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Inside Playstation 4 Pro: How sony made the first 4k games console

Downloading the provided screenshots and seeing them up on a tv at typical viewing distance, Infamous looks pretty good, convincing, but doesn't look native. Days gone and Horizon look stunning, they practically look native 4K from ~8ft away on a 55 incher.

Edit: actually Infamous looks pretty crisp too.
 

gogojira

Member
Maybe not the right place to ask, so apologies if so. If I buy a Pro and already have a PS4, is there any kind of a family account setup where both consoles would have access to the same digital content?
 

onQ123

Member
Maybe not the right place to ask, so apologies if so. If I buy a Pro and already have a PS4, is there any kind of a family account setup where both consoles would have access to the same digital content?

Just use your account on both consoles
 
Well if you sell your current system, you're probably looking at only $200-250 to upgrade. That's less than the cost of a comparable graphics card and you get a larger hard drive and 1080p recording. Hopefully it's quieter than the original though.

It is a $150 upgrade for me. Of course I sold my PS4 mine long ago before the prices tanked.
 
I didn't understand most of it...but it laymens terms, here's what I got.

- Pro is a bigger jump than it's initial 4.2 TF suggest because of custom hardware

- lots of custom hardware designs in the Pro and some from pretty current GPU tech

- will definitely benefit HDTV across all resolutions and PSVR

- Cerny is a smartie-pants

-
 

longdi

Banned
Looks like the PS4 Pro is a worthy upgrade for those with PS4's after all.

It's especially fantastic for those like myself who doesn't own a PS4 yet.
It is! And Its only 399!

Thats why i am a supporter of this strategy. Your iterative console dont have to blur the lines of a generation, you do it this way. Imo this is a win win situation for all!

Cnet even thinks existing ps4 owner is worth the upgrade to pro!

Admittedly, I have 20/20 eyesight and review products for a living, but it was enough to make me consider trading in my existing PS4 for a PS4 Pro.
 

thelastword

Banned
The Pro not giving you improvements in the current library except for specifically patched games makes it a poor upgrade proposition compared to the iterative upgrades you can do on a PC which does make all your games better. I guess this way they can continue to sell us 'HD remasters' of the same games we already paid for so that they actually take advantage of the hardware.
Except that the Pro has quite a number of patches deployed already for old games. Games as old as Mordor for free and you can be sure more devs will improve their older titles on their down time between current projects. So the number of older vanilla titles getting Pro patches will increase significantly by the new year. Especially after all the holiday titles ship.

We're not just talking about any old design practice, we're talking about what you called "sane"; as such why should the onus fall on Sony more than the developer to just actually engage in the practice in the first place? Of course Sony was going to offer a platform with an improved GPU and CPU, they made that clear about the post-PS3 roadmap for PS consoles. That was the whole point about ditching Cell and more esoteric parallel computing architectures.

Besides, anyone engaging in the sane approach you prefer probably has about the simplest upgrade to Pro possible - just release a patch that basically flicks the "OK for Pro" switch and they're good. There isn't a massive obstacle preventing older games from activating Pro mode if they were designed "sanely".
Absolutely, it's insane how simple Sony has made it for devs too. Use the power to get your 900p titles to 1080p as a base and use geometry rendering to boost to 4k. Easiest method, one man can work on said titles and get a good return in a few days. Titles like AC Unity, BF4, Watch Dogs, NHL, Syndicate etc... can all see a huge improvement in IQ and framerate. 1080p users would probably get the biggest upgrade in IQ with supersampling as 1080p textures and certain effects will look best there over the faux 4k mode for 4k monitor users.


There is no fucking way it's not FP32.
I agree, but I just don't want to imagine what type of reactions we will get if it is.....but surely that's impossible for a late 2017 console tbh. It would be laughable for sure.

And that I was right about them aiming for 1800p.
There's a reason. Better upscaling. 1800p gets you the same ratio of scaling as 900p to 1080p does. Then add in CBR to fill in the gaps, and the upscaling will be slightly better. But with the extra artifacts that add on top of the existing aliasing.

Look at Infamous
https://images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles//a/1/8/6/3/6/2/4/FirstLight_01.png
https://images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles//a/1/8/6/3/6/2/4/FirstLight_02.png
https://images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles//a/1/8/6/3/6/2/4/FirstLight_04.png
3200x1800, It's blurry and ridiculously aliased (Did they have to ditch the SMAAT2x they used or is it just falling apart here?) and FFS the texture filtering is still a total joke!
Infamous may be using Geometry rendering to 4k, hence why the textures are not enhanced over the 1080p PS4 version. Some effects won't be enhanced either. The biggest draw is the clarity and sharpness of the image at 4k over 1080p and also the improved framerate. 1080p users will no doubt benefit most here imo. Textures suited for 1080p, better IQ and better framerate.

Bonkers said:
No. Clearly it doesn't. If you could get a HDR 1080p TV. Then there'd be zero reason to use a 4k TV over a 1080p.
Fixed resolution display with SSAA > Fixed resolution display with sub native rendering and tricks to fill the gaps which add additional artifacts.
Only that there are no 1080p HDR sets, it would be a nice option, but I think the 4x resolution has huge benefits and it will wow too.....

Bonkers said:
1080pTVs will potentially get near CG movie levels of image quality if developers are smart about they get down to 1920x1080 in that specific mode.. Meanwhile 4k TVs will be stuck with the same stuff we've had for years, upscaled images with aliasing left over from low end PPAA solutions and then artifacts from CBR/interpolation techniques and upscaling on top of it.
Here's the thing, the CG quality AA you're looking for is very possible with the PS4.Pro, but you will still need to render at 4k and downsample to 1080p to achieve that. So rendering in 4k is still not a waste of resources for what you want. I think the cleanest looking/highest detailed game may very well be a checkerboarded game that saves performance over a native render using SAA and TAA whilst checkerboarding it 's way to 4k and then downsampling to 1080p. It would mean that virtually all jaggies would be gone with some pretty good graphical presets to maintain high detail over medium to low presets.


It's cool to see how they can be smart to circumvent power limitations, and I totally agree with him that power is not the end goal, but rather what this power enables, but it seems ps4 pro is such a half assed upgrade on anything but raw gpu size that it's struggling to deliver even with all the clever tricks going on.

I though that all checkerboard rendered games were for sure rendering natively at 2x1080p, but as the article points out, turns out *most* aren't. They are below that target, being slightly upscaled to 1920*2160p and then checkerboarded to 4k.

Nice about the hardware buffer for tracking geometry and objects, though, seems like it's a requirement to make the upscale good look, having the titles rendering with amazing IQ at the native res to reduce the effects of the upscale.

But, I'm not expecting any native 4k games, except for games that ps4 itself had no trouble going well over 1080p
My biggest takeaway is the ID buffer, what a genius idea. I think this will help developers give us some really nice IQ on the PS4.Pro especially outside of downsampling. I will say that the IQ on checkerboarded titles (primarily) AA will be vastly improved over the vanilla PS4 titles we have seen. And that saying something with the likes superbly anti-aliased titles like; UC4, ISS/FL, 1886 and Sniper Elite 3, Primal etc.....

You should also be aware that there are many native 4k games coming to the Pro or will be patched in. They're not basic looking titles either. NBA 2k17, PES, TLOUR....And I'm pretty sure SF5 could hit native 4k on the Pro along with so many other titles.

I don think so, or very little if anything. The game is suppose to run at 60, the hardware just struggles with it. So an additional 5-10 fps to keep it consistent shouldn't really give a huge advantage. You are just using the extra power to run the game at the framerate its suppose to. If you were to go from 30 to 60 in a multiplayer game I would agree its a big advantage.

On PC some are probably playing at 30 fps, some at 120. That is a huge advantage.



Netflix, YouTube, 4k bluray? :p

It can output 4K, no other current console does.
The boost to the PS4.Pro is much larger than the boost to the XB1s. You could gain massive boosts in framerate from the GPU alone notwithstanding much less stutter with the CPU boost. Some of these titles are supposedly 60fps but they fall so often to 40fps and at times in the mid 30's, that it would definitely impact vanilla players in contest.

Look at BF Hardline on certain maps, it falls into the 30's mostly when there's heavy alpha on screen, explosions etc...I think on many games it will change things too much and set vanilla users at a disadvantage. I think the Pro hardware is definitely capable of improving framerate of upwards of 20-30fps in some titles over vanilla. Tbh, even more than that if all we're doing is allowing the new hardware to run vanilla games as fast as possible. Remember BF4, Hardline would be running at 900p on Pro hardware with no preset improvement or resolution enhancements, just the vanilla game gone wild on better hardware.........So yes, running hardline at 900p on an Rx 480 is going to give you close to 150-200fps most of the time at non-ultra/console presets.

"One of the features appearing for the first time is the handling of 16-bit variables - it's possible to perform two 16-bit operations at a time instead of one 32-bit operation," he says, confirming what we learned during our visit to VooFoo Studios to check out Mantis Burn Racing. "In other words, at full floats, we have 4.2 teraflops. With half-floats, it's now double that, which is to say, 8.4 teraflops in 16-bit computation. This has the potential to radically increase performance."

Found this quote very interesting. This means that in reality Ps4pro's actual TFLOPS performance will be somewhere between 4.2 and 8.4, depending on how much is 16bit half-floats and how much is 32bit full-floats. In reality this Tflops number will be closer to 4.2, otherwise the visuals will take a big hit, but I think some effects do not need more than 16bit variables anyway. Every time the variables ends up with a result in 32bit that is equal in 16bit, power is wasted. I think this explains why Mark Cerny says there is more power under the hood than what the 4.2TFLOPS is suggesting.
The biggest takeaway from 16 bit floating points is how beneficial I forsee it being for VR. It will be fit perfectly into the framerate boost that VR requires, perhaps more titles can now aim for 120fps instead of 90 or 60 boosted and also give PSVR games much more legroom for better AA and reduced blurriness on titles.
 
Damn, why can't they let old games use the extra horsepower automatically, like XB1 S. Must be some sort of technical hassle. I'm just thinking of how PCs work where if you have more power you'd just get a higher framerate, and the game wouldn't otherwise be affected.

Yup this was what I was hoping for as well, but pff I am really not seeing the benefit to those "700+" games from the PS4 library if they aren't at very least allowed to run at the marginal cpu increase to help smooth out gameplay.

For a system aiming at keeping people from going to PCs it seems ass-backwards with how adding better components and then artificially limiting them is a good idea. Why not give us an option in the settings to run full speed or limited speed?

I'm not sure it's worth a damn now for current PS4 owners with a library of older games that could use a slight performance boost.

If anything this makes going full PC seem MORE attractive
 

dogen

Member
If you do calculations using 16 bit (half precision) floating variables the GPU allows developers to do two operations in the same time it takes to do a single operation using a 32 bit (standard precision) variable. So if the Teraflops in standard precision are 4.2 you get 8.4 in half precision.
It's really nothing complicated. Same way usually if you use 64 bit precision the Teraflops would become 2.1
The point is when and where it's feasible for developers to use 16 bit precision to get more performance. Usually 32 bit is required for most tasks hence why 32 bit is the standard precision.

Apparently FP16 and INT16 support can help a lot.

https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/nvidia-pascal-announcement.57763/page-95#post-1933199
 

zedge

Member
So your saying Pro games framerates will be held back to prevent an advantage over PS4 users?

BF1 will have the same framerate drops as the PS4 to prevent this? That sounds completely ridiculous to me..
 

Saberus

Member
I didn't know this, the third USB port on the Pro is USB 3.1 Gen.1 port on the rear of the unit. That will allow very Hi speed.
 
So your saying Pro games framerates will be held back to prevent an advantage over PS4 users?

BF1 will have the same framerate drops as the PS4 to prevent this? That sounds completely ridiculous to me..

No that won't happen. Both versions will have the same target framerate, but the Pro version should stay a lot closer to that target.
 
I didn't understand half the things he was saying but Mark Cerny knows his shit. Sony is lucky to have such an intelligent man designing its hardware.
 
So your saying Pro games framerates will be held back to prevent an advantage over PS4 users?

BF1 will have the same framerate drops as the PS4 to prevent this? That sounds completely ridiculous to me..

it just means in terms of multiplayer games if the regular version is 30fps the pro version will need to be 30fps to not give an advantage but both games have to target the same framerate that doesnt rule out the pro version being a more solid framerate over the regular version.
 

zedge

Member
it just means in terms of multiplayer games if the regular version is 30fps the pro version will need to be 30fps to not give an advantage but both games have to target the same framerate that doesnt rule out the pro version being a more solid framerate over the regular version.

That's fine.

But others are saying the frame drops on PS4 should remain on the pro to prevent an advantage. That's just bad.

No that won't happen. Both versions will have the same target framerate, but the Pro version should stay a lot closer to that target.

Good. That's all I am asking for.
 

Saberus

Member
From where did you get this? Which article?
Also it is only for the additional rear USB?

Off the official FAQ

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2016/09/08/ps4-pro-the-ultimate-faq/

((Outside of higher gaming performance, 4K TV features, and support for 4K video streaming, are there any other benefits to PS4 Pro?
Yes. PS4 Pro will come standard with a 1TB HDD, faster Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac), and a third USB 3.1 Gen.1 port on the rear of the unit. PS4 Pro’s more powerful hardware can also benefit PlayStation VR games, enhance streaming features such as Share Play and Remote Play, and enable higher resolution output for media captured using the Share button.
In most other ways, PS4 Pro will be very similar to the standard PS4. This includes the user interface and functionality.))
 

Bl@de

Member
That's fine.

But others are saying the frame drops on PS4 should remain on the pro to prevent an advantage. That's just bad.

Yeah I don't see why clockspeeds should add incompatibility if you leave the game capped at 30. The games should just run at a locked 30 with GPU having spare power (so it runs cooler and quieter). Even if game logic is tied to fps. Framedrops on the original PS4 aren't planned after all :/
 

Tagg9

Member
And that I was right about them aiming for 1800p.
There's a reason. Better upscaling. 1800p gets you the same ratio of scaling as 900p to 1080p does. Then add in CBR to fill in the gaps, and the upscaling will be slightly better. But with the extra artifacts that add on top of the existing aliasing.

Look at Infamous
https://images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles//a/1/8/6/3/6/2/4/FirstLight_01.png
https://images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles//a/1/8/6/3/6/2/4/FirstLight_02.png
https://images.eurogamer.net/2015/articles//a/1/8/6/3/6/2/4/FirstLight_04.png
3200x1800, It's blurry and ridiculously aliased (Did they have to ditch the SMAAT2x they used or is it just falling apart here?) and FFS the texture filtering is still a total joke!

Jesus, the aliasing in those screenshots is insane. I wouldn't be surprised if 1080p turns out to be the preferred setting for pristine image quality (even for those of us with 4K TVs).
 


Off the official FAQ

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2016/09/08/ps4-pro-the-ultimate-faq/

((Outside of higher gaming performance, 4K TV features, and support for 4K video streaming, are there any other benefits to PS4 Pro?
Yes. PS4 Pro will come standard with a 1TB HDD, faster Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac), and a third USB 3.1 Gen.1 port on the rear of the unit. PS4 Pro’s more powerful hardware can also benefit PlayStation VR games, enhance streaming features such as Share Play and Remote Play, and enable higher resolution output for media captured using the Share button.
In most other ways, PS4 Pro will be very similar to the standard PS4. This includes the user interface and functionality.))

Nice. USB 3.1 is faster but it is on the back which is not practical if you want to use USB stick or external HDD.
 

deadduck

Member
Damn, why can't they let old games use the extra horsepower automatically, like XB1 S. Must be some sort of technical hassle. I'm just thinking of how PCs work where if you have more power you'd just get a higher framerate, and the game wouldn't otherwise be affected.

1s is what, 5% more frames over std. No big deal.

Pro could be a very large jump over std. 30->60 will break some games, so then it comes down to limiting it. How much do you limit it? What about multiplayer? It's easier and safer to leave it as it is and get devs to patch.

PC games have a wide range of hardware to start with. Some PC games will be played on systems worse than consoles, some better, so you have to take all into account day1. Consoles are fixed and the pre summer 2016 APIs didn't take scalable hardware into account.
 
Honestly I'm not too worried. But would it be possible for Sony to give a way for developers to emulate a higher clockspeed for the CPU so they can take advantage of just that for a more consistent fps?

Kinda just give enough like the Xbox S does for games running on it. A lazy patch it they prefer.
 

Saberus

Member
Nice. USB 3.1 is faster but it is on the back which is not practical if you want to use USB stick or external HDD.

I agree about the USB stick, but I'm actually happy for external hard drive, will look cleaner without the cable sticking out the front.
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
Curious why 3200x1800 is being used in lots of games before the upscaling/uprendering/reconstruction? That's quite a jump from 1080p and a fair amount more pixels than '1080p X 2' which would have been my guess based on the performance increase. Add in the additional processing to do the checkerboard stuff and is there a risk that pro may perform worse than OG PS4 in some situations?
 

pottuvoi

Banned
One of the things we really like about the method was are using is that it provides AA.
Fixed function primitive ID buffer on ROPs was really big news, will certainly be interesting all the ways developers will use it for. (Should be useful on many ways, not just TAA.)
Curious why 3200x1800 is being used in lots of games before the upscaling/uprendering/reconstruction? That's quite a jump from 1080p and a fair amount more pixels than '1080p X 2' which would have been my guess based on the performance increase. Add in the additional processing to do the checkerboard stuff and is there a risk that pro may perform worse than OG PS4 in some situations?
As Cerny said the checkerboard uses half the target resolution/pixel render target.

So if developers say they use 1800p and checkerboard, it should mean that they use 1600x1800 buffer for checkerboard. (1600x900 2xMSAA buffer, both sub-samples shaded..)
Then upscale the completed 3200x1800 buffer to 4k output.

1800p used for source for reconstruction would give quite incredible quality though.
3200x1800 (2xMSAA) + checkerboard would give 6400x3600.
 

Shane89

Member
Blame the recording and sharing features for that. I imagine if it was as barbeones as the last gen, they could have upto 7.5GB available just for games.

not that. there is a dedicated CPU for that, and ram usage shouldn't be really high for 2 background recording apps.
 

Caayn

Member
I don't get why people talk about two GPUs or even a mirrored set-up. When Cerny only uses the word mirror to described doubling the GPU cores. The GPU in the Pro is exactly twice the amount of cores as the original in the PS4. Hence mirroring itself.
"First, we doubled the GPU size by essentially placing it next to a mirrored version of itself, sort of like the wings of a butterfly. That gives us an extremely clean way to support the existing 700 titles," Cerny explains, detailing how the Pro switches into its 'base' compatibility mode. "We just turn off half the GPU and run it at something quite close to the original GPU."
They're literally turning off half of the cores to preserve compatibility.

Having two GPUs in the Pro would be a gigantic waste of resources, both production wise (not just the second/mirror GPU itself but the extra buses as well for example.) and developing wise.
 
Curious why 3200x1800 is being used in lots of games before the upscaling/uprendering/reconstruction? That's quite a jump from 1080p and a fair amount more pixels than '1080p X 2' which would have been my guess based on the performance increase. Add in the additional processing to do the checkerboard stuff and is there a risk that pro may perform worse than OG PS4 in some situations?

Some seem to target 60fps and use 1800p like devs have used 900p on the regular PS4.
 
I was saying that MS need to give us more information then just the flop number because 6TF could be 6TF FP32 or 6TF FP16 because this is the way AMD & NVIDIA was going even for bigger GPUs in the future.

I'm not saying that this is what MS is doing but they wouldn't be lying if they called 6TF FP16 6TF.

It will be 6tf at 32bit for certain. Wether or not it has 12tf at 16bit remains to be seen, but probable
 

Kuosi

Member
Can't wait to hear about 8.4tf console everywhere, maybe DF should do a short clip about what 16b and 32b operations actually mean and how it affects the outcomes of those operations
 

Markitron

Is currently staging a hunger strike outside Gearbox HQ while trying to hate them to death
That was a pretty good article, IMO it seemed to have addressed almost all of the major issues that people have with the PS4 Pro:

End of console cycles
No benefits for 1080p users
Not powerful enough for 4K etc

For 399 this is a hell of a nice upgrade.
 

Rurunaki

Member
Now I'm getting hyped for pspro.. still I need somebody to explain ro me in DBZ format what the technical jargon means.
 
It was all over my head but the parts that I did understand sounded pretty good. And that's good enough for me. I never though thing was going to do native 4k, I just needed to know that it would looked good enough on a 4k TV. I know Modern Warfare Remaster is getting some kind of support so I just need for Capcom to announce it for SFV as well and I'm good. Neither seem really graphic intensive so they might be native 4k. If not then at least 2160p checkerboard instead of 1800p I assume.
 

RocknRola

Member
Silly question that has probably been answered already: can you use an external HDD or SSD as external storage (and play games from there like the XB1, for example)?
 
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