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Digital Foundry: PS4K / Neo spec leak is genuine, dev kits on their way to devs

Futurematic

Member
Can Sony emulate Jaguar 100% on Puma? I don't see how its worth it for the small bump

Puma is the same 3.1 mm2 as Jaguar AFAIK. Which implies process improvements (hence the up to 2.5 GHz part and lower TDP) instead of actual design changes. So I suspect Puma+ is again exactly the same but process improved. Alas I don't which generations of 28nm tech the various cores are built on to answer said hypothesis.

Any work done porting Jaguar to 14nm could be anything from speeding up the communication between the modules and various minor tweaks (as the cat team is gone, I don't think semi custom will do too much) to basically nothing except improving power use.
 

Jimrpg

Member
Wondering if someone could explain the following for me -

The digital foundry article mentions hardware upscaling. Did PS4 games look bad without upscaling to 4k TVs? I thought because 4k was exactly 4 times the number of pixels as 1080p that it would scale well? Also, if the games are 1080/60 now, does that mean they will be 4k/60 after upscaling?

Do you guys think Sony will drop the bombshell at E3 and say PSVR will require PS4k? It is obvious to me that the PS4 can't handle 1080/60 let alone 1080/90 for PSVR.

I also get the feeling, that the PS4 was poorly planned. Have they used the full 8gb Ram yet? At one stage they were going for 4gb DDR5, which if they set aside 1gb for the OS would have given them 3gb DDR5 which would have been fine for now going by PC games RAM usage. Secondly the CPU and GPU seem weak in comparison to PC, even at the time of the announcement they seemed like average PC components. If Sony want to compete with PCs they really shouldn't be going for a middle of the road solution like they are doing again with the PS4k.
 

Tagg9

Member
Wondering if someone could explain the following for me -

The digital foundry article mentions hardware upscaling. Did PS4 games look bad without upscaling to 4k TVs? I thought because 4k was exactly 4 times the number of pixels as 1080p that it would scale well? Also, if the games are 1080/60 now, does that mean they will be 4k/60 after upscaling?

Haha no, the PS4 does not look bad on 4K TVs. The upscaling is done by the 4K TV, and assuming you have a decent one (I have an entry-level Sony X850C) it should look perfectly fine.
 

Jimrpg

Member
Haha no, the PS4 does not look bad on 4K TVs. The upscaling is done by the 4K TV, and assuming you have a decent one (I have an entry-level Sony X850C) it should look perfectly fine.

So why call the PS4k by that name if the TV can handle it anyway?
 

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
Wondering if someone could explain the following for me -

The digital foundry article mentions hardware upscaling. Did PS4 games look bad without upscaling to 4k TVs? I thought because 4k was exactly 4 times the number of pixels as 1080p that it would scale well? Also, if the games are 1080/60 now, does that mean they will be 4k/60 after upscaling?

4k TVs can generally scale 1080p quite nicely. Hardware scaling is just usually a better option for games because it avoids adding too much more input lag and could potentially be a higher quality scale.

Do you guys think Sony will drop the bombshell at E3 and say PSVR will require PS4k? It is obvious to me that the PS4 can't handle 1080/60 let alone 1080/90 for PSVR.

Absolutely not. They aren't allowing any PS4k exclusives and they've already been talking about and demoing PSVR on PS4 for years.
 

Lady Gaia

Member
So why call the PS4k by that name if the TV can handle it anyway?

Multiple reasons.

For one, presuming the console with play 4K / UHD media you wouldn't want the console to switch between 4K and 1080p output depending on what you're doing because this would result in blackout while your AVR or TV resynchronizes with the new resolution. Upscaling everything to the same resolution yields nice smooth transitions between system menus and content regardless of the source's native resolution.

For another, you'll get better results from upscaling content at intermediate resolutions (1440p and the like or anamorphic resolutions like 3840x1080.) Scaling these down to 1080p and then back up to 4K is suboptimal.

For a third, UHD standards allow for HDR and wide gamut color representation. Even if you stick with a 1080p frame buffer you'd be losing all of this if you tried to output it as standard HDTV 1080p content.
 

orochi91

Member
Do you guys think Sony will drop the bombshell at E3 and say PSVR will require PS4k? It is obvious to me that the PS4 can't handle 1080/60 let alone 1080/90 for PSVR.

PsVR handles games fine on ps4; high FPS via reprojection addresses those fps concerns.
Impressions have been stellar, with regards to the IQ and performance of PsVR games.

Also, there isn't any logic to tying PsVR exclusively to ps4k. There are far more ps4s out there than ps4ks, and this will be the market reality for a while.
 

mitchman

Gold Member
Are there latest rumours suggesting that Neo will house a UHD BR player as well? I thinks that would be the only way to coax me (personally) into buying. It's far easier to include my wife for a movie night on our flagship Samsung 4K TV than to play games.

UHD BD is easily handled by existing BD drive technology. BDXL already mandates more than 2 layers, and reading that is trivial with drives manufactured the last 3+ years. The laser and drive mechanics are the exact same between BD and UHD BD. So that the Neo will handle the UHD disc format is almost 100% guaranteed.
 

Raistlin

Post Count: 9999
Wondering if someone could explain the following for me -

The digital foundry article mentions hardware upscaling. Did PS4 games look bad without upscaling to 4k TVs? I thought because 4k was exactly 4 times the number of pixels as 1080p that it would scale well? Also, if the games are 1080/60 now, does that mean they will be 4k/60 after upscaling?
TV's only accept specific resolutions (namely 480i/p, 720p, 1080i/p, 3160p). While the PS4K doesn't have the power to do native 4K on a complex game, they could go for something in between - 1440p, etc. A TV wouldn't know what to do with that, so the PS4 will do the scaling to 4K.

Also scaling on 4K TV's is still early days. In some cases it's slow, etc. By having the PS4 do it they can make sure the lag is minimal, and also control the specific algorithm to get what they deem is the best IQ for gaming.
 
Today I used my lunch hour to visit a local electronics retail store (Saturn). 4k TVs everywhere! You wanna know what they all had in common? Tech demos. Tech demos on every screen, showing some 4k videos which have only one purpose: To be shown in retails stores. It was then when I realized that the other (non-4k) TVs showed the actual TV program (Barack Obama giving a press conference for example).

Which then reminded me: Besides some very rare 4k streaming services, there's actually no content (yet) which exploits a current gen 4k HDR TV screen.

My point is: Sony not implementing UHD playback into PS4k Neo, I just cannot imagine that, not with all the other stakes Sony has in this market (from TVs to Blu-Ray royalties). And the whole 4k TV market really needs a million-selling device like that, because events like Olympia in Rio or the European Football Championship in France will be over after few weeks...
 
TV's only accept specific resolutions (namely 480i/p, 720p, 1080i/p, 3160p). While the PS4K doesn't have the power to do native 4K on a complex game, they could go for something in between - 1440p, etc. A TV wouldn't know what to do with that, so the PS4 will do the scaling to 4K.

Also scaling on 4K TV's is still early days. In some cases it's slow, etc. By having the PS4 do it they can make sure the lag is minimal, and also control the specific algorithm to get what they deem is the best IQ for gaming.

A TV can accept different resolutions than what you listed. The scaling won't be as good when scaling from 1440p, but it will still display it.
 

Kabanossi

Member
Sold my PS4. Thought the resale value will go down when Neo and/or a price cut is announced. Day 1 when Neo launches. I hope it'll be when PSVR launches. My Xbox One and Wii U will get some well deserved love for a few months.
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
Why wouldn't they be 90? The screen can do 90 or 120

Increasing framerate would require more from the CPU than increasing the resolution or shader details which are more GPU limited. The rumoured CPU is only a small increase and may not be enough to go from 60-90
 
On top of that, while the documentation says that the hard drive will remain the same (Sony has several in circulation, so we assume it means 2.5-inch laptop drives generally) there are no indications of any changes to the Blu-ray drive. This is surprising, as we would have assumed that Sony would take this opportunity to support the new UHD 4K movie standard, supporting standard 50GB discs along with 66GB and 100GB variants. For now it seems that developers are set to stick with 50GB of storage.

It seems kinda obvious that developers would not be allowed to use UHD discs for games. However, it would really be a missed opportunity for Sony if PS4 Neo does not have a UHD Blu-ray drive for supporting 4k movies.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
TV's only accept specific resolutions (namely 480i/p, 720p, 1080i/p, 3160p). While the PS4K doesn't have the power to do native 4K on a complex game, they could go for something in between - 1440p, etc. A TV wouldn't know what to do with that, so the PS4 will do the scaling to 4K.

Also scaling on 4K TV's is still early days. In some cases it's slow, etc. By having the PS4 do it they can make sure the lag is minimal, and also control the specific algorithm to get what they deem is the best IQ for gaming.

The X1 chip that does scaling in Sony 4K sets is amazing, and not slow, blurry, artifacting, etc.. It practically looks native (and nobody could really discern unless told, or face right up to the screen). I have tested this and I am very sensitive to the scaling blur.

There is a reason review sites compare every other TV/Blu-ray/Receiver scaler to it, as a baseline on how it is done. If they implement that same tech in the PS4K, then that will be a plus for TV's/receivers that have less adequate 4K scalers.
 

Raistlin

Post Count: 9999
A TV can accept different resolutions than what you listed. The scaling won't be as good when scaling from 1440p, but it will still display it.
It can, but it's not a promoted or advertised feature. So exactly what resolution / framerate / bitdepth / color format / etc. will be accepted by a given HDMI input outside of the HDMI specification is a complete guess. You'd literally have to experiment with it to find out. And since console games don't typically allow you to adjust those parameters ... what happens when it doesn't work?


There's a reason modern consoles are designed for fixed format specifications. It's to ensure compatibility with the CE standards that are currently being widely used / adopted. Basically all CE devices follow the HDMI spec which is based on ATSC / HD / UHD media formats.





The X1 chip that does scaling in Sony 4K sets is amazing, and not slow, blurry, artifacting, etc.. It practically looks native (and nobody could really discern unless told).
If only every TV had it :p

There is a reason review sites compare every other TV/Blu-ray/Receiver scaler to it as a baseline on how it is done. If they implement that same tech in the PS4K, then that will be a plus for TV's that have less adequate scalers.
I can't imagine it will be a dedicated media processor like what's used in a TV. Too costly. I assume it's going to be part of the rendering pipeline of the APU ... just like scaling has been in all recent AMD console parts. The filters are programmable though, so I hopefully whoever is working on it knows what's up.
 
Why wouldn't they be 90? The screen can do 90 or 120
I believe it's for the same reason you run games at 30fps rather than 45fps even if the game theoretically can run that stable - the reprojection effectively doubles the frame rate. Doubling 90 is 180 which the headset doesn't support. If you are project 90fps native to 120fps then it means every odd frame gets shown twice whilst every even frame only gets shown once. Which makes it look stuttery and weird in the same way 45fps looks weird running on a 60 hertz TV.
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
I believe it's for the same reason you run games at 30fps rather than 45fps even if the game theoretically can run that stable - the reprojection effectively doubles the frame rate. Doubling 90 is 180 which the headset doesn't support. If you are project 90fps native to 120fps then it means every odd frame gets shown twice whilst every even frame only gets shown once. Which makes it look stuttery and weird in the same way 45fps looks weird running on a 60 hertz TV.

Nah. PSVR can do
60 reprojected to 120
90 reprojected to 90
120 reprojected to 120

(90 and 120 native are still reprojected to ensure the most recent movement of the headset is captured)
 

LosDaddie

Banned
Not happy about this. But whatever.

I wouldn't buy it this year, possibly not until Q4 2017 but by that time, the PS5 might be coming out soon.
 

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
The X1 chip that does scaling in Sony 4K sets is amazing, and not slow, blurry, artifacting, etc.. It practically looks native (and nobody could really discern unless told, or face right up to the screen). I have tested this and I am very sensitive to the scaling blur.

There is a reason review sites compare every other TV/Blu-ray/Receiver scaler to it, as a baseline on how it is done. If they implement that same tech in the PS4K, then that will be a plus for TV's/receivers that have less adequate 4K scalers.
I really hope that this tech is in the PS4k. Only heard wonderful things about it. I HATE scaling artifacts and if we see greater than 1080p res on this console, I'd like it to look good since it doesn't scale as well as 1080p will on a 4k display.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
I really hope that this tech is in the 4k. Only heard wonderful things about it.

Same! It truly is remarkable... and what prompted me to get a Sony 4K, when that very day I was in the store to get their top 1080p set for $700. They offered me the 4K with a 120hz panel over the 60hz in the 1080p set for $100 less.

I saw the demo of R&C running on it, and my jaw dropped at how it looked native. I was sold (pixel density is also king to me).

I want an OLED in about 2 years, so I am hoping the joint venture Panasonic and Sony are doing for OLED brings the prices down in that front, as well as having more years under the tech's belt (and hopefully a standard for HDR adopted to curb compatibility issues).
 

Blanquito

Member
I believe it's for the same reason you run games at 30fps rather than 45fps even if the game theoretically can run that stable - the reprojection effectively doubles the frame rate. Doubling 90 is 180 which the headset doesn't support. If you are project 90fps native to 120fps then it means every odd frame gets shown twice whilst every even frame only gets shown once. Which makes it look stuttery and weird in the same way 45fps looks weird running on a 60 hertz TV.

Nah. PSVR can do
60 reprojected to 120
90 reprojected to 90
120 reprojected to 120

(90 and 120 native are still reprojected to ensure the most recent movement of the headset is captured)

.

And from what we've heard, 90 > 60 reprojected to 120, so it would be preferable to have the native 90fps experience.
 
It seems kinda obvious that developers would not be allowed to use UHD discs for games. However, it would really be a missed opportunity for Sony if PS4 Neo does not have a UHD Blu-ray drive for supporting 4k movies.
Considering Sony's uhd player is going to be $400-$500 as a standalone, I wouldn't hold my breath.
 

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
Not happy about this. But whatever.

I wouldn't buy it this year, possibly not until Q4 2017 but by that time, the PS5 might be coming out soon.

If PS5 was coming out in 2018, they would not have launched this. I don't expect it until 2019 at the very least at this point, which coincidentally was when i thought the PS5 would be released anyway
 

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
Explain PS3


[EDIT]
DAMMIT

Didn't they loose hundreds of dollars per unit at 599 because of putting loss leading hardware into PS3? I never thought i'd hear someone say they thought Sony would ever go back to that type of design.
 
Explain PS3


[EDIT]
DAMMIT

=)

Didn't they loose hundreds of dollars per unit at 599 because of putting loss leading hardware into PS3? I never thought i'd hear someone say they thought Sony would ever go back to that type of design.

That had less to do with Blu-ray and more to do with the rest of the system. Plus UHD Blu-ray is more evolutionary hardware and the initial costs are nowhere near as high.
 

SystemUser

Member
That's not relevant. Sony released the Sony BDP-S1 for $1000 back in 2006, the same year they released the PS3.


Also the PS2 was the same price as a Sony DVD player when it launched. I think home video sales (especially for physical media) are not what they were in the late 90s and early 2000s though.

Sony the video content provider would probably like UHD BD in the PS4k. Sony the electronics company probably doesn't want to undercut itself on UHD BD players though. Undercutting itself might be less of a concern since often early adopters want the best product and will pay a premium price.
 

Swass

Member
Increasing framerate would require more from the CPU than increasing the resolution or shader details which are more GPU limited. The rumoured CPU is only a small increase and may not be enough to go from 60-90

Isn't that where GPGPU comes into play though?
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
Increasing framerate would require more from the CPU than increasing the resolution or shader details which are more GPU limited. The rumoured CPU is only a small increase and may not be enough to go from 60-90

Well luckily they have London Studios on it, developing an engine for VR game makers to use that incorporates GPGPU features, voxel based illumination, etc..

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1200772
 
It can, but it's not a promoted or advertised feature. So exactly what resolution / framerate / bitdepth / color format / etc. will be accepted by a given HDMI input outside of the HDMI specification is a complete guess. You'd literally have to experiment with it to find out. And since console games don't typically allow you to adjust those parameters ... what happens when it doesn't work?

I'm not sure if I follow. Why wouldn't it work and why would it be a complete guess? Your TV manufacturer's manual will tell you what it supports. Whatever your TV's native resolution is, that's the resolution that will display. If it receives a lower resolution it will upscale it. If it doesn't work then something is most likely wrong with your hdmi cable or the manufacturer screwed up somewhere since they listed a specification and aren't meeting it. I can play around with custom resolutions on my PC and send the signal to my HDTV. It's not always the case that the console scaler will do a better job than your TV. PS3 had issues for a long time.
 

Raistlin

Post Count: 9999
Didn't they loose hundreds of dollars per unit at 599 because of putting loss leading hardware into PS3? I never thought i'd hear someone say they thought Sony would ever go back to that type of design.
The situation is very different. Yields for blue laser diodes were terrible when they started PS3 manufacturing. So yes, BluRay did add to the cost a fair amount initially. Also adding to it was their custom programmable HDMI Tx chipset. IIRC it was the first programmable one (or at least to the extent it was), and the first clocked fast enough to support HDMI 1.3/4 in mass production. So in some ways we can blame BluRay for that cost too. Of course obviously CELL having terrible yields was probably the biggest cost though.


Point being, none of that fits here. The UHD drive specification is not new or costly. It's basically the same as the PS4. And the ancillary hardware to support the content (HDMI 2.0a / HDCP 2.2) is already in mainstream production. Decoding will be done on the APU. Basically all the parts are available and would be on any media device coming out moving forward.



*shakes fist*

:p
 

spwolf

Member
Point being, none of that fits here. The UHD drive specification is not new or costly. It's basically the same as the PS4. And the ancillary hardware to support the content (HDMI 2.0a / HDCP 2.2) is already in mainstream production. Decoding will be done on the APU. Basically all the parts are available and would be on any media device coming out moving forward.


Samsung's UHD player is $400 on Amazon.
 

Raistlin

Post Count: 9999
I'm not sure if I follow. Why wouldn't it work and why would it be a complete guess? Your TV manufacturer's manual will tell you what it supports. Whatever your TV's native resolution is, that's the resolution that will display. If it receives a lower resolution it will upscale it. If it doesn't work then something is most likely wrong with your hdmi cable or the manufacturer screwed up somewhere since they listed a specification and aren't meeting it. I can play around with custom resolutions on my PC and send the signal to my HDTV.
That's not how it works on most TV's at all.

Many HDMI inputs will literally only display a resolution / rate that falls within the HDMI specification. And if others are supported, it's not typically published.

The common exception to this is many TV's have a dedicated 'PC' input that supports more resolutions. However even with them it's typically a fixed set. You can't just throw any resolution / rate at it like a PC monitor.

For example, here's a current Sony 4K TV spec for its PC input:

640x480@60Hz
800x600@60Hz
1280x768@60Hz-R
1280x768@60Hz
1360x768@60Hz
1024x768@60Hz
1280x1024@60Hz
1920x1080@60Hz
3840x2160@30Hz


https://docs.sony.com/release//specs/XBR75X910C_mksp.pdf


It's not always the case that the console scaler will do a better job than your TV.
PS3 had issues for a long time.
The PS3 literally did not have scaling available at all at launch. It could only output the native resolution of the game, and that meant developers had to make their game in HDMI standard resolutions ... 720p or 1080p/i.

Only later did they get scaling semi working in the SDK so devs could utilize non-standard frame-buffers. But the scaling performance was not particularly good. That was a problem with the RSX. Basically all GPU's post-Xbox 360 have had dedicated scaling at the end of the rendering pipeline.
 

Raistlin

Post Count: 9999
Samsung's UHD player is $400 on Amazon.
I'm not sure what your point is? If you're trying to correlate pricing between that and the costs for an upcoming PS4K, they are entirely unrelated on multiple grounds.



The added costs to the PS4K for UHD are practically nil in terms of BOM. The licensing likely costs more.
 
Samsung's UHD player is $400 on Amazon.

And? You have to factor in that Samsung's player is going to ship in vast fewer quantity than a PS4 which means their cost to manufacture is higher and they're trying to have a decent mark up on it too. It's apples and oranges compared to a PS4 where you can utilize a lot of the things inside the hardware already and just add on the functionality in a box that sells way more units and has a lower profit margin.
 

Raistlin

Post Count: 9999
And? You have to factor in that Samsung's player is going to ship in vast fewer quantity than a PS4 which means their cost to manufacture is higher and they're trying to have a decent mark up on it too. It's apples and oranges compared to a PS4 where you can utilize a lot of the things inside the hardware already and just add on the functionality in a box that sells way more units and has a lower profit margin.

Yup. There is no economy of scale on the Samsung player versus a Playstation, plus the entire business model is different. Samsung is trying to profit entirely off of the hardware sales. For Sony, the return is from multiple different areas.

The bigger point is all of the parts for UHD are needed anyway, or at least a variation of them. They need a BD drive in it that already supports a faster spin rate then UHD requires. The laser assemblies being used likely already support the extra layers - most of them do. So basically the drive itself is pretty much 'free'. The only real extra cost is for a more advanced HDMI chipset. But remember they need HDMI anyway, so the chipset itself isn't an added cost ... only the price delta. And since they are already in mass production, the extra cost is going to be minimal. The only other cost is the licensing for UHD BD which incorporates BD / DVD playback. So again, they are only paying the delta ... not the full cost. Not to mention they actually are partially paying themselves for the license.
 

spwolf

Member
I'm not sure what your point is? If you're trying to correlate pricing between that and the costs for an upcoming PS4K, they are entirely unrelated on multiple grounds.



The added costs to the PS4K for UHD are practically nil in terms of BOM. The licensing likely costs more.

Point is that UHD has higher costs than regular BD players, it is not as trivial as you are making it. In Europe, Samsung costs €500 and Panny €800. If they could make it for $99, they would - or some other competitor would.

You are making it way simpler than what it is.

I wonder what did you think that PSVR would cost as well as Steam boxes?
 

mitchman

Gold Member
Do you guys think Sony will drop the bombshell at E3 and say PSVR will require PS4k? It is obvious to me that the PS4 can't handle 1080/60 let alone 1080/90 for PSVR.
Considering that it's been handling PSVR just fine with some very nice graphics, I'd say you are misinformed.
 

Raistlin

Post Count: 9999
Point is that UHD has higher costs than regular BD players, it is not as trivial as you are making it. In Europe, Samsung costs €500 and Panny €800. If they could make it for $99, they would - or some other competitor would.
That's not how the CE market works. All product launches include high margin. Then it leans out over time as competition and mass production increases. That happens with literally every format / tech launch where the only path to making money is on the hardware itself.

You are making it way simpler than what it is.
If you think that is the case, please quantify where the costs would be incurred?

We know how BD drives work and that the PS4 drive can essentially be used. We know the difference in the I/O, and that it is already ramping up mass production (and that the delta from a traditional HDMI 1.4 is not significant). We know the processing will be done by the APU. And we know there is a licensing fee (don't know the price difference, but there's no way it's significant).

Where are the hidden costs?

I wonder what did you think that PSVR would cost as well as Steam boxes?
What does that have to do at all with this discussion?
 
Just had to upload my reaction to this news:

vwW8.gif
 
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