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EDGE: "Power struggle: the real differences between PS4 and Xbox One performance"

onanie

Member
I think that many posters here exhibit a severe case of core gamer myopia, myself included. I know that core gamers want power and games, I know they don't give a crap about media functionality and casual gamer features. I don't either. But the mainstream market does and that market is crucial to the survival of the whole console business. That's why I think that Microsoft made the right call by adding mainstream-friendly features.

Look around you. The console sector is under pressure by tablets and PCs, devices that are inherently multifunction. Microsoft understands that a new console cannot be pitched to today's market as "like what you have already, only more powerful". This would be commercial suicide. New consoles need more functionality to appear attractive to the mainstream tablet-obsessed audience. The Xbox One will have games and they will look good. Its library will be largely the same as the PS4's. It's not a WiiU situation at all.

Microsoft people said that they purposefull didn't target the highest end graphics and I believe them. Every choice they made shows that, from the 8GBs of RAM right from the start, to the bundled Kinect and the deals with NFL and such. Nowadays you need to show the consumer that your device has more value than simply playing a bit prettier games.

Sony chose to go with a core gamer-focused console but it didn't go far enough. If it wanted to emphasize the machine's power, it should have added a lot better hardware than what it currently has. I don't understand how the PS4 is considered all-powerful when it's significantly weaker than my graphics card that I bought almost two years ago. If Sony wanted to sell the PS4 on power, it should have gone all out and create a device that would truly dazzle with its graphical prowess. Now it feels like a half-hearted attempt, one that I am not at all sure it will resonate with the mainstream market.

Maybe your first instinct will be to bash me and label me a Microsoft fanboy. It's partly true I guess, I own both HD consoles as well as a powerful PC but the 360 is my clear favorite from last gen. However, understand that I'm scared for console gaming's future and that's why I want both companies to win the mainstream market. I'm afraid that gaming's future is f2p and cow clickers and that really terrifies me. The old way of doing things is dead, console makers need to evolve or die. There's no third alternative, the core gamer market cannot sustain the console business by itself.

Sony has already sold the PS4 on power, and quite efficiently with just $400. Within the console market, you're not going to find anyone sensible who believes the Xbox is more powerful.

On the other hand, Microsoft brought a toothpick to the casual goldmine - a hardcore machine at a hardcore price for the casual crowd. If they desire such a different audience, I feel they could do much better with a different, more focused product.
 

Ishan

Junior Member
not to fan more console wars .... but ps4 vs xb0 apart do people not realize that so far microsoft doesnt do well with casual oriented products ... they have great engineers and everything but apart from windows and ms office they dont really have a great consumer appeal product ..... maybe they arent as nimble as some startups obviously ... but essentially the mass market which they are targetting has never adopted a microsoft product .... maybe it will change with xbo ...but it hasnt so far..

off topic i believe ms is a great company with innovation ... the general thing i hear is their innovation and research divisions come up with great ideas and concepts it just gets very muddled before it reaches the consumers ...

EDIT TLDR . Ms has great potential their PR is horrible .. and the XBO just exemplifies that.
 
There will be trade offs. The consoles won't be pushing out high end PC graphics any time soon.
We weren't talking about high-end PCs. You said "the difference between the two", meaning PS4 and One. In that comparison, there's nothing PS4 has to give up. All the bending will be on the One side.
 
Sony has already sold the PS4 on power, and quite efficiently with just $400. Within the console market, you're not going to find anyone sensible who believes the Xbox is more powerful.

Of course not, but consoles are not just competing with themselves anymore.
 

Freshmaker

I am Korean.
Sony has already sold the PS4 on power, and quite efficiently with just $400. Within the console market, you're not going to find anyone sensible who believes the Xbox is more powerful.

On the other hand, Microsoft brought a toothpick to the casual goldmine - a hardcore machine at a hardcore price for the casual crowd. If they desire such a different audience, I feel they could do much better with a different, more focused product.

They could've just offered a dedicated Minecraft handheld device that also does fantasy football.
 

SnakeEyes

Banned
ill live if i get banned from here. sorry for speaking my mind.

JBrvqwb.png
 
If I get banned for keeping on topic subject and discussing the integrity around a journalistic article, then there's something wrong here.

It's not like I'm saying I'm always right, I'm just posting based on my experience and knowledge around the subject. Prove me wrong, I'm not fussed.

If people saw the kind of crap you spouted on other sites you would be banned instantly, that includes getting other people banned from the site then talking shit about them when you think they aren't reading.

Here you have to back up your theories and conclusions, you can't just make baseless comments and then belittle people like you do on other forums.

Just for GAFs benefit, this guy is Pro Xbox One.
 

bonus_sco

Banned
We weren't talking about high-end PCs. You said "the difference between the two", meaning PS4 and One. In that comparison, there's nothing PS4 has to give up. All the bending will be on the One side.

You can try to limit the conversation to any parameters which suit all you like.

Neither console has infinite power, all games make trade offs to make use of the power available. The number of vertices you render for objects, the quality of lighting algorithms you choose, the types of VFX, the resolutions of your textures; they're all balanced in a budget of trade offs to get what you need from the hardware available.
 
Neither console has infinite power, all games make trade offs to make use of the power available. The number of vertices you render for objects, the quality of lighting algorithms you choose, the types of VFX, the resolutions of your textures; they're all balanced in a budget of trade offs to get what you need from the hardware available.
Of course! But you're falling back on boilerplate instead of addressing the topic of the thread, which is the performance delta between One and PS4. Perhaps it will help if we go ahead and agree that neither is capable of matching today's top-end PCs, which in turn will be superseded in the years ahead.

Given that both consoles will have to compromise from that lofty height, will one have to compromise more? Yes, One will have to compromise more. There's no area in which PS4 will have to bend as much, and in most areas the advantage is large. This assessment based on paper specs is being borne out by the dev comments from the EDGE article.
 

bonus_sco

Banned
Of course! But you're falling back on boilerplate instead of addressing the topic of the thread, which is the performance delta between One and PS4. Perhaps it will help if we go ahead and agree that neither is capable of matching today's top-end PCs, which in turn will be superseded in the years ahead.

Given that both consoles will have to compromise from that lofty height, will one have to compromise more? Yes, One will have to compromise more. There's no area in which PS4 will have to bend as much, and in most areas the advantage is large. This assessment based on paper specs is being borne out by the dev comments from the EDGE article.

That post wasn't talking about composting the system against any other.

Even a developer making an exclusive game for a single console has to make trade offs.

How many vertices to spend on characters vs environment. How many effects with alpha overdraw, etc.

It will be interesting to see which trade offs are made on both platforms.

The Xbox One might be able to do better tessellation and handle more vertices in the front end, for what it's worth.

As for the Edge article, I've already said why I think looking at the performance of Xbox One games not using the ESRAM is a pointless exercise. The Xbox One would be massively bound by memory bandwidth. 1600*900@20fps is better than I would have expected in that situation but the PS4 is shown as 2.16 times faster with those numbers (1920*1080*30 / 1600*900*20), that's nonsense.
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
I think another, subtle elephant in the room that hasn't been talked about extensively, is 1)How retardedly difficult the PS3 was to develop for and 2)Despite ALL of that, they[Sony First Party] learned the ins and outs of the system and created titles that no 360 game can match graphically. It's not even up for debate. Keep in mind, they've spent over seven years working with this incredibly complex system.

With PS4, the development tools are extremely easy to work with and the system is ridiculously powerful for a console.

So, you have developers, who are by all accounts USED to working with complex hardware and making it sing, giving a powerful system that's not only easy to develop for, it has EIGHT GB of GDDR5. EIGHT. That's batshit fucking insanity. Not even the Titan has that much memory. Not only that, these are companies that from all accounts compete with each other, not with other third parties. In some cases last gen, there were reports that they helped each other out on their games as well, drawing strength from each like a hivemind to cover certain weaknesses one had.

The conclusion? Considering this trend is already still going with KZ:SF looking drop dead gorgeous as a fucking launch title, the XB1 simply isn't going to compete graphically, by the time the second and third wave hits. It's not even going to be a contest. You can deny it all you want, but the facts still remain the same: Sony just gave its First Party Studios a powerful closed box with 8 GBs of high-bandwidth memory and told them to go buck wild.

Holy Shit


Sony first party are basically the opposite of Nintendo first party right now.

Nintendo are struggling with the transition to HD because they've been stuck with GameCube/Wii level tech for ten years.
Sony will hit the ground running with multi-threaded code and GPGPU processing because of the steep learning curve they were forced to go through with PS3.

IMO Sony have a triple whammy
- console is cheaper
- console is more powerful
- strong first party teams will be better placed to leverage that tech more quickly.
 

Codeblew

Member
If people saw the kind of crap you spouted on other sites you would be banned instantly, that includes getting other people banned from the site then talking shit about them when you think they aren't reading.

Here you have to back up your theories and conclusions, you can't just make baseless comments and then belittle people like you do on other forums.

Just for GAFs benefit, this guy is Pro Xbox One.

I had this guy pegged as a shill a couple of days ago in another thread. No need getting worked up about it. His kind get taken care of eventually because they cannot help themselves.
 

KidBeta

Junior Member
As for the Edge article, I've already said why I think looking at the performance of Xbox One games not using the ESRAM is a pointless exercise. The Xbox One would be massively bound by memory bandwidth. 1600*900@20fps is better than I would have expected in that situation but the PS4 is shown as 2.16 times faster with those numbers (1920*1080*30 / 1600*900*20), that's nonsense.

They could quite easily be doing things that murder performance on the XBONE that don't effect the PS4 much, I don't see how 2.16 is really that unbelievable, it has bucket loads more fill rate, it has 40% more ALU, it has 40% more tex, it has better support for massive amounts of GPGPU jobs.
 
So these consoles are launching in about 2 months from now. When do game sites get their hands on the first slew of multi platform games to run comparison tests on?
 

Finalizer

Member
So these consoles are launching in about 2 months from now. When do game sites get their hands on the first slew of multi platform games to run comparison tests on?

At launch, I'd guess. Or at least when review copies get in.

I doubt any publisher will touch a multiplat comparison themselves.
 

bonus_sco

Banned
They could quite easily be doing things that murder performance on the XBONE that don't effect the PS4 much, I don't see how 2.16 is really that unbelievable, it has bucket loads more fill rate, it has 40% more ALU, it has 40% more tex, it has better support for massive amounts of GPGPU jobs.

You are right, I'm going with gut instinct and experience to make an assumption on why those figure look bandwidth limited and I could be wrong.

147/68 ~= 2.16
 
I think another, subtle elephant in the room that hasn't been talked about extensively, is 1)How retardedly difficult the PS3 was to develop for and 2)Despite ALL of that, they[Sony First Party] learned the ins and outs of the system and created titles that no 360 game can match graphically. It's not even up for debate. Keep in mind, they've spent over seven years working with this incredibly complex system.

With PS4, the development tools are extremely easy to work with and the system is ridiculously powerful for a console.

So, you have developers, who are by all accounts USED to working with complex hardware and making it sing, giving a powerful system that's not only easy to develop for, it has EIGHT GB of GDDR5. EIGHT. That's batshit fucking insanity. Not even the Titan has that much memory. Not only that, these are companies that from all accounts compete with each other, not with other third parties. In some cases last gen, there were reports that they helped each other out on their games as well, drawing strength from each like a hivemind to cover certain weaknesses one had.

The conclusion? Considering this trend is already still going with KZ:SF looking drop dead gorgeous as a fucking launch title, the XB1 simply isn't going to compete graphically, by the time the second and third wave hits. It's not even going to be a contest. You can deny it all you want, but the facts still remain the same: Sony just gave its First Party Studios a powerful closed box with 8 GBs of high-bandwidth memory and told them to go buck wild.

Holy Shit

That completely ignores the fact that a Titan doesn't need that much VRAM as it is attached to systems that routinely have 12 gigs of system ram attached anyway.

It's not insane or amazing, its just a design decision with pros and cons. It's powerful for a console but unusually not that powerful compared to good pcs as some consoles have been on day one in the past.
 

nib95

Banned
That completely ignores the fact that a Titan doesn't need that much VRAM as it is attached to systems that routinely have 12 gigs of system ram attached anyway.

It's not insane or amazing, its just a design decision with pros and cons.

That doesn't really make a difference. On a PC, the moment your vram on your GPU caps out, you're going to start seeing heavy frame losses. System ram is generally a lot slower than Vram.
 

Finalizer

Member
That sucks. I thought games sites for sure would have previews of multiplats for both consoles at least a month before release.

Nah, the games aren't even done. I highly doubt we'll see anything beyond the usual trickle of bullshots/vids carefully put together until the absolute latest moment.

Remember, the guys making games absolutely don't want anyone to be swayed from buying a game. I don't even think they even want to show much of the current-gen counterparts if it'd cause people to think twice about buying a game on a current-gen system, despite everyone knowing full-well the gulf of difference there'll be.
 
That doesn't really make a difference. On a PC, the moment your vram on your GPU caps out, you're going to start seeing heavy frame losses. System ram is generally a lot slower than Vram.

You're right it's lower bandwidth and you want to have a frame buffer that can cope at the res you're playing and not run out.

I've yet to se this happen on 1080p in my card.

8 is completely unnecessary at that res. but as you need system ram anyway and you have the reserved amounts then in reality you are probably looking at max 4. Even then 2 is cutting It perfectly at the moment and will likely continue to for a while. But that's when paired up to 12 gigs of ram, which obviously carries an additional pool to support the gpu if needed but yes you don't want to be spilling over.
 
One thing to consider is that It would appear that Microsoft has given up on losing a lot of money on the console at launch with their price point. So even if Sony outsells them 2 to 1 then they aren't going into it losing money on the hardware. So if they only sell 50 million consoles next gen at a break even price to slight profit per unit hardware, then I'm sure they won't be too upset about Sony selling more. At least within reason. So they are banking that people would rather have Kinect 2.0 than better graphics. We will see.
 
What no. Put it back in your pants.

Uncharted 2 & 3 - and the small amount of TLoU I've played up to now - are gorgeous no doubt. But Gears 3 and Halo 4 were every bit as good looking (in my opinion). So - I think there is some 'debate' to be had there.

.

yes.in your opinion god of war 3 or uncharted 3 destroys halo4 or gears 3,these games are reliying on good design and art
 

nib95

Banned
You're right it's lower bandwidth and you want to have a frame buffer that can cope at the res you're playing and not run out.

I've yet to se this happen on 1080p in my card.

8 is completely unnecessary at that res. but as you need system ram anyway and you have the reserved amounts then in reality you are probably looking at max 4. Even then 2 is cutting It perfectly at the moment and will likely continue to for a while. But that's when paired up to 12 gigs of ram, which obviously carries an additional pool to support the gpu if needed but yes you don't want to be spilling over.

8 is not unnecessary at 1080p at all. It might be based off current gen games, but the more advanced graphical features and so on that get implemented as the new generation wages on, the more that ram will quickly get eaten up. It's fair to say that Crysis 3 is the most advanced current gen game there is, and at 1080p on ultra settings with high AA, even that can take up 3GB Vram. So future games will chew through more than that easily as devs and games continue to push boundaries and push tech forward.
 

SeanTSC

Member
I think the talk of developers gimping their games just for graphical parity between the consoles is silly. No one outside of the hardcore circles is nit-picky enough to really care about how their console's games compare graphically with other consoles. Critics will know about hardware limitations and aren't going to strike down games just for not looking as pretty on the X1 (just like how they normally don't with 360/PS3 versions vs. PC versions). Developers (many of whom actually care about their games and want them to be as good as possible) aren't going to hold back their vision over petty "political issues," the underpowered hardware is Microsoft's problem alone.

I would bet the "political issues" comment is coming from a dev like DICE whose publisher is being moneyhatted by Microsoft. Most other devs shouldn't think twice about making their games look as good as possible on the PS4. They're not only competing with its exclusives, but with other 3rd-party devs who will be pushing the hardware to its limits.

The talk of developers gimping their games for parity is indeed silly. You don't have to look any further than this current generation for proof of that.

Just look at how far console games have come since the launch of the X360 and PS3. The difference in fidelity is night and day between current games and launch titles. They might as well be from entirely different generations. Developers have pushed these two little boxes far beyond what they were first capable of doing.

Now, let's look at early PS3 ports: Due to the PS3 being extremely hard to learn and code for they looked and ran noticeably worse and there was a lot of talk about it. Did developers gimp X360 games down so they would have parity with their PS3 counterparts? No. They pushed the X360 within the bounds of their budget and experience and knowledge of the system and put out better looking games. Over time developer experience with PS3 hardware improved and, as a happy coincidence, they were brought up to parity as, overall, they have very similar levels of power, though both excel at different things. Cross-platform games today look mostly the same, but are better or worse in different areas depending on the system and developer experience/budget. There is not a general parity between them due to any gimping. Developers on both the first party *and* third party side push these systems very hard to stay competitive.

In the coming days we face a different scenario. We have a system (the PS4) that's likely by far the easiest one to code for since the PS1 and it's also more powerful than its competitor by a non-trivial amount (the XB1). The XB1 isn't PS3 level harder to code for, but it will be harder to pull more of its power out and that does matter when it's the weaker of the two and likely significantly so. Will developers bring down the quality of PS4 games to match what they can pull out of the XB1? No, I do not think so. They will do what they have always done: Push both systems as far as their budget, experience, and skill allow them to.

We'll probably see the most parity between the two systems in Year 1 as developers try to push out launch games and cross-generation ports as fast and easily as they can. However, come Year 2 as people get more experience with the systems and cross-generation development peters out and eats up less of their budgets we'll start to see more and more obvious differences. And when Year 3 rolls around it's going to be painfully obvious that the PS4 is the more powerful system as both first party and third party developers with the experience and budget to do so really start to show off their next-generation games and start pushing what both of the systems can do.

Game developers should be given more credit for how much they try to eke power out of the hardware. It'll be a rare scenario where one intentionally gimps a title on an easier to program for, more powerful system. I'd like to think that the majority of them have more integrity than that. These past 8 years should be proof enough that (most) developers are always trying to improve their tools and what they can do with a piece of hardware, especially the big ones. Hell, they've had to to stay competitive with each other.
 

Finalizer

Member
One thing to consider is that It would appear that Microsoft has given up on losing a lot of money on the console at launch with their price point. So even if Sony outsells them 2 to 1 then they aren't going into it losing money on the hardware. So if they only sell 50 million consoles next gen at a break even price to slight profit per unit hardware, then I'm sure they won't be too upset about Sony selling more. At least within reason. So they are banking that people would rather have Kinect 2.0 than better graphics. We will see.

Ehh... I think the real issue is software sales and Live subscriptions which, to my understanding, is where the real money is anyway. MS gets more money per customer out of software sales than the hardware itself, even when it is being sold at profit. So I doubt MS wants to be at 50m lifetime sales on the 'Bone, especially if that leaves Sony swimming in twice the hardware and software and subscription sales. Sort of a snowball effect.

It's probably part of the reason they're trying to convince people there is no performance difference in the first place.
 

mentok15

Member
So these consoles are launching in about 2 months from now. When do game sites get their hands on the first slew of multi platform games to run comparison tests on?

Not until the Xbone launches. We will probably see ps4 vs pc vs ps3/360 comparisons first based on the releas date.
 

Codeblew

Member
One thing to consider is that It would appear that Microsoft has given up on losing a lot of money on the console at launch with their price point. So even if Sony outsells them 2 to 1 then they aren't going into it losing money on the hardware. So if they only sell 50 million consoles next gen at a break even price to slight profit per unit hardware, then I'm sure they won't be too upset about Sony selling more. At least within reason. So they are banking that people would rather have Kinect 2.0 than better graphics. We will see.

Well, part of setting a price is expected sales and how much money you can save by buying/assembling in bulk. If xbone doesn't sell well then that will reduce how much they make per unit. Think about having Kinects and xbones wasting warehouse space because of low sales.

Also, they don't move units, they are not making much on game sales (both first and third parties). They could have very well have thought $500 was a profit based on projections a year ago. Now since all of the backlash against their policies, $500 might not be good enough.
 
One thing to consider is that It would appear that Microsoft has given up on losing a lot of money on the console at launch with their price point. So even if Sony outsells them 2 to 1 then they aren't going into it losing money on the hardware. So if they only sell 50 million consoles next gen at a break even price to slight profit per unit hardware, then I'm sure they won't be too upset about Sony selling more. At least within reason. So they are banking that people would rather have Kinect 2.0 than better graphics. We will see.

Andy House said that while there will be a loss on each console they expect not to have anywhere near the losses of PS3, it's easy to be profitable from day one when you cheap out on the box and price the console $100 more expensive.
 

Skeff

Member
So these consoles are launching in about 2 months from now. When do game sites get their hands on the first slew of multi platform games to run comparison tests on?

Not a chance, I'd expect the first ones to be around November 19th, Reviewers will have the xbone and ps4 way before then, probably receive both in the first week of November, but the multiplat games will ship to them about 5/6 days before release and it takes time to do a good comparison.
 

bonus_sco

Banned
Andy House said that while there will be a loss on each console they expect not to have anywhere near the losses of PS3, it's easy to be profitable from day one when you cheap out on the box and price the console $100 more expensive.

The PS4 would sell out at $500. I'd love to know how they both came up with their pricing.
 

Brera

Banned
If people saw the kind of crap you spouted on other sites you would be banned instantly, that includes getting other people banned from the site then talking shit about them when you think they aren't reading.

Here you have to back up your theories and conclusions, you can't just make baseless comments and then belittle people like you do on other forums.

Just for GAFs benefit, this guy is Pro Xbox One.

He won't last long!
 

cyberheater

PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 Xbone PS4 PS4
It's probably part of the reason they're trying to convince people there is no performance difference in the first place.

Show me where MS has said that. Folks keep saying this but it's fud.
 

Blackage

Member
So these consoles are launching in about 2 months from now. When do game sites get their hands on the first slew of multi platform games to run comparison tests on?

At best, a week or two before launch. At worse, NDAs will keep them quiet until launch day.

Never forget Aliens: CM. ;p
 

cyberheater

PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 Xbone PS4 PS4
Heavy generalization of the whole Penello thing, but fine, we'll go with there isn't as much of a difference as people think there is. Not tryin' to spread bullshit here.

Yep. He just said that performance gap wasn't that big.
 

Skeff

Member
sucks ps4 relies on numers while the box relies on games.

idrinkalone
Banned

Thank you NeoGAF.

Microsoft have; downplayed the diffrence in power, Dished out an achievement for "the most powerful console" and asked us if we could imagine the "weaker" console been stronger, they deserve all the shit thy get for the power disparity.
 

Melchiah

Member
Why buy an xbone for titanfall, when casuals can buy it for their 360? I keep hearing how ps4 being more powerful doesnt matter, well a slight bump in graphics between the 360 and bone version should not matter to casuals either.

Especially when the other version has an additional 500€ cost.
 

cyberheater

PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 Xbone PS4 PS4
Why buy an xbone for titanfall, when casuals can buy it for their 360? I keep hearing how ps4 being more powerful doesnt matter, well a slight bump in graphics between the 360 and bone version should not matter to casuals either.
A slight bump? Keep trolling.
 
8 is not unnecessary at 1080p at all. It might be based off current gen games, but the more advanced graphical features and so on that get implemented as the new generation wages on, the more that ram will quickly get eaten up. It's fair to say that Crysis 3 is the most advanced current gen game there is, and at 1080p on ultra settings with high AA, even that can take up 3GB Vram. So future games will chew through more than that easily as devs and games continue to push boundaries and push tech forward.



You can run it pretty smoothly in 2 but I'd agree 2 will be pushing it in a couple of years.

But that's the beauty of a system I can keep upgrading and why it appeals to me more. That and the cheap sales and humble bundles.
 
The truth coming out a bit earlier than Microsoft expected.

Regardless, nothing has changed, it is worse hardware for more money, a company who tried to bend everyone over and a horrible PR when anyone tries to address it.
 

Riky

$MSFT
I'm sure the 360 version of Titanfall is being farmed out to somebody else to port, we'll have to see what is cut but I'm pretty sure it isn't going to be quite the same and not just in a graphical sense.
 
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