Giant Bomb: PS4.5 / PS4K is codenamed NEO, more info

Pardon me if what I'm saying doesn't make sense, but I don't think I'm understanding something right:

One of the benefits of going x86 and sticking to it was supposed to be that backwards compatibility would be trivial, and that made sense to me. Even if you change the hardware architecture, as long as you stick to x86 you should be fine. Opcodes may have different timings comparatively to each other, but you'd expect that the more powerful hardware would be able to power through it essentially and process at least as fast as the old hardware because in the end its still the same opcodes running natively and note emulated. So people in this thread are saying it was for the best that Sony didn't change the CPU, as then it could lead to compatibility issues, but that seems wrong to me. I think the only reason they went with the same CPU is price. :/
 
This is a clear sign to me that Sony have discovered (or devs have told them) that the PS4 doesn't have much performance headroom for VR and is not really fit for doing anything very complex at the framerates that are needed. The horsepower just isn't there.

I think anyone who is planning on buying PSVR but is sticking with the PS4 is craaaazy.

It's a clear sign to me that you haven't read the article:

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. Sony makes no mention of PlayStation VR in the docs we've seen, so it's hard to know what that means for the persistent rumors that this upgraded PS4 will be able to support PSVR without the "breakout box" that the headset ships with. That said, so long as the NEO's upgrades apply to PSVR games, developers should be able to get even more performance out of Sony's VR headset

In the documents we’ve received, Sony offers suggestions for reaching 4K/UltraHD resolutions for NEO mode game builds, but they're also giving developers a degree of freedom with how to approach this. 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.
Starting in October, every PS4 game is required to ship with both a “Base Mode” which will run on the currently available PS4 and a “NEO Mode” for use on the new console.
 
Glad to hear this drop, its basically a minor refresh of the PS4 to allow native 4K display but most games are almost certainly going to stick to 1080p since a 10-15% boost in CPU/GPU is nowhere near what you need to render at 4k.

I'll definitely be upgrading and moving to a 4k TV at the same time, but more or less nothing really changes. Hoping they manage to slim it down a little bit too.

grats to GB for scooping this megaton!
Yeah, this is definitely my cue for 4k screens when this drops for both PS4k and PC, by then my PC GPU would be strong enough to do modern games at 4k 60fps. UHD Blurays is also nice along with Netflix and Hulu 4k streaming. There's no doubt that 4k will be the way to go come October this year.

That CPU is going to be such a huge bottleneck lol. Also, I will laugh like crazy if NX ends up having a faster CPU than that. I'm getting Wii U flashbacks. That would be the weirdest thing ever. I think Sony is better off going with the $500 price point to toss in a better CPU and ensure that games are running the equivalent of PC ultra settings at 1080p 60FPS.

Otherwise, better than expected. That's around R9 290/GTX 970 power. Hard to say how it'll perform with that anemic CPU though. Either way, I guess I need a new graphics card. :P
Not for every game, look at what ND is doing with this anemic CPU as it relates to physics, draw distance and animations. That boost will prove pretty significant notwithstanding the other CPU boosts we may not be privy to.

As for the GPU, that's a pretty significant upgrade, about the 970's performance, you must be aware that the 970 run many of these consoles 30fps games at 1080/60fps on some pretty anemic PC CPU's. I think the GPU boost will be even better on closed hardware as opposed to a PC environment and so will that CPU boost as well. The upgrades listed here should prove very impressive in the right hands.

One thing's for sure, no more of that reprojection BS for the NEO, no more 900p games, all games should be 1080p native minimum. Perhaps Guerilla will give us a 1080p or 1440p version of Killzone shadowfall uprezzed tp 4k at a solid 60fps this time.

30fps > 60fps dream kinda dead with this spec?
No it's not, I expect there will be 4k games too, obviously not the best graphical games, but PSN games will be, some remasters as well and there will be a developer that will do some insane graphics at 4k. The closed box environment with one console target can bring about some impressive feats.
Nah man your games will run GREAT on your old Ps4 but the NEO man the NEO has all the right stuff. REAL 60FPS 1080P. Make no wordies gaming community and buy our new 399 product because hey why the fuck not? Instead of OPTIMIZING for PS4 we'll just increase the shit because it cant run 1080p 60fps right now with great graphics, and we promised that when we announced PS4.

/s.
Let's be honest, we don't have forever to wait on devs to optimize games properly. Should we wait for 2020 to get a game like RER2, Xenoverse, Alien Isolation to be running at 60fps on the PS4? Or all these shoddy ports like Saints Row, Dishonored, Sleeping Dogs DE, Prototype, Payday etc....so farfetched a concept (that you don't realize that most of these devs are just not about optimizing their games?). Lets' be honest, waiting on devs to deliver good ports is something that is just not forthcoming even on hardware that's more than capable of delivering said games at 1080p 60fps (That is the PS4). So perhaps just bruteforcing it is the only way now for many multiplat devs going forward, their bare minimum will still give you a decent product at 30-60fps locked at least.

Also, people upgrade PC hardware all the time, I don't know what the big deal is. At least Sony ensures that PS4 should be the base and all software should be compatible on both systems as a rule.
 
I played Perfect Dark on Nintendo 64 in Hi-Res mode at 5-10 FPS. The amazing game still shone through. 20-30 FPS isn't going to scare me since there are no exclusives. I wonder when the next gen will start. This stopgap 3 years in makes me think it could be 2019 at the earliest, and quite possibly 2020.

Pretty much. I have zero faith that devs will continue to optimize for the lower spec'd PSPoor.

Good luck. Things will probably continue as they did last gen with progressively better looking games taking more out of the original hardware, nothing more and nothing less.

Considering that most people will have the base model at least to begin with and quite possibly ever, expect the usual 20-30 FPS and worse visuals, sure, but it will be the main model, at least for the foreseeable future. Devs aren't going to care about a system that will have a smaller userbase than the Wii U for the considerable future, and that's why Sony is mandating optimisation for it from late September (via patch) and then October.
 
The article reads like damage control (or at least a controlled leak)... Nothing juicy or controversial at all but rather it addresses many specific concerns people had with the first couple of leaks. Weird to see it coming from GB

I will say it worked on me though, it doesn't seem like the PS4K will be quite as substantial of a jump as it originally sounded, but I still have my doubts about how devs will dance around the guidelines and target the PS4K at the expense of base owners. I hope there's very little about this that we learn the hard way
 
I wanted to buy a PS4 for Uncharted 4. Now I have to wait...
You're the lucky one here. Most of us will have payed $798 to play Uncharted 4 definitive edition. This is the type of day I hate being a day 1 buyer. :(
 
It is interesting we are looking at a more than 2x better GPU stuck with that CPU though. I wonder if Sony has some nice tools in place to get the most out of that GPU paired with that thing.

I too am curious too see what developers, especially first party, could get out of this PSNeo set up.

I think it can be surmised that GoWiV and Horizon will both be poster children PSNeo titles.
 
This was clear to most of us on the day this console was released.

No way, people doesn't know anything about horsepower or console hardware, take a look at the early PS4K threads of people claiming this thing would play games in 4K resolution, bleeding edge PC's can barely do 4K and they were thinking a $400 box could do it.
 
It ain't over $500 that's for sure.

No, but at $500, that's performance that is achievable on the PC at that price point. You can build an i3 + GTX 960 for $500. And probably a a 970 by the time the new Nvidia cards come out later this year.
 
All this means is the PS4K will be able to play all games at PS4 settings. It doesn't mean developers have to make an enhanced version of every game.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but what you've typed is implying that no PS4 games released prior to September 2016 will work on the PS4k unless they get a patch. This isn't how I read the article or what I would assume, but I could be wrong. Is there a reason to think PS4k won't be automatically "backwards compatible" with PS4?
 
Wonder how the "no neo exclusives" rule applies to VR. Will they be able to have games that run regularly on PS4, but with PSVR as a neo-only feature? It feels like that was a big reason for them to do it in the first place.

edit: oooooh, I hope this means a price drop for the original PS4. If neo is $400 PS4 will be $300 at absolute most.
 
This increase in numbers equates to a 1080p 30 fps game officially running at 1080p 60 fps on the Neo. That's substantial.

Unlikely because games are generally CPU bound on PS4 and the CPU isn't getting a strong enough boost for 60fps, unless design paradigms change and GPGPU takes off more than it already has for multiplatform development, though I could see first party devs definitely making use of it. Like if it Dreams isn't 60fps already, it could definitely be on PS4k.
 
You're the lucky one here. Most of us will have payed $798 to play Uncharted 4 definitive edition. This is the type of day I hate being a day 1 buyer. :(

You know you can sell that PS4 if you plan on upgrading. Or use it in another room, in which case it's almost like buying two consoles at two separate times for $399 each. Oh wait, it's exactly like that. I could be wrong, but I doubt that the PS4 NEO will need to absorb your old PS4 to function.
 
No, but at $500, that's performance that is achievable on the PC at that price point. You can build an i3 + GTX 960 for $500. And probably a a 970 by the time the new Nvidia cards come out later this year.

It isn't going to be close to 500. They are only upgrading the GPU and overclocking the cpu this is probably going to be the new 399 model and they will drop the price of the original ps4.
 
So in terms of flops...

Exactly how much improvement is this?

Like 20-30% more power compare to the original? Help me gaf.

It's about a 100% improvement in terms of on paper performance.

In terms of rela world performance, given that bandwidth is still shared between CPU and GPU and other overhead, it's probably going to be closer to 80+%. But we won't know for sure until it's otu and games are runing on this bad boy.
 
It's hard to tell if this is a good idea or a bad idea.

I'm also curious how many devs (EDIT: and publishers) are going to jump on the idea of having to allocate more time and money to create "NEO" modes for their games, with game schedules and budgets already restrained as is.
 
I don't see this being very successful. If the differences are just slightly better framers tea people will take the $100 discount and buy a couple games.

I don't think that the Xbox one elite model makes up a huge part of their sales either.
 
I wonder if Nintendo was counting on the NX being the most powerful console on the market for a while. Wonder how they are reacting to this.

That's a little more than a massive GPU boost its almost a generational leap.
 
It isn't going to be close to 500. They are only upgrading the GPU and overclocking the cpu this is probably going to be the new 399 model and they will drop the price of the original ps4.

That GPU upgrade is significant though. They are going rom a GTX 950 to somewhere between GTX 960 and 970.

I guess a GTX 770 OC is probably the best match in terms of performance.
 
CPU is slow, but I think the GPU is around a 280x in terms of performance.

So basically what the PS4/XB1 should have been at launch.
 
You're the lucky one here. Most of us will have payed $798 to play Uncharted 4 definitive edition. This is the type of day I hate being a day 1 buyer. :(

Why? Didn't you enjoy the games at the launch of the PS4 and for its first three years? I did.

Yeah, you pay more to get the games early, and at a bigger prices, but you could also play 3 years or 10 years later than everyone at 1/3 or 1/10th of the price the day 1 buyers played. You have the choice.
 
No different then if the new ps4 revision didn't exist. If you were happy before being upset now would be really silly

Yeah, the only reason I'd care is if it gets to a point that devs start being lazy with optimizing the PS4 mode and we get games running worse than current ps4 games.

Barring that, I don't care as I don't notice much difference between 30fps and 60fps and I'm not a graphics whore in general. So I have no attention of upgrading and will just skip any games that are said to run crappy on orginal ps4.
 
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