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Digital Foundry: Microsoft to unlock more GPU power for Xbox One developers
- Thread starter DaSorcerer7
- Start date
Sword Of Doom
Member
http://m.ign.com/articles/2013/09/30/poll-64-wont-buy-next-gen-ps4-slightly-preferred-to-xbox-one
I know this is off topic but this ign article caught my attention. It's about the Reuters poll asking people which next gen console people prefer. Ps4 was 41% and Xbox one was 27% but in the headline Ign emphasizes 64% won't buy next gen and that the ps4 is slightly preferred over the Xbox one.
Just seems strange to me that ign considers a 50% higher preference for the PS4 slightly more. It's ridiculous really. Especially in the US where the 360 was so dominant. Also emphasizing 64% won't be buying next gen downplays the rest of the data. And ign should know better that the majority of the people don't buy consoles at launch.
Again apologies for going off topic but since we're talking about money hatting I thought it was somewhat relevant.
ChainsawFilms
Member
The GPGPU calculations go through them. They manage the queues basically. It's not as simple as one in, one out, due to the nature of GPGPUs you may be better off calculating, say, the fourth request before the first, because of the "available / free GPGPU" at that particular time. So you stick the requests into the queues and get the calculations out the other end in the most efficient way possible.
Needless to say, the more queues, the better, else you'll be managing them yourself.
SenjutsuSage
Banned
Somehow I think this is an exaggeration, but I suppose it does provide more ammo for spec wars lol.
Never did state that they weren't going at it in different ways. Sony is following the usual trend of catering to hardcore gamers early in the gen where as MS feels like they can get a good userbase early via advertising their console as doing various things from the get-go.
Either way, I'm pretty positive that both systems will have a decent amount of good games and that both with have their own appealing titles that won't be on the other console.
27% is 65% of 41%, not 50. So there is a 35% higher preference for PS4. It's still more than "slight", but let's not get out of hand with the number rounding to make your point.
Sounds good to me.
Sony is really pushing for GPGPU and asinchronous computing, I wonder how will this reflect in games.
I don't think third parties developers will really take advantange of it, besides things like particles and minor effects (water maybe?).
I can't see things like offloading the general physics of a game to the GPU to free up the CPU and have better AIs, more NPCs on screen and such in multiplatform games.
Okay? How is that a reply to what I said in that post? I never stated that MS didn't care about media.
The Xbox 360's reveal was even less focused on games -- doesn't mean that the Xbox 360 wasn't a solid gaming console.
My question though is that when you're playing a game in Windows, does Aero give up it's GPU cycles for the game to use?
I'm not contradicting this. Snap is just a byproduct of the two OSes running side by side. What you're actually snapping is an app running on Windows. They're just speaking very high-level. Saying "snap functionality" is the same as "running Windows along side Xbox OS".
Haha, I noticed that exact thing too. I thought it was very Fox News-esque of them. Which is appropriate considering the type of bottom feeders IGN plays to these days.
I don't even know why they went down this road. As someone mentioned earlier, the Xbox One is clearly Microsoft's vision of the set top box realized. They have entirely different priorities. Priorities which allowed gamers to get annoyed when they focused so much on TV TV TV, but also revealed what they were really going for and why these things keep being unveiled.
Microsoft's strategic blunder was not having significantly less power than PS4, but in even responding to technical inquiries. They should have said what they said to begin with "we purposefully did not target the highest end specs (PS4 didn't as well, but this is a good type of PR), and we think the games speak for themselves." They're finally getting back to that sort of PR, but not with yet more disastrous months of Sony getting positive word-of-mouth off this issue.
I like the confirmation of the 10% reservation because it puts the PS4 deltas all at 50% or higher. Much more balanced than 40-something
lol
I disagree with your assessment of historical Xbox dynamics. Xbox and Xbox 360 when I bought them both were touted as the most powerful consoles of the generation. And for the most part, both of them were. I knew when I bought my OG Xbox and 360 that I was going to have (for the most part) the best looking games of the generation. I knew that Microsoft cared about having the greatest gaming specs around and flaunted their machine as a hardcore gaming machine that Sony's hardware simply couldn't touch. And they were right.
They're on a completely different dynamic this time that has essentially pushed me away. I don't want to own a Microsoft console that is no longer striving to be the very best at games performance.
The amount of power they sacrificed on a machine releasing at the same time as the PS4 is something I never imagined XBO would be. It is a completely different stance towards gaming than the vision that got them the 360 sales lead.
Microsoft helped to teach Sony what to do right to add the power to Sony's system that already had the game support. Microsoft didn't even follow their own lessons that they taught Sony this time.
Windom Earle
Member
This thread is highly entertaining. Thanks so much to DF and MS, the spec damage control rollercoaster continues. And also to the OP for the misleading thread title, exposing a lack of the most basic math skills by many posters.
ethomaz
Banned
Is it confirmed 8 queues for each ACE on Xbone? Or we are just assuming based on PS4?
This dude is really strong... I miss you Ace.From my understanding, the PS4 has 8 of these dudes, where as the Xbox One only has 2.
Yes. So far judging by Deep Down, Resogun, SS, Killzone they are pushing better physic and more particles physic than any game i know be it console or PC.
I really like they went with GPGPU boost.
I was fan of Ageia back in the day and physic in games for me is one of most important things.
I wonder what will Kaz do with it in GT7. GT7 physic engine probably will be at netcar/iRacing level.
Maybe soft body physics for vehicles isn't too unlikely this next gen?
BruceWayneIII
Member
Regarding ACE / queues, here's one quote from Cerny:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/191007/inside_the_playstation_4_with_mark_.php?print=1
Gamasutra interviews Cerny said:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/191007/inside_the_playstation_4_with_mark_.php?print=1
Why? I want to hear about the architecture, the only people having issues with this are more than likely not getting Xbox One's at launch.
Imo that probably won't be a problem from power side but it will be problem because it they would need to create insides of car.
I wish but it won't probably be in GT7 nor 8.
When they will move from PS3 era models to PS5 era models maybe they will render whole car inside out...
Yeah, I'd really like to see more reactive worlds, I hope this boost to the physics capability will eventually make it happen.
Something like this would be awesome. Not only in GT7 though.
As someone who liked the PS2 immensely more than the original Xbox, as long as the system has enough games I'm interested in and is a large improvement over the console(s) I own now then I don't really care about it not being "the #1 console in power" within its own console generation.
As I said in my previous post, there will be solid games on both consoles with both having games that won't be on the other. I look at both consoles as mainly gaming machines and as of right now, the Xbox One has more games I'm interested in than the PS4 during the first year or two of the next gen so I'm getting the Xbox One first and
:gasp: mostly doing so for gaming reasons. Pretty sure I'm not alone in that.I will get a PS4 once The Order comes out though since I'm very interested in that game (unless it somehow ends up being really disappointing).
ethomaz
Banned
Yeah... PS4 is already know.
But I guess there is no confirmation about 2x8 of Xbone... GCN for example uses 2x2... so MS customized the Xbone to have 8 queues per ACE too?
This is not about what you or I want. Showing that your product is inferior isn't great strategy to get people on board. Especially if it is more expensive.
This is why Nintendo went with total ban on hardware talk and people need to use other methods to reach information.
ChainsawFilms
Member
GCN is, as standard, 1 queue 1 ACE. AMD are increasing this themselves going forward.
I've been unable to find any source for the XBone. Original posts, here and elsewhere, were 2 ACE / 4 queues, then suddenly that jumps to 2 / 16 but there's nothing I can find on VGLeaks or elsewhere. Possibly people are extrapolating from the PS4 number? 8 queues per ACE is not usual.
Prisoner KSC2-303
Member
Sorry, but i think you're getting your maths a bit wrong. You calculate an increase from the lower figure, and a decrease from the higher figure.
50% higher preference for PS4 is about right.
i copied that list from somewhere and i added only % differences.
So far there was no 2x8 confirmation anywhere. It is most likely 2x4.
edit:
heh probably i know how they got that 2x8.
2x4 <--- this was probably the reason. Instead of typing 2/4 they wrote 2x4 and then probably someone later did 2x4 and wrote 2/8.
I agree that IGN somewhat downplayed the nature of the findings with its title, but my assumption is that they did that to reduce the inevitable comment flame-war that is always at the bottom of these articles. But as long as we are nit-picking the findings:
This survey was focusing on this holiday season, so it is almost exclusively gauging the opinion of early adopters.
Additionally:
The figures you posted were exclusive to those younger than 40 years of age. The quoted text contains the findings for the entire sample. Based on these results, I think this is actually positive news for Microsoft. Early reports were saying the PS4 was winning the preorder battle 4:1 (and some even reported 5:1), but based on this survey the PS4 will outsell 1.73:1 before the end of the year. Sure Microsoft is still getting beat, but this tells me that their '180s' are working.
ChainsawFilms
Member
That's where they want to go. To emulate the iPhone market. XB2, which thanks to the hypervisor and "standard PC hardware", everything going forwards can be backwards compatible.
Although I don't know what that means for the ESRAM. Maybe they'd need to always have that? That wouldn't be a sensible decision. I don't know the implications of emulating that, but you may be able to get by with setting aside 32mb in an, ahem, unified 8gb DDR5 memory setup and still meet the bandwidth requirements.... lol.
As someone who liked the PS2 immensely more than the original Xbox, as long as the system has enough games I'm interested in and is a large improvement over the console(s) I own now then I don't really care about it not being "the #1 console in power" within its own console generation.
As I said in my previous post, there be solid games on both consoles with both having games that won't be on the other. I look at both consoles as of right now as mainly gaming machines and as of right now, the Xbox One has more games I'm interested in than the PS4 during the first year or two of the next gen so I'm getting the Xbox One first and
I will get a PS4 once The Order comes out though since I'm very interested in that game (unless it somehow ends up being really disappointing).
But the fact that the games are pushing you towards buying the weaker console isn't really the point of this particular thread. And what I said about where the Xbox brand was positioned spec-wise when it was first introduced and with the 360 and compare it now to where the Xbox brand is positioned spec-wise and it's night and day.
So to use historical Xbox launches as some sort of basis to paint a similar picture isn't accurate from a spec perspective. They had the graphical edge every other time and they used it to their advantage. Now they are charging more money for a significantly weaker console.
It's like if the PS2 came out at the same time as the Xbox and the PS2 decided to be nearly 50% weaker graphically AND $100 more expensive.
It's a dynamic that has never existed for the Xbox brand to be weaker and more expensive. Ever.
Darkwaknight
Banned
Most likely due to IGN being very PRO Microsoft, for sure.
The question on what the ACE's, these are the GPU compute handlers, they basically que the jobs for the CU to process. And they can reorganise jobs within each cycle as they become more or less relevant. This is one of the big changes from a standard GPU as all the "holes" in a GPU's parallel work can be filled more affectively with no hit on the render work, physics, dynamics. Ai will all take a huge leap forward this gen for sure once they get to use these properly.
That said all these is just making things worse for ms on the specs. I have said this before they should just let it go now as a battle they cannot win (specs) is futile. But to the average joe this will all work in convincing them that the Xbox 1 is getting even closer, that and the fact when the watchdogs and battlefield and (worse of all) COD looks worse on the x1 they can hide behind the 10% GPU loss/gain (still not convinced on this though) as With the hypervisor OS layout they have they should handle the switch between hardware very simply with a very, very small reduction of the base hardware removed (1% max) to sit within the visor that allocates the relevant resources to the app (game/OS etc) as needed and can pass more to whatever requires it dynamically. That said MS virtualised option (hyper v) is no where near as good or as lean as the other main business solution (VMware) so this again falls into MS typical heavy handed resource consumption, as always they will improve but I think they are reserving more than needed (as are Sony) for the what if scenario, you can always give some back you can never take away.
Wait, that's actually a full +25%, now you are the one biased!
BruceWayneIII
Member
Yeah, I couldn't find any hard facts or quotes either on the Xbone, so maybe you are right about how those figures showed up.
Chobel
Member
@Bgamer90 Sorry If I looked aggressive, I'll try to tone it down from now on.
Many (all?) read what you said as "both have gaming as a second objective", now if that it's not what you meant, then I'm sorry because I interpreted it wrong.
Nobody said PS4 don't have media functionality, the one you quoted only said PS4 isn't focused in entertainment like Xbox One, you interpreted as PS4 don't have anything for entertainment.
No disagree there.
Like I said (and many others) PS4 don't look like it want to take over the living room, Yes Sony have entertainment division that will use PS4 to deliver content, but that isn't enough to PS4 the only media box in the living room, It actually feel like a bonus for PS4. I could be wrong but what you did is you make it look like "PS4 wants to take over the living room" is a fact.
Many (all?) read what you said as "both have gaming as a second objective", now if that it's not what you meant, then I'm sorry because I interpreted it wrong.
Nobody said PS4 don't have media functionality, the one you quoted only said PS4 isn't focused in entertainment like Xbox One, you interpreted as PS4 don't have anything for entertainment.
No disagree there.
Like I said (and many others) PS4 don't look like it want to take over the living room, Yes Sony have entertainment division that will use PS4 to deliver content, but that isn't enough to PS4 the only media box in the living room, It actually feel like a bonus for PS4. I could be wrong but what you did is you make it look like "PS4 wants to take over the living room" is a fact.
SenjutsuSage
Banned
One of my all-time favorite manga characters. Dude was the man!!
ChainsawFilms
Member
The XBone doesn't need that many queues anyway, it's not like they have much spare GPGPU to play with.... ;-p
PS4 games do continue to run in the background. I think it was at gamescom when Yoshida demonstrated Killzone actively running in a window while browsing through the PS4 OS.
KoopaTheCasual
Junior Member
I think it might be off slightly, by virtue of us not knowing how much GPU is reserved on the PS4 if any at all. But I think the consensus is, it would be substantially less than the Xbox One's, due to lack of snap feature. Either way, yes the gap is a bit wider than it was understood yesterday. It was, however, hilarious to watch this thread at the beginning, seeing who actually read the bad news in the article, and who commented without reading, lol.
phosphor112
Banned
Imagine Walmart, or some other very large supermarket.
Now imagine Walmart with 100's of checkout lanes. Each lane checks out (processes) a customer.
An ACE is one of those people that tell you a lane is open, so you don't have to wait in line.
The more ACE's you have, the more customers can get told to go to an empty or short line to get checked out. That makes the store more productive.
So basically, the ACE tells data where to go and into which line for it to be processed in the best way possible.
I don't really get the "take over the living room" stance either. How can any device take over the living room when it has an additional subscription required before you can access your subscription-based media apps?
I mean currently only about 25 million 360 owners can use media functions (Gold subscribers), while there is nothing stopping all 75 million PS3 owners from using their machine as a media box for no additional cost.
(PS3 is the number one most used Netflix streaming device in the world)
If this is Microsoft's bright idea to face off against Roku, AppleTV, PS4, and even VitaTV for living room media functions, they need to try harder.
I mean currently only about 25 million 360 owners can use media functions (Gold subscribers), while there is nothing stopping all 75 million PS3 owners from using their machine as a media box for no additional cost.
(PS3 is the number one most used Netflix streaming device in the world)
If this is Microsoft's bright idea to face off against Roku, AppleTV, PS4, and even VitaTV for living room media functions, they need to try harder.
Chobel
Member
I thought they were streaming someone else playing Killzone, not running the game in background.
KoopaTheCasual
Junior Member
Mine too:
Perkel... you disturb me, dude.
H_Prestige
Banned
As someone who liked the PS2 immensely more than the original Xbox, as long as the system has enough games I'm interested in and is a large improvement over the console(s) I own now then I don't really care about it not being "the #1 console in power" within its own console generation.
As I said in my previous post, there will be solid games on both consoles with both having games that won't be on the other. I look at both consoles as mainly gaming machines and as of right now, the Xbox One has more games I'm interested in than the PS4 during the first year or two of the next gen so I'm getting the Xbox One first and
I will get a PS4 once The Order comes out though since I'm very interested in that game (unless it somehow ends up being really disappointing).
No. But you are in a very small minority. The best selling games on both consoles will be multiplatform. And very few people are going to spend an extra $100 to play Fifa, COD, etc, let alone worse performing versions of them.
MS is in this mess because when they were designing the system, gaming performance was not the top priority, unlike Sony. They were clearly more interested in marketing some pseudo cable box, and that crippled their system right from the start.
SenjutsuSage
Banned
Yea, I doubt the PS4 reservation is upwards of 10%, if there's any at all, but I always viewed this 10% thing as mostly being negated by the upclock of the GPU. So how this looks really comes down to which you think came first. The 10% reservation, or the 6% clock speed increase. Either way, if Microsoft can reduce that reservation later, fantastic.
Nightengale
Member
Yeah, but looking at it from a different perspective, one can argue that MS has probably been the most profitable per user when it comes to the living room, because they have a revenue stream piggy-backing off another company's content offering.
MS would choose their existing 25 million subs over Sony's Netflix bragging rights, by far.
They can say what they like, but it's pretty clear that they like how the current arrangement works in terms of maximising profitability-per-user.
Multiplats are my and most peoples reasons for buying these consoles. That's why I find it impossible to buy a console that is weaker and more expensive.As someone who liked the PS2 immensely more than the original Xbox, as long as the system has enough games I'm interested in and is a large improvement over the console(s) I own now then I don't really care about it not being "the #1 console in power" within its own console generation.
As I said in my previous post, there will be solid games on both consoles with both having games that won't be on the other. I look at both consoles as mainly gaming machines and as of right now, the Xbox One has more games I'm interested in than the PS4 during the first year or two of the next gen so I'm getting the Xbox One first and
I will get a PS4 once The Order comes out though since I'm very interested in that game (unless it somehow ends up being really disappointing).
Take a look at your games collection. If you tell me you have more exclusives than multiplats I'll be surprised.
Shpeshal_Ed
Banned
Yeah......ok.
Unless I work for Microsoft, I could give a rat's ass about their profitability. The fact is that they're attempting to be known worldwide as the multimedia console, and right now only 33% of the number of media-capable PS3 owners can use their Xbox as a media machine.
If you spend $500 on the XBO, what exactly can you do with only that $500 spent? Can I even access the Internet browser? Nope.
Microsoft isn't comparing themselves to the PS4 in this article, the people on here are doing that. They are releasing information on their architecture to prospective buyers and giving the reasons behind their design choices. Lets just put it this way, right now we know a lot more about MS's architecture than we do about Sony's because MS is actually putting out information. You know why that Sony 4.5/5.5/6GB of RAM got overblown because Sony has not gone into as much detail on their system and a lot of the information we have is from a VGleaks document from over a year ago. The people who will see this i.e. the above average gamer, the gamer that visits sites like Neogaf, Eurogamer etc. more than likely already know about the hardware disparity and that the PS4 has the spec advantage (how much this translates to real world gains we'll see over the course of the generation). This was an interesting read for me and it lets me see the rationale behind some of the decisions MS made. Do I wish the Xbox One was more powerful? Hell yes. But right now I've made my next gen console choice and what I want is the device that can provide me the most novel experiences, this includes games, services and other forms of entertainment. I'm backing the Xbox One will do just that.