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DF: Leadbetter interviews 4A's Oles Shishkovstov about current gen consoles + PC
- Thread starter stryke
- Start date
Please provide a quote from "PC GAF" stating that. Don't worry, I'll wait. (By the way, why is generalizing "PC GAF" not treated in the same way as "Sony GAF"?)
I still think people should qualify such a statement a lot more before they present it to the masses. Reduce your CPU overhead twofold? Sure, at least in some scenarios (and you better, considering the anemic CPUs in consoles). But you won't get much better performance shading pixels or transforming vertices on consoles than on equivalent PC hardware -- and many high-end multiplatform titles confirm this.
icecold1983
Member
pc games are horribly inefficient. late gen console games will be achieving much closer to peak throughput in all areas of its hardware than a pc will ever dream of
The problem is they are early tools still the article pretty much confirms this and theres no way a multi-plat game will be as well optimised as a 1st party game so kinda pointless to be honest as both side's can't prove it.
4 man months. Which means 4 people for 1 month.
jellies_two
Member
it comes up all the time. !!
- the coding to the metal "myth."
- let's not dredge up that cliffyb tweet.
- there has been zero examples of a multi platform game benefitting from any metal advantage.
- pc has assembler too.
- any performance increase over the years was down to algorithms not optimization.
it is pc gaf lore that metal is not a thing that matters, and pc gaf lore that the same number of Teraflops means same game.
that's just my impression! but what do I know I have only been lurking daily for a year.
Of course it is more powerful. According to him "PS4 is just a bit more powerful.".
But ESRAM major issue? I guess you opened a different link.
To be fair many PC gamers here on GAF have been reasonable about it. A lot however start frothing at the mouth when the word comes up but then talk about the benefits of Mantle/DX12.
Shpeshal Nick
aka Collingwood
Ok cool. Thanks for the replies.
kruis
Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
PS4 has twice the number of GPU components but it's only a bit more powerful?
Well, bad things are happening over there but it's not like the whole country is a giant warzone. Kiev is probably safer than an average big American city ;P
Yea wrong to brand any side as a whole because of what a few hardcore platform fans say.
What would you expect him to say? "PS4 has a decent performance lead and it took us a while to get the X1 version up to scratch"?
Don't ask me, ask the one interviewed.
Why not? I think given they had even less time on Xbox One their work on this version is amazing.
Oh, I agree; but from a marketing point of view I can understand being deliberatley vague about certain things.
That's a pretty arbitrary number there. Define what 1x better means, ya know?
And it all depends on what the developer decides to prioritize. You can easily take a 60fps game and thrown in MSAAx8 and suddenly you have a 30-40fps game. It is going to look 2.5x better? Hardly. It will look a lot cleaner obviously, but the multitude of other things that make up 'good graphics' are being ignored there.
GeordieMark
Member
In the grand scheme of computing power, he isn't wrong.
I think what most people say is that more is made of the 'coding to the metal' thing than is really there. Perhaps, on-paper, in a theoretical capacity, it might be true. But in practical terms, I don't think there's a whole lot of evidence to support the difference being quite that big. And I also don't think you'll find anybody who denies that there is some advantage to using a low level console API.
You are exaggerating and generalizing.
What the hell is "PC GAF lore" and where can I see actual quotes of it?
LukasTaves
Member
They had kits for a limited time and themselves said it was in an infant state.
Esram is not a "hamperiment", per se, it might have become one in early titles due lack of tools and apis on xbone devkit, but that doesn't mean it's going to stay that way forever. Heck, we are already seeing improvements.
And this is a huge reason why:
The xbone's XDKs even today doesn't offer the borderline performance the hardware is capable of. Things like multithreaded draw calls that have been possible on Ps4 since before day one, are still not possible on the bone.
Of course, it's Ms own fault, but it means things will still improve further.
kruis
Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
In the grand scheme, no. The GPU in the PS4 is only a bit more powerful than the Xbone in comparison with a GTX Titan. But in a direct comparison between just the PS4 and Xbone, I don't think that's true.
LukasTaves
Member
Because Ps4 does not have twice the gpu components, and even the ones it does (like ROPs or TMUs) are usually bound by things other than the units themselves like bandwidth.
Coding to metal is a myth - yes. Its a myth, because people treat it exactly like a quote above:
You get 2x times more global performance on consoles or You are only achieving 50% performance on PC hardware.
Its so ridiculous statement to think that PC are running on 50% or less efficiency that i dont know who with the any brain claim that, but You know what?
There are tons of people here and on the internet that do, even though not only theoretically its not possible, but there is not a single real example of that.
Ps. No one is ever claiming lack of benefits of lower level API. Far from it actually.
I think we all are well aware about the hardware differences but we should keep in mind that all numbers given are theoretical max values which probably can't be achieved all the time.
For example we know currently that the os by PS4 and Xbone (afair) take a good amount of RAM (3gb, if I am not wrong) and take 2 CPU cores. Than you have to keep in mind that both systems run on multi-tasking OS's. So the scheduler is constantly stealing CPU time from your game (of course with priorities, but still).
The comparison between both systems with raw numbers is, in my opinion, of no real use this gen as there are side effects on both systems we are uncertain of considering performance hits.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=876047&page=9
A few in this thread to what he was on about a console analysis thread turned in to PC vs console thread like many due to a PC gaffer posting something. They discuss in this thread I think if there is an actual benefit from closed patforms with a few PC gaf arguing there is none and its a myth.
I was about to ask for an actual example of a game running on consoles at 2x performance compared to an equivalent PC. Maybe there are, but I can't find any.
Are you sure of that. Because 8800 gt released in november of 2006 for 200 bucks is faster then a ps3 in recent multiplat. This whole optimization is fishy.
Die size and expense.
Wishmaster92
Member
Very good interview eurogamer
icecold1983
Member
its also over twice as powerful as the gpu in ps3, yet provides an experience thats marginally better. plz find me anything a 7950gt, or whatever card is spec matched to the rsx, can run at playable fps that looks anywhere near as good as uncharted 3, god of war, tlou, killzone 3 etc.
But what about the Cell ?
angular graphics
Banned
So it should run games about the same as the PS3 thanks to the latter's automagical 2x applies-to-everything-and-every-developer-out-there-can-do-it-while-standing-on-his-head code to the metal optimizations, not significantly better (as it does).
Well, given that DX11 overhead is felt most acutely on the CPU side, I think you might actually see a large performance delta if you were to pair, say, an AMD 5150 (4 core Jaguar) with a 7850.
But in practice, of course, this is fairly meaningless, as even a mid-level build from 2011 is likely to sport a CPU that is more than twice as fast as the console counterparts, thereby erasing much of that delta.
GeordieMark
Member
He is primarily a PC developer so I imagine he is looking at this in terms of the bigger picture. To him, the difference is not a huge one.
Night Hunter
Banned
People should remember this. Unless someone is explicitly comparing PS4 and XBO the difference will be minimal. I remember this discussion from ther threads (I think it was about a developer from CD Projekt).
And look how good it works. People already starting to see how cheap that port of TLOU:R is in reality. Smh. Ya that dig at ND was complete unnecessary.
alexandros
Banned
There aren't any, if there were you can be sure that you would see them plastered all over Neogaf threads. I believe that no developer would seriously consider spending many months or even years on optimization just to eek out a bit better performance. Carmack, whose "2x" tweet is often brought up as evidence, since there isn't any actual evidence out there, had this to say on the topic of his greatest regrets:
Carmack in the end understood what the vast majority of multiplatform devs already know. That endless optimization is a gigantic waste of time for little actual benefit.
Well you are directly contradicting Shishkovstov and Carmack, they are not mincing words and leaving it open to interpretation. Any counterclaim has to start with "Sorry Oles and John, but you guys are wrong".
Oh so you believe that optimisation DOES exist after all. And youre quoting that n00b Carmack!
The defensive attitude only proves that its to do with vested interests. Some people see bringing up the idea as somehow making more powerful PC hardware less impressive.
More like, "Sorry Oles and John, but I don't see the evidence that supports this."
Once again, its likely a theoretical thing, but not something that actually pans out in practical circumstances.
Dictator93
Member
Guys, the 2x statement does not apply to the entire rendering pipeline. Just parts of it...
You people just use that "2x more perf quote" in fanboyish manners. Please stop, it's stupid you aren't devs or anything close to that.
Endlessly I see odd comparisons flourish here. Like comparing multiplatform games and all to prove anything.
Comparing multiplatform games between PC and consoles will always being about bruteforcing things. Why? Basically because those multiplatform games aren't designed to take advantages to platform specific hardware features (and it's the same for console wars bullshit using multiplatform software), so yes more flops = more performance here, always.
PC will always have a power advantage versus consoles, they are just limited by the tech available at a time and that's it. It's undebatable. Problems arise when you compare things that aren't very comparable, furthermore using bad examples (multiplatform games).
Yes, Crysis 3 on PS3 is exactly what you should expect of equivalent hardware on PC (if it does exist) because that kind of game is distributed among a big range of hardwares and isn't designed around the advantages (and flaws) of one hardware in particular. But a game like TLOU is something you can just dream to achieve with equivalent hardware in a PC. It doesn't say PC hardware isn't as capable, I bet if one PC developer would design a game just for that particular hardware (let's say an equivalent tflops and bandwidth config on PC than PS3) he could build a game as ambitious as TLOU because the hardware is effectively as capable.
This particular problem resides in the design philosophy. Designing a game around the hardware of a closed platform improves efficiency by a lot. You can say, to end this, that multiplatform console gaming and PC gaming have the same limiting factors. PC is just like there was plenty of other consoles around there where some have more power and some less, with games designed to run on every of them.
Ultimately, I hear every now and then that consoles are a limiting factor for PC gaming, but in fact the biggest limiting factor for high-end PC gaming is PC. If there was a "label" like "high-end PC gaming only" forming an high-end platform with devs targeting this (and only this) range of high end hardwares only, you would see things right now you never imagine your shiny hardware would be capable of today, things you won't see until the next generation of consoles, right now. I know it's frustrating and it's a shame that hardware isn't fully used and never will be because high end PC gaming is niche (in regards of big publishers) bit it's not the fault of console gaming or even budget PC gaming, it's because devs don't (or aren't economically allowed to) design their games for your hardware.
That's why, in fact, plenty of us choose the console road.
Endlessly I see odd comparisons flourish here. Like comparing multiplatform games and all to prove anything.
Comparing multiplatform games between PC and consoles will always being about bruteforcing things. Why? Basically because those multiplatform games aren't designed to take advantages to platform specific hardware features (and it's the same for console wars bullshit using multiplatform software), so yes more flops = more performance here, always.
PC will always have a power advantage versus consoles, they are just limited by the tech available at a time and that's it. It's undebatable. Problems arise when you compare things that aren't very comparable, furthermore using bad examples (multiplatform games).
Yes, Crysis 3 on PS3 is exactly what you should expect of equivalent hardware on PC (if it does exist) because that kind of game is distributed among a big range of hardwares and isn't designed around the advantages (and flaws) of one hardware in particular. But a game like TLOU is something you can just dream to achieve with equivalent hardware in a PC. It doesn't say PC hardware isn't as capable, I bet if one PC developer would design a game just for that particular hardware (let's say an equivalent tflops and bandwidth config on PC than PS3) he could build a game as ambitious as TLOU because the hardware is effectively as capable.
This particular problem resides in the design philosophy. Designing a game around the hardware of a closed platform improves efficiency by a lot. You can say, to end this, that multiplatform console gaming and PC gaming have the same limiting factors. PC is just like there was plenty of other consoles around there where some have more power and some less, with games designed to run on every of them.
Ultimately, I hear every now and then that consoles are a limiting factor for PC gaming, but in fact the biggest limiting factor for high-end PC gaming is PC. If there was a "label" like "high-end PC gaming only" forming an high-end platform with devs targeting this (and only this) range of high end hardwares only, you would see things right now you never imagine your shiny hardware would be capable of today, things you won't see until the next generation of consoles, right now. I know it's frustrating and it's a shame that hardware isn't fully used and never will be because high end PC gaming is niche (in regards of big publishers) bit it's not the fault of console gaming or even budget PC gaming, it's because devs don't (or aren't economically allowed to) design their games for your hardware.
That's why, in fact, plenty of us choose the console road.