? If I had a PS4 and the third party game I bought had NO advantage over the same game on a weaker console, that wouldn't make me happy. If you buy an Xbone, you know you're getting the weaker system. You expect games to not look or perform quite as well, but that's probably a non-issue to you. If you bought a PS4 and that extra power isn't being put to use, how is that a good thing?

 

[onQ123]

Yep, Helper chips, an audio processor more powerful and esram all add up to make these machines a lot closer than some are stating, especially considering the cpus in each

PS4 also have a secondary chip & audio processor.

 

[ConteZero76]

Well, I presumed there isn't flash memory, as it hasn't been mentioned, eventhough Sony has been very forthcoming with the specs. So, just out of curiosity, I'm interested in knowing how its supposed absence would affect the fluidity of the system.

Some FLASH must be in place, otherwise you won't be able to boot the unit when you upgrade the internal HDD.

 

[cyberheater]

How exactly does that make customers happy? If I had a PS4 and the third party game I bought had NO advantage over the same game on a weaker console, that wouldn't make me happy. If you buy an Xbone, you know you're getting the weaker system. You expect games to not look or perform quite as well, but that's probably a non-issue to you. If you bought a PS4 and that extra power isn't being put to use, how is that a good thing?

Then you're not going to be a happy camper next gen.

 

[coldfoot]

PS4: Manchester Utd
Xbone: Liverpool
WiiU: Crystal Palace

 

[level_e11even]

Because you categorically state that PS4 is full hUMA whatever the hell that means. I'd like to know how you know because if you can't show me an official source of your information than it's pure fud and speculation on your part.

I already showed you an example. If you don't know the PS4 APU spec, I'm not going to do the groundwork for you and spell everything out. I already gave you an example that the way things are, if one console wanted to do hUMA, then it would be the PS4 not the Xbox One. If MS decided to force hUMA on the Xbox One's APU, it would be hindered by the complicated eSRAM. Hence the "pseudo" moniker.

 

[Piggus]

Then you're not going to be a happy camper next gen.

You know this for sure? lol

You still haven't explained to me why PS4 customers would be happy with platform parity.

 

[Ebomb]

GPGPU emphasis on the PS4, move engines on Xbox, dedicated audio decompression on PS4, custom audio on Xbox one. Everybody wants to compare GPUs but the designs of both these systems seem to place a ton of emphasis on freeing up CPU resources. While all this talk, beyond fanboy nonsense, is interesting, I wonder whether the bottleneck long term will be GPU or CPU. With the low clock speed on the jaguar CPUs, maybe they are both worried about non multi core optmized code performance.

 

[Spongebob]

I remember bgassassin mentioning that a large amount of the Xbone's audio processor was dedicated to the Kinect.

 

[BigDug13]

Then you're not going to be a happy camper next gen.

Why were 360 owners happy this gen? Multiplats weren't gimped on 360 compared to the PS3 just because the PS3 couldn't hold its own. Saints Row IV is a travesty on PS3 compared to the 360 version, and so based on your theory, the 360 should have been low-res like the PS3 version so that customers would stay happy with the parity.

Fact is that consoles of various strength have ALWAYS shown differences in third party titles, and this idea that suddenly this next gen it's going to be different with companies intentionally gimping certain versions of the game to appease some nebulous group of neogaf-level gamers is pretty ridiculous.

 

[Melchiah]

Some FLASH must be in place, otherwise you won't be able to boot the unit when you upgrade the internal HDD.

Oh, my question seems kinda stupid in retrospect. However, would larger amount be needed for quick app switching?

 

[cyberheater]

Some FLASH must be in place, otherwise you won't be able to boot the unit when you upgrade the internal HDD.

Rom bios on PC motherboards are maybe up to 8Mb big. They don't require a flash memory to boot.

 

[Metfanant]

Then you're not going to be a happy camper next gen.

there are certain things that are unavoidable whether the devs set out to achieve them or not...

for example...your blasting through a gunfight in CoD:Ghosts and bam there is an explosion and the framerate hiccups...its going to more negatively effect the Xbone version...just unavoidable...now if they devs want the framerate to stay equal...they will have to slightly scale back an effect or two on the Xbone version...

and there you get your differences, even though the devs set out looking for parity..

 

[coldfoot]

Rom bios on PC motherboards are maybe up to 8Mb big. They don't require a flash memory to boot.

That's also one type of flash memory Not in the same traditional sense of SSD's/memory cards though.

 

[Metfanant]

Oh, my question seems kinda stupid in retrospect. However, would larger amount be needed for quick app switching?

i dont think youre going to be seeing the Flash used for that...too much risk of killing the memory by constant writing...

 

[level_e11even]

Well, you said the PS4 is geared for better longevity. I assumed you meant due to horsepower.

Horsepower is a factor, but it's more about the overall architecture. Cerny's presentation at the February conference pretty much sums it up, especially the reason why they decided to not go the eSRAM route.

 

[Iced_Eagle]

PS4 also have a secondary chip & audio processor.

It does. However, the PS4 audio chip is much more basic than what's in the X1 because Sony is heavily betting on GPGPU.

Here's what Mark Cerny says about the audio chip from here: http://www.gamechup.com/mark-cerny-ps4-contains-a-dedicated-audio-processing-chip/

“There’s dedicated audio hardware,” he revealed. “The principal thing that it does is that it compresses and decompresses audio streams, various formats. So some of that is for the games – you’ll have many, many audio streams in MP3 or another format and the hardware will take care of that for you.

“Or, on the system side for example, audio chat – the compression and decompression of that.”

He also added that the GPU can be useful to do different types of audio processing.

“It really does come down though to the amount of parallelisation that is natural to perform for that algorithm, and that does vary greatly depending on what you are doing specifically in your audio processing. I think that as you go forward we will see a hybrid approach in a couple of years where certain aspects of the audio are being done on GPU.”

The audio chip on the PS4 just does compression/decompression and mixing of sound sources. That is nice because that means you don't use CPU cycles on those tasks. If you want to do DSP effects (reverb, etc), then Sony is pushing devs to use the GPU for those tasks. With the X1, all of that is handled by the dedicated audio processor (which is apparently equivalent in power to an additional CPU core). On the PS4, since games will be using some of the CU's for audio work, that will mean there's less resources for graphics. That's what people are talking about when they say it brings the performance more in line. PS4 will likely still have a small edge since not all of the CU's will be used for GPGPU functions, but it's not a huge difference. MS and Sony are just approaching the problem from two different, but totally valid ways. MS is pushing more dedicated hardware for some of these tasks, and Sony is pushing GPGPU functions.

 

[PopcornMegaphone]

Horsepower is a factor, but it's more about the overall architecture. Cerny's presentation at the February conference pretty much sums it up, especially the reason why they decided to not go the eSRAM route.

oh... ooook.

 

[Bundy]

Yep, Helper chips, an audio processor more powerful and esram all add up to make these machines a lot closer than some are stating, especially considering the cpus in each

Jeezzz Klocker, you're continuing where you stopped weeks ago, right?

 

[cyberheater]

You know this for sure? lol

You still haven't explained to me why PS4 customers would be happy with platform parity.

Ask the developers. It's them that makes the decisions and they believe that game parity across same generation hardware benefits consumers.

 

[Melchiah]

i dont think youre going to be seeing the Flash used for that...too much risk of killing the memory by constant writing...

So, what exactly will it be used on XB1? Storing the OS?

 

[Suikoguy]

So, what exactly will it be used on XB1? Storing the OS?

It's a good place to store the OS.

 

[Omnistalgic]

ps4 = goku
X1 = vegeta

lol....DBZ reference awesome...but Vegeta was slightly stronger than Goku during there SS2 fight. If you're saying PS4 is SS3 Goku and XB1 is SS2 Vegeta, I think that might be a bit exaggerated no?

Power difference seems closer than that...I mean it's launch, but still...Just have to wait and see I guess...

btw-guys who don't love DBZ. It's a pretty big deal in anime/manga, and it has become somewhat synonymous with comparing specs because in the end, it all means nothing. So it's sort of poking fun at the whole comparision thing while having a bit of humor to go along with it. It's part of GAF, it's not derailing the thread...well usually..

 

[Guymelef]

It does. However, the PS4 audio chip is much more basic than what's in the X1 because Sony is heavily betting on GPGPU.

Here's what Mark Cerny says about the audio chip from here: http://www.gamechup.com/mark-cerny-ps4-contains-a-dedicated-audio-processing-chip/



The audio chip on the PS4 just does compression/decompression and mixing of sound sources. That is nice because that means you don't use CPU cycles on those tasks. If you want to do DSP effects (reverb, etc), then Sony is pushing devs to use the GPU for those tasks. With the X1, all of that is handled by the dedicated audio processor (which is apparently equivalent in power to an additional CPU core). On the PS4, since games will be using some of the CU's for audio work, that will mean there's less resources for graphics. That's what people are talking about when they say it brings the performance more in line. PS4 will likely still have a small edge since not all of the CU's will be used for GPGPU functions, but it's not a huge difference. MS and Sony are just approaching the problem from two different, but totally valid ways. MS is pushing more dedicated hardware for some of these tasks, and Sony is pushing GPGPU functions.

I think that as you go forward we will see a hybrid approach in a couple of years where certain aspects of the audio are being done on GPU.”

"In a couple of years" so not now, no if devs doesn't want tu use GPU for audio.

 

[cyberheater]

Yep, Helper chips, an audio processor more powerful and esram all add up to make these machines a lot closer than some are stating, especially considering the cpus in each

Yep. It will help to bridge the gap but It won't close it.

 

[lherre]

Ask the developers. It's them that makes the decisions and they believe that game parity across same generation hardware benefits consumers.

Then did you ask the developers before about it? I mean, is there any developer out there saying this in an inteview or it is something you believe?

 

[coldfoot]

The SHAPE Audio chip is 15 Gflops max, part of which is used up by Kinect voice recognition at all times. Let's just say 10Gflops is available on average. PS4 has a 1840 Gflop GPU, I'm sure they'll find 50 Gflops worth of unused GPU shader cycles here and there to make up for the lack of 10Gflop dedicated sound processing without downgrading graphics, assuming the GPU will need 5x the raw power of the sound block to make the same calculations due to inefficiency (worst case).

In reality, I doubt multiplatforms will use SHAPE or GPGPU audio....

 

[PJV3]

PS4: Manchester Utd
Xbone: Liverpool
WiiU: Crystal Palace

PS4: Daniel Craig
XB1: Roger Moore
WiiU: Woody Allen

 

[Iced_Eagle]

So, what exactly will it be used on XB1? Storing the OS?

I would guess that's where it stores suspended games so it can instantly switch back to them. So if you start playing Ryse campaign, but your buddy invites you to a Forza 5 match, it suspends Ryse and stores it in flash memory, loads up Forza in RAM and when you're done, it can almost instantly switch back to Ryse where you left off without it having to load again (and it would then store Forza in flash so if you wanted to then go back to Forza, again it's already in memory, just suspended).

*Edit*

"In a couple of years" so not now, no if devs doesn't want tu use GPU for audio.

Right, GPGPU is a fairly new field for game development. At launch you won't see a lot of devs use it, just like they won't be using lots of the functions of the PS4/X1. At launch, I would assume that some of the work is being done on the CPU then like it typically has been on current gen. That should actually give X1 an edge in terms of CPU processing power to start as it's not too difficult to use dedicated audio processing hardware (many PC devs have been doing this for a while since many PC's have dedicated sound cards), but as PS4 devs start using more of the GPGPU functions, that will normalize and that's probably one avenue in which devs will "find" more power in the system.

 

[ConteZero76]

Rom bios on PC motherboards are maybe up to 8Mb big. They don't require a flash memory to boot.

Last ROM bios I saw on PC was a "TOMATO BOARD" 80486...
BIOS updates means that BIOS itself is stored inside a FLASH.
Embedded systems (XBox360 and Playstation 3 too) have BIOS code and a minimal filesystem in a partitioned FLASH.

 

[Klocker]

PS4: Daniel Craig
XB1: Roger Moore
WiiU: Woody Allen

Laughed harder than I should there.

 

[Piggus]

Ask the developers. It's them that makes the decisions and they believe that game parity across same generation hardware benefits consumers.

So you think a game developer who works with both Sony and Microsoft will outright say that "X version is better that Y version" before the games or systems are even out? You realize they're trying to appease the holder of the weaker platform and not the gamers, right? In reality there will be differences. Regardless of what these differences are, the devs on record will refer to them as "minimal" as to avoid any beef with Microsoft.

 

[badcrumble]

Ask the developers. It's them that makes the decisions and they believe that game parity across same generation hardware benefits consumers.

Do you think that the level of game parity we'll see this generation will be similar to the level of game parity we saw in the PS3/360 generation?

 

[Shambles]

I like how audio processing has suddenly become some non-trivial thing all of a sudden thanks to the xbone mouth pieces. Are we going to go back to having seperate 2D and 3D graphics processors so people can feel like they're getting more power than they are?

 

[PopcornMegaphone]

So you think a game developer who works with both Sony and Microsoft will outright say that "X version is better that Y version" before the games or systems are even out? You realize they're trying to appease the holder of the weaker platform and not the gamers, right? In reality there will be difference. Regardless of what these difference are, the devs on record will refer to them as "minimal."

Or maybe in the grand scheme of things the differences really are minimal. Occam's razor and all that.

 

[coldfoot]

PS4: Daniel Craig
XB1: Roger Moore
WiiU: Woody Allen

If you're comparing them as directors, Woody Allen wins

 

[Melchiah]

I would guess that's where it stores suspended games so it can instantly switch back to them. So if you start playing Ryse campaign, but your buddy invites you to a Forza 5 match, it suspends Ryse and stores it in flash memory, loads up Forza in RAM and when you're done, it can almost instantly switch back to Ryse where you left off without it having to load again (and it would then store Forza in flash so if you wanted to then go back to Forza, again it's already in memory, just suspended).

Wouldn't that lead to this?

i dont think youre going to be seeing the Flash used for that...too much risk of killing the memory by constant writing...

 

["D"]

PC: Omega Shenron
PS4: Rare Akuma
BONE: Mordecai
WIIU: Sponge BoB

PC: "Heisenberg"
PS4: Jesse "Bitch" Pinkman or Saul Goodman
XBone: Skyler White
Wii U: Marie Schrader

 

[EvB]

Some FLASH must be in place, otherwise you won't be able to boot the unit when you upgrade the internal HDD.

You can't upgrade the internal HDD, but I suspect you knew that.