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[Panajev2001a]

Well in terms of GPU upgrade, they've basically put in an AMD 390/Nvidia 970 class part in it.

Don't care what anyone says, doubling GPU performance but keeping that horrid little Jaguar CPU just increases the CPU bound nature of the PS4, even with a 500Mhz clock bump, in fact a x2 GPU capability paired with only a 30% CPU bump makes it even more unbalanced than before.

That Jaguar CPU needs to go.

I think you are underestimating the performance of the cluster of 8 Jaguar cores at the intended frequency and overestimating the importance of CPU performance in the design of these consoles. Not to say that Xbox Next and PS5 will not update the CPU's to a more powerful core, but I would be surprised if the relative performance ratio between CPU and GPU is not going to stay the same. There was an insomniac CPU optimisation GDC track about the Jaguar setup in this generation of consoles and while it may not match gamers Core i7 expectations, the words on it were still pretty positive. It is a reliable, relatively surprise free (nasty unexpected performance pitfalls... see PPC cores in the previous generation), general purpose little core meant to keep a monster GPU fed (monster is relative to console size and thermal budgets) and the game responsive while the GPU progressively take over as much work as it possibly can.

 

[Brad Grenz]

I doubt it will output at 1440p, there will be people who use the new console on 1080p TVs and I'm not sure that a downscaled image would look good.

Supersampled yes, but if it outputs at 1440p and is then downscaled by a chip you are going to get artifacts.

Downscaling IS supersampling. It looks great. There's no artifacting to worry about. But for most people it probably isn't worth paying $400-500 again just to get a downsampled image on their 1080p set.

Unless Sony specifically mandates this, uh, no. Probably fewer than 5% of PS4 users are currently displaying the picture on a 1440p+ capable monitor. It's much more likely devs will use the extra power on better IQ, which is one of the easiest things to increase without a ton of extra effort. It may be difficult to jump from 30 fps to 60 fps, but if that's possible, that would probably get priority over 1440p, as well.

And honestly, I'd rather have better IQ than a 1440p resolution, anyway.

1440p IS better image quality. The entire idea around this revision is supporting new 4K TV owners and to drive the adoption of such displays. It doesn't matter how many already have them, this is a premium option for people who do, and a reason for more people to look at them.

Lol, I know we don't have ALL the info about the GPU yet.

But what is it with Sony hardware and people always vastly overestimating what it can do?

You probably shouldn't disparage the knowledge of others in this case. 1440p rendering is easily within the realm of a 4.2GFlop GPU's capabilities. It's twice the detail of 1080p and can be easily scaled to 4K for output to a UHD television.

 

[chromatic9]

Completely missing the fact that the CPU used there is a monster relative to the ps4+

(6 core cpu at close to 5ghz with an IPC that is more than double to that of Jaguar).

Surprised you think that is relevant in this situation. The intel is just there to rule out any issue. That is a GPU bound test.

PS4 and XBO do BF4 around 30-50fps. Any crappy AMD CPU can do around 30-40fps under load.

Just to clarify since you couldn't understand the bench. The CPU in PS4/XBO is indeed weak not saying it isn't, the test you quoted is GPU bound. They have trouble maintaining 60fps in BF4 multiplayer and raising the clock won't do much.

 

[Mabufu]

I'm so fucking in with this. Seems like Sony nailed the upgrade model.

 

[valkyre]

sounds to me that nobody will care enough for either PS4 or NEO when developing their games.

I fear that there will be quite a lot of "fuck this shit" from developers, Bioware last week pretty much was along these lines...

 

[Putty]

At a rumoured price point of $399 i'm not sure what people are expecting with talk of disappointment in the specs. Maybe it's Sony testing the water a little bit to gauge reaction, maybe these ARE the nailed on specs. A double performance GPU, 30% faster CPU and i imagine bumped RAM speed, add in 4k Blu Ray support.....for $399? If you expected more it's time to go the PC route.

 

[Kuni]

Yes, this is much more in line with what I expected. This is all sounding very reasonable. It sounds like Sony are going to great pains to ensure the market isn't broken by it. Good stuff.

 

[Renekton]

Bioware last week pretty much was along these lines...

That was from an ex-founder who left Bioware long time ago.

 

[TAJ]

Maybe they can release a version of Broforce for this that stays above 10fps.

 

[GamerMax73]

People are acting like Sony is gonna kick in their door and replace their current PS4 with a pile of shit or something.

The box in your house is the exact same as it was when you bought it. Why assume that every new game coming out will run like shit on the standard PS4? The 30-something million unit install base should be incentive for publishers and devs to make sure new games are running at least decently on the standard unit, no?
.

Because tbh, most consumers are not discerning enough to tell the difference. If The Laster of Us: The Lastening comes out and runs at ~22fps on PSPoor then the mass market consumer isn't going to notice the difference. They'll look at the trailers (running on PS4 Neo) and see how awesome it looks, and buy the game even if they won't get the same product they saw in the video.

Interesting from Giant Bomb:

4K TV owners should expect the NEO to upscale games to fit the format, but one place Sony is unwilling to bend is on frame rate. Throughout the documents, Sony repeatedly reminds developers that the frame rate of games in NEO Mode must meet or exceed the frame rate of the game on the original PS4 system.

If this is right I'd expect Sony to be watching frames rates on "PSPoor" as well.

 

[justsomeguy]

Hrm. Torn. Spend £800 on a neo (my first playstation of the gen) and an xbox 1.5, or just sink that into a pc that will probably outperform both. Tough call.

 

[EPaul]

Not much of an upgrade so i don't feel so bad about my PS4 purchase

 

[Maroon Gamer]

These are some good specs. If they manage to make it more quiter than the "old" PS4 i'm sold.

 

[sense]

If you own a PS4 and think these specs are not much of an improvement then that's a positive. It means you won't regret buying a PS4. I think these specs and perception of this new console is in about the right place at the moment.

Yea lol. I was all in for ps4k but Right now it is at a level which would annoy me. I would rather they go for 499 and make it a bit more substantial but I can totally see why they wouldn't want to do that to keep the price at 399.

Personally, I think they should go 499 for ps4k with a bit more than the rumored specs here or atleast a better cpu and sell the regular ps4 for 299 so there is clear differentiation.

 

[Nictel]

"There will be no exclusive Ps4k games". Now as much as I think that would be fantastic and the right move,I can't fully believe that.At some point im sure somebody WILL develop a game directly for Ps4k.

As for the name,I actually like that.

That's the risk. That a new game runs at 25fps on PS4 and a steady 30fps on ps4k. Ideally it runs a steady 30 on both but at 900p and 1080p respectively. Sony needs to guard this.

 

[AmyS]

We will be waiting forever under your recommendation.3 years is not an unreasonable length of time to upgrade a piece of tech, especially when you don't have to do it.



And then 6 months later Sony leap frogs them again or maybe even releases at the same time. I have a feeling they have no intentions of ever giving Microsoft a competitive advantage like they had with the 360 again.

I'd be fine with PS5 in 2019.

 

[inner-G]

2016: Year of the Second Mortgage

PS4K
Pascal
VR

 

[Zojirushi]

Funny thing is the question stays the same as always: Will Neo mode bring better Framerates or meaningless yet demanding graphical effects to look better for marketing.

Everyone on PC knows you can easily kill even the most powerful GPU with just a handful of effects.

 

[Demanufacture]

These are some good specs. If they manage to make it more quiter than the "old" PS4 i'm sold.

If you ignore the CPU, sure.

 

[FyreWulff]

"There will be no exclusive Ps4k games". Now as much as I think that would be fantastic and the right move,I can't fully believe that.At some point im sure somebody WILL develop a game directly for Ps4k.

Sony can enforce it by refusing to license any games that are 4K only. It's not like a developer can go rogue - all games have to be digitally signed by Sony before they run on PS4s.

 

[GasProblem]

You know, I enjoyed Witcher 3 pre-patch and enjoy the FFXV Platinum demo even though the framerate is kind of bad. I'd rather spent the money needed to upgrade on the NX handheld and a couple of games for that (if the handheld exists and is going to be in the €200-250 range).

I'm just going to enjoy FFXV/Persona 5/Ni No Kuni 2/Horizon/Ni-Oh/Nier Automata/Mass Effect Andromeda/Tales of Berseria/FF7R and Kingdom Hearts 3 and not worry about other people getting a slightly better framerate or a better IQ.

I just hope devs will first optimize for the base version and make it playable, then add some bells and whistles for the NEO.

 

[Lord Error]

Don't care what anyone says, doubling GPU performance but keeping that horrid little Jaguar CPU just increases the CPU bound nature of the PS4, even with a 500Mhz clock bump, in fact a x2 GPU capability paired with only a 30% CPU bump makes it even more unbalanced than before.

That Jaguar CPU needs to go.

If the PS4 was so CPU bound, games would be able to have better AA, better AF etc. But they don't a lot of the time, so better GPU and faster memory is probably more important in this case.

 

[Militaratus]

there will be no NEO-only games, and Sony will not let developers separate NEO users from original PS4 players while playing on PSN. Likewise, Sony explicitly and repeatedly states that developers cannot offer exclusive gameplay options or special unlockables for NEO players

So Sony is making sure normal PS4 players won't get shafted when playing with PS4K/NEO players. This restriction would probably also apply to all graphical options that affect gameplay such as Draw Distance (which would prevent a more powerful system to display enemies at a further range than the base console).

PS4 Base and NEO versions of a game will also need to have parity with regard to peripheral support. So don’t expect NEO Games to have exclusive VR modes.

So NEO will not have an built-in PSVR support, and we need to have the same PSVR equipment as for the normal PS4. Which means: PS Camera, PSVR Breakout Box & Headset, and optionally PS Move.

Though every PS4 game released as of October of this year will need to support both the original PS4 and the NEO, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the Neo will release in October. Additionally, games released in the late September window will require a day one patch that updates them to NEO standards.

Sounds like the PS4K/NEO is slated for release in November this year, which coincides a little with the original launch date of the PS4 that was on November 15th in 2013.

Games released previous to the NEO can take advantage of this hardware upgrade, but only if developers decide to patch their titles.

Sony could throw developers/publishers a bone and allow NEO upgrade patches to be waived of the patch fees (if that is still a thing), in order to encourage older games to be upgraded to support the new power.

---

All in all, I'm looking forward to become the One.

 

[Kysen]

The CPU is even more of a bottleneck, doesn't AMD have a fully compatible replacement by now?

 

[amstradcpc]

At a rumoured price point of $399 i'm not sure what people are expecting with talk of disappointment in the specs. Maybe it's Sony testing the water a little bit to gauge reaction, maybe these ARE the nailed on specs. A double performance GPU, 30% faster CPU and i imagine bumped RAM speed, add in 4k Blu Ray support.....for $399? If you expected more it's time to go the PC route.

If MS goes the ZEN apu route with a real good CPU and HBM bandwidth many people, me included, will jump ships as it will trounce NEO specs. Keeping Jaguar/Puma is a failure...

 

[OrbitalBeard]

Or just never buy a console again. Pretty simple. If they're iterative, they are finally just shitty versions of PCs with none of the upsides.

By "accept", I'm not saying you have to like or agree with it. But you're doing yourself a disservice by failing to see where consoles are heading. If it isn't something you're interested in, sure, stop buying 'em. I'm not suggesting otherwise.

 

[Backfoggen]

There may not be NEO-exclusive titles but what is preventing devs from developing games that run Shadow of Mordor last-gen style on the original PS4? Provided this thing sells well.

 

[Protann]

So have we accepted the possibility of PSVR being trash on regular PS4?

 

[Dahaka]

The CPU is even more of a bottleneck, doesn't AMD have a fully compatible replacement by now?

AMD Zen could be that replacement but for 399 it's delusional to believe getting double the GPU and 3x+ the CPU. (just pulling that factor oma)

 

[Toxa]

45 pages about unlikely specs, which are obviously a bad fake

C'mon gaf is really in bad shape these days .

 

[Lord Error]

If MS goes the ZEN apu route with a real good CPU and HBM bandwidth many people, me included, will jump ships as it will trounce NEO specs. Keeping Jaguar/Puma is a failure...

There's a pretty high chance at this point that whatever MS releases will be released much later than Neo. So it won't compete directly.

 

[Gurish]

So according to what people say the GPU got a nice bump, around X2.5 while the CPU didn't really.

That means devs will target extra visual stuff over fps, makes sense as it won't give any significant advantage during online play to NEO users.

I'm one of those people that likes more gfx than FPS, so maybe this is good news for me, CPU is not powerful enough for 60 FPS, so all the extra power will go on effects and gfx, like!

 

[Zomba13]

There may not be NEO-exclusive titles but what is preventing devs from developing games that run Shadow of Mordor last-gen style on the original PS4? Provided this thing sells well.

Nothing. They just have to make sure that Neo mode runs better than Old PS4 mode.

 

[Coulomb_Barrier]

Trinity is the codename for their upgraded console stand.

 

[Rymuth]

Finally caught up. Fun thread all around, with meltdowns and even a surprise appearance by Phil Spen---I mean, Nktrnl.

Can't wait to see how Sony's first party take advantage of this...Horizon and hnnnnnnggh God of War 4. I'll be there day 1 and gift my PS4 to my sister's kids.

Matt, I know you're getting angry so please calm down. It's not worth it.

 

[Kathian]

Most PS4 users are not going to feel the need to upgrade and this does not sound like it will fix all problems currently associated with the system.

Its the problem with console bumps; you have to rebuy everything rather than one component or another. Not declaring PCs godly but the main strength of consoles is to set the standard for a generation. Muddying those waters seems poorly thought out.

Main reason Nintendo gets away with it on handhelds is form factor is a MUCH bigger factor.

 

[Jabba]

Nothing. They just have to make sure that Neo mode runs better than Old PS4 mode.

Meet or exceed OG PS4 framerates.

 

[lupinko]

If PS4K is out this year and uses the same HDD bay cover (I have the Frozen one), I'll just wait for it.

If it doesn't use the same bay cover I'll just buy a regular.

 

[LostDonkey]

Trinity is the codename for their upgraded console stand.

And the new range of controllers are Tank and Dozer

 

[Delusibeta]

1) It's a decent upgrade in all aspects except for the CPU, which is still garbage. Considering the CPU seems to be the source of most of the optimisation issues on the PS4, that's disappointing.

2) I still expect Sony to permit PS4k exclusives before the end of 2018.

3) I have zero faith in developers optimising the base PS4 versions better than 2 FPS. After all, complaints about doing more optimisation than expected seems to be a large part of the reasoning why the hardware is getting a bump.

 

[timetokill]

Interesting from Giant Bomb:

If this is right I'd expect Sony to be watching frames rates on "PSPoor" as well.

I don't think so. The main reason here is the LAST thing Sony will accept is that something on the PS4 Neo runs worse than on the PSPoor. Purchasers would lose their shit if that happened, so they'll go out of their way to prevent it. But there's absolutely no reason to think it would work the other way.

 

[amstradcpc]

I'm counting on it, actually.

2018 - Microsoft releases a true next-gen Xbox that has 8-core Zen APU with Radeon Vega 10 GPU (formerly Arctic Islands "Greenland") with High Bandwidth Memory (HBM2).

“I’m not a big fan of Xbox One and a half. If we’re going to move forward, I want to move forward in big numbers”

-- Phil Spencer

Yeah, this. MS will go for the good CPU. Good luck competing with those Jaguars...

 

[Dragon Puncher]

That's the risk. That a new game runs at 25fps on PS4 and a steady 30fps on ps4k. Ideally it runs a steady 30 on both but at 900p and 1080p respectively. Sony needs to guard this.

The document makes a big deal about framerate in general, so I doubt Sony would allow/at least not try an improve framerate on the original ps4 release if it was below 30. As long as that has the, by far, biggest instalbase I'm guessing most PS4K games will just be uprezzed ports.

 

[Feep]

1440p IS better image quality. The entire idea around this revision is supporting new 4K TV owners and to drive the adoption of such displays. It doesn't matter how many already have them, this is a premium option for people who do, and a reason for more people to look at them.

I'm just saying there are more efficient ways to increase IQ than supersampling, if you have unrestricted access to those additional resources.

 

[DieH@rd]

Why did the PS4 not ship like this in the first place?

Cerny needed a rough draft in place first?

Because PS4 costed ~$390 to be made in 2013. In early 2014 the price went down a bit, enabling Sony to start earning money on each sold PS4.

PS4 was not rough draft, it was a perfect draft. X86 and great AMD capabilities are reason why both MS and Sony can do easy switches to faster hardware whenever they want to.

 

[KratosEnergyDrink]

The developers are not ALLOWED to make Neo only games? Wow, that is unbelievable restricting.

 

[AcademicSaucer]

Or just never buy a console again. Pretty simple. If they're iterative, they are finally just shitty versions of PCs with none of the upsides.

That's where I am right now, will make my decision after I see the conferences.

 

[SmartWaffles]

The CPU is even more of a bottleneck, doesn't AMD have a fully compatible replacement by now?

For code compatibility reasons aka don't put devs into more trouble optimizing, they can't use a new CPU.

 

[John Wick]

I'm not sure how those specs get you to native 4K while maintaining IQ.

They don't and it states that in the article

 

[Milly Osworth]

I will be funny if MS one ups the PS4.5

Confusing times for console warriors fighting the not so good fight.