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[XtremeXpider]

Why only 32MB ESRAM?

10MB eDRAM to 32MB ESRAM seems like it's not enough when they went from 512MB GDDR3 RAM to 8GB DDR3 RAM.

They increased the unified system RAM by 16x but only increased the embedded RAM by 3x.

IIRC the 10MB eDRAM was used to give nearly free 2xAA for 640p games or something like that. What can the tiny 32MB of ESRAM be used for?

Because sRAM in Durango is not used like the eDRAM in Xbox 360.

 

[Death Dealer]

The xenos was the first compute capable gpu, it was out before dx10, let alone dx11. You're talking to the company who controls D3D and you expect them not to be introducing features and instruction sets and architecture in their gpu that wont be a stop gap for dx12? You're blowing smoke.

It gets back to what Timothy Lottes was saying. I don't program them, so I don't know, but the talk I usually hear is that Sony has less rules on programming their consoles while MS does have more restrictions. Perhaps for good reasons. I read once it makes BC easier to do in the future by not letting devs do really out of the box stuff with the hw.

 

[nib95]

you don't just add them together, what are you talking about. You access them simultaneously.

Yes, but only to the advantage of 32mb, which is a relatively paltry amount. It doesn't change the slower bandwidth of the DDR3.

My guess is it'll probably be used for 2xmsaa at 1080p or something similar and not a whole lot else. But I guess we'll have to wait and see.

 

[XtremeXpider]

Yes, but only to the advantage of 32mb, which is a relatively paltry amount. It doesn't change the slower bandwidth of the DDR3.

My guess is it'll probably be used for 2xmsaa at 1080p or something similar and not a whole lot else. But I guess we'll have to wait and see.

No ROPs in eDRAM.

 

[les papillons sexuels]

Yes, but only to the advantage of 32mb, which is a relatively paltry amount. It doesn't change the slower bandwidth of the DDR3.

My guess is it'll probably be used for 2xmsaa at 1080p or something similar and not a whole lot else. But I guess we'll have to wait and see.

it does if you're reading and writing between the 2.

 

[Zzoram]

Yes, but only to the advantage of 32mb, which is a relatively paltry amount. It doesn't change the slower bandwidth of the DDR3.

My guess is it'll probably be used for 2xmsaa at 1080p or something similar and not a whole lot else. But I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Does 1080p even really need AA? Wouldn't motion blur or other effects be more noticeable?

 

[XtremeXpider]

Again ROPs are not in eSRAM:

Efficiency is related to SIMD performance, memory access, and other things. I've been told the ROPs are not in the ESRAM.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=47052122&postcount=3157

And from AndyH months ago (06-21-2012):

6x is pretty weak. Although a poster on B3D confirmed an 8GB, 8 core, AMD 7000 machine.

Those specifications were correct as of a few months ago. It's nice to see the 2GB max crowd finally change their ways and see the light of the impossible 8GB . What I haven't seen posted yet is that 2 cores and 3GB of RAM will be dedicated to the OS. This information is second hand and months old now though. If true I can see MS using Windows8 or some variant of it as the Durango's OS and making huge advances over the current gen OS. They really want to take over the living room.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=39101755&postcount=914

 

[nib95]

it does if you're reading and writing between the 2.

Huh? Are you suggesting that 32mb of 102 GB/s esram automatically turns the whole 8gb of DDR3 in to 170 GB/s? Lol.

 

[XtremeXpider]

Huh? Are you suggesting that 32mb of 102 GB/s esram automatically turns the whole 8gb of DDR3 in to 170 GB/s? Lol.

We don't know the uses of "Move Data Engines" and how the 32MB are used.

 

[Dreamgazer]

We don't know the uses of "Move Data Engines" and how the 32MB are used.

If we don't know, then it's even more important that someone explain how the "combined peak bandwidth" claim of 170GB/s came about.

Cause it's not making sense to me at 2AM either and "it works because of something we don't know" is not an explanation.

 

[Zzoram]

If the Durango specs turn out to be significantly underpowered compared to Orbis, would MSFT bother to upgrade them this late into development? How far before release did they bump the 360 RAM to 512MB from 256MB?

 

[nib95]

We don't know the uses of "Move Data Engines" and how the 32MB are used.

Sounds like an extreme case of wishful thinking right there. I'm sure the DME's will help greatly with efficiency and data management or something similar, but I very much doubt they're going to be doing anything as magical as what he/you are suggesting.

 

[Mandoric]

so does them using Bluray disc drive mean they have to pay royalties to Sony or something?

Yes. Relatedly, Sony supporting Bluray video discs means they have to pay royalties to Microsoft who own portions of the compression technology, and their early devkits are shipping with Windows installed.

This doesn't keep anyone but the craziest of the fanboys awake at night. If someone makes a useful tool, you roll with it.

 

[XtremeXpider]

If we don't know, then it's even more important that someone explain how the "combined peak bandwidth" claim of 170GB/s came about.

Cause it's not making sense to me at 2AM either and "it works because of something we don't know" is not an explanation.

I'm just saying we don't know some details, and how the memory is managed in the console. If ROPs are not in sram, it do not work like Xbox 360 edram.

Sounds like an extreme case of wishful thinking there. I'm sure the DME's will help greatly, but I very much doubt they're doing any as magical as what he/you are suggesting.

I can say the same from some users "wishing" a poor performance console, without all hardware details. And it is tired to read all bs. Do you want to know how the console works? then wait for a dev or wait for more leaks.

 

[Death Dealer]

Sounds like an extreme case of wishful thinking there. I'm sure the DME's will help greatly, but I very much doubt they're doing any as magical as what he/you are suggesting.

One of the mods at B3D says he was told what they do and he doesn't think they are game changers. I think it was implied they are not any kind of radical new tech. I think PS3 had something similar. I would conjecture the move engines in Durango are there by necessity, to feed the esram. If there is special sauce, it's something else.

 

[sangreal]

If we don't know, then it's even more important that someone explain how the "combined peak bandwidth" claim of 170GB/s came about.

Cause it's not making sense to me at 2AM either and "it works because of something we don't know" is not an explanation.

Well it's easy to see where the claim comes from -- it's in the OP

 

[nib95]

I can say the same from some users "wishing" a poor performance console, without all hardware details.

Lol. It's not wishing a poor performance console, it's going off of the facts or rumours we currently have instead of just concocting some elaborate ones from thin air to suit a particular agenda.

As I've said before, my ideal scenario would be for either console to be as powerful as possible within a £380 budget. Durango being more powerful than it is currently poised to be suits me more if the PS4 ends up launching in Europe later than else where as is generally par for course with Sony consoles.

 

[XtremeXpider]

Lol. It's not wishing a poor performance console, it's going off of the facts or rumours we currently have instead of just concocting some elaborate ones from thin air to suit a particular agenda.

I wasn't talking about you specifically.

And form AndyH:

Not sure if this is actually new but I was informed that the cores in the Durango processor have their own FPUs rather than the 2 modules share one FPU that the older AMD processors were using.

8 modules FPU (1 per core), AVX2 maybe?

From B3D:

If they had a 256 wide AVX2 unit per core then it'd go a long way. The Durango CPU would sport 410 GFLOPs.

Maybe the CPU is the sauce.

 

[ionicbluebird]

It sounds as though Durango's special sauce is in the cpu. This is going to a fun lead up to E3.

 

[Wolves Evolve]

The worst thing about Microsoft coming into the hardware game has been the horrendous impact on the already awful fanboy console wars. Half of all the next gen speculation threads are some immense multi-agent pantomime to talk one console up or down as if it really fucking matters. Most people here will own more than one console at some point but you have to sift and sift and sift to read the few people who are excited for videogames as a whole.

I understand why people do it, we all have investments in brands that are deep-rooted. As aggregate, though, it burns.

I've begun saving for both consoles. I'm Switzerland.

 

[oversitting]

the cpu probably won't have 256bit avx. It would be way too modified if that is the case and AMD doesn't have the money for that.

 

[iamshadowlark]

the cpu probably won't have 256bit avx. It would be way too modified if that is the case and AMD doesn't have the money for that.

This isn't being designed on their dime.

 

[XtremeXpider]

the cpu probably won't have 256bit avx. It would be way too modified if that is the case and AMD doesn't have the money for that.

And vgleaks don't put the "jaguar" word (just "x64") into the Durango leak...

From aegies:

Durango's documentation refers to CUs as shader cores. There's a difference in philosophy and approach between the two systems architecture, though they share a lot of ancestral DNA.

Not CNG? VLIW4 instead?

 

[Azure J]

I'm Switzerland.

I love this post.

 

[nib95]

I've heard some pretty wishful claims today regarding Durango. That customisations are going to make Durangos cpu push 3-4x more flops than Orbis', and that these DME's are going to enable the 32MB ESRAM to turn all 8gb of DDR3 to 170 GB/s of bandwidth lol. Some pretty elaborate claims...

Roll on more leaks or E3 lol.

 

[XtremeXpider]

I've heard some pretty wishful claims today regarding Durango. That customisations are going to make Durangos cpu push 3x more flops than Orbis', and that these DME's are going to enable the 32MB ESRAM to turn all 8gb of DDR3 to 170 GB/s of bandwidth lol. Some pretty elaborate claims...

Roll on more leaks or E3 lol.

Lol, why you are acting as you know a lot more than the rest? Do you know all the details? I'm not saying Durango > Orbis or something like that.

The customizations thing came from AndyH, not from me.

 

[MaulerX]

If we don't know, then it's even more important that someone explain how the "combined peak bandwidth" claim of 170GB/s came about.

Cause it's not making sense to me at 2AM either and "it works because of something we don't know" is not an explanation.

The 170GB/s number came directly from vgleaks themselves. They said that the GPU can access both the main RAM and eSRAM simultaneously. Eurogamer didn't dispute this claim either.

If a room has two windows and one of them fills the room with 68 gallons of water per second and the other window fills the room at 102 gallons per second, then isn't that room effectively getting filled at 170 gallons per second?

 

[ionicbluebird]

The 170GB/s number came directly from vgleaks themselves. They said that the GPU can access both the main RAM and eSRAM simultaneously. Eurogamer didn't dispute this claim either.

If a room has two windows and one of them fills the room with 68 gallons of water per second and the other window fills the room at 102 gallons per second, then isn't that room effectively getting filled at 170 gallons per second?

Yeah but the 8GB's can't be accessed at 170 GB's per second.

The question is, does it need to?

I think Microsoft has found an elegant way of utilizing 8GB's of slow ram by having the 32MB's take some of the load off.

 

[Kaako]

...
I'm Switzerland.

I'm Jamaica. Everything's irie, ya mon.

Regarding throwing around that 170GB/s for Durante. Stahp! It don't work that way from our basic understanding so far. Wait until we get a much clearer picture on how DMEs work with ESRAM/DDR3 pool, ya feel?

 

[nib95]

The 170GB/s number came directly from vgleaks themselves. They said that the GPU can access both the main RAM and eSRAM simultaneously. Eurogamer didn't dispute this claim either.

If a room has two windows and one of them fills the room with 68 gallons of water per second and the other window fills the room at 102 gallons per second, then isn't that room effectively getting filled at 170 gallons per second?

Yea sure, but one of those windows leads to a tank that has 8 million litres in volume of water, and the other leads to one that has just 34 thousand litres of water. Second might pour faster, and together they might pour faster still, but one still has a tank with order of magnitude less water.

 

[MaulerX]

Yea sure, but one of those windows leads to a tank that has 8 million litres in volume of water, and the other leads to one that has just 34 thousand litres of water. Second might pour faster, and together they might pour faster still, but one still has a tank with order of magnitude less water.

But what if they found a way to make sure the smaller tank is always full? DME's might come into play there. At this point you really can't say it's impossible.

 

[fixuis]

The 170GB/s number came directly from vgleaks themselves. They said that the GPU can access both the main RAM and eSRAM simultaneously. Eurogamer didn't dispute this claim either.

If a room has two windows and one of them fills the room with 68 gallons of water per second and the other window fills the room at 102 gallons per second, then isn't that room effectively getting filled at 170 gallons per second?

Because of the slower window the room will take longer to fill up so it will take longer to empty it and fill it with water again..

 

[bobbytkc]

The 170GB/s number came directly from vgleaks themselves. They said that the GPU can access both the main RAM and eSRAM simultaneously. Eurogamer didn't dispute this claim either.

If a room has two windows and one of them fills the room with 68 gallons of water per second and the other window fills the room at 102 gallons per second, then isn't that room effectively getting filled at 170 gallons per second?

yes, but in keeping with the analogy, only for 0.0003 seconds.

 

[Krabardaf]

But what if they found a way to make sure the smaller tank is always full? DME's might come into play there. At this point you really can't say it's impossible.

But there is no such way possible, what you put into memory has to come from somewhere. So that leaves three possibilities : secret additional fast ram (not happening), main memory pool (DDR3) or HDD.

 

[jaosobno]

The more I read discussions here and on B3D the more I think that this Durango "hidden secret sauce" talk is bullshit of the decade and nothing more than an attempt of damage control or some kind of stealth marketing from certain members here.

For example this post from Proelite partially shoots down secret sauce at least when it comes to potential hidden CU:

http://beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1699838&postcount=877

Too bad this was left unanswered:

http://beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1699842&postcount=878

 

[TheOddOne]

People are trying to hard to disregard or up the "secret sauce". Makes both parties look delusional.

 

[Dreamgazer]

I'm just saying we don't know some details, and how the memory is managed in the console. If ROPs are not in sram, it do not work like Xbox 360 edram.

Well it's easy to see where the claim comes from -- it's in the OP

The 170GB/s number came directly from vgleaks themselves. They said that the GPU can access both the main RAM and eSRAM simultaneously. Eurogamer didn't dispute this claim either.

I know where the source of the number comes from.

I'm just saying why are people assuming that 170GB/s (102+68) is the actual achievable bandwidth in any sense. As all of the other posts above have already said, you can't just add the 2 number together. Until something further is revealed, it's silly to use 170GB/s as a comparable figure, cause common sense tells you it'll definitely be lower than that.

 

[REMEMBER CITADEL]

If we don't know, then it's even more important that someone explain how the "combined peak bandwidth" claim of 170GB/s came about.

It came from people who have leaked the information, so it's safe to presume that that's what their sources have told them. But I agree that we can't take that as a fact (neither can we take the opposite as a fact) until we get a clear confirmation and an explanation of how it works.

 

[Reiko]

People are trying to hard to disregard or up the "secret sauce". Makes both parties look delusional.

"One of these consoles has to be more weak!!!!1111"

 

[deanos]

"One of these consoles has to be more weak!!!!1111"

zero chance for parity, so yeah.

 

[Reiko]

zero chance for parity, so yeah.

They will be close. How close remains to be seen.

 

[jaosobno]

They will be close. How close remains to be seen.

I've always advocated 5-10% difference in power. I seriously doubt we'll see something like 50% and more.

 

[90TilInfinity]

People are trying to hard to disregard or up the "secret sauce". Makes both parties look delusional.

The discussion on this page looks totally valid though. One side is going by what 2 sources have leaked, whereas another is asking how it's even possible technically. Definitely not as bad as the Uncharted v Gears, Killzone v Halo BS from a few pages back.

 

[deanos]

They will be close. How close remains to be seen.

close? how exactly? because of the "secret sauce"/wizard jizz? give me a break.
guy from B3D summarized it perfectly:

Isn't it funny that someone always comes up with new fairy dust for Durango that will close the gap to Orbis?

When Orbis was rumored to have a 1.8 TFLOPS GPU, the "leakers" said that Durango will have a secret sauce for the GPU (some kind of super FLOPS) since it had a 7970 in the first devkit. When Orbis was rumored to have 4GiB of super fast GDDR5 RAM, the "leakers" said that Durango will have some wizzard jizz that will close the bandwidth gap. Now Orbis is rumored to have 512 GFLOPS on the computing side (8 Jaguars + 4 GCN CUs) and "only" 1.4 TFLOPS on the GPU side and all of a sudden Durango will have some sort of Super-Jaguar with ultra-beefy FPUs that close the gap again. What happened to the secret sauce for the Durango GPU? No longer required since Orbis was downgraded to 1.4 TFLOPS on the GPU?

All these Durango rumors sound contradictory as hell. I'm not believing any of it until someone comes out with concrete information.

http://beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1699996&postcount=898

 

[Reiko]

close? how exactly? because of the "secret sauce"/wizard jizz? give me a break.

guy from B3D summarized it perfectly:

http://beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1699996&postcount=898

If wizard jizz and magic sauce makes you sleep better at night. So emotionally invested.

 

[les papillons sexuels]

But there is no such way possible, what you put into memory has to come from somewhere. So that leaves three possibilities : secret additional fast ram (not happening), main memory pool (DDR3) or HDD.

what if what you're putting into memory is coming from the other memory? IE, what if the reason the reserved ram is so massive is actually to account for some kind of high speed transfer of data directly from esram to the ram and vice versa. IE a blitter, but it's for both gpu and cpu.

 

[paradise_circus]

i mentioned it in another thread, but isn't the 8 gb, say 6 gb for games too much for a 6x blu-ray (avg. 20-30mb/s) drive. to fill that amount of ram from zero to full would take more than 4 minutes. the only way to reduce these kind of loading times is to make a mandantory install of games like for the ps3.

 

[deanos]

If wizard jizz and magic sauce makes you sleep better at night. So emotionally invested.

i think you got it backwards.

 

[TheOddOne]

The discussion on this page looks totally valid though. One side is going by what 2 sources have leaked, whereas another is asking how it's even possible technically. Definitely not as bad as the Uncharted v Gears, Killzone v Halo BS from a few pages back.

I'm not saying that the discussion is invalid, but the hyperbole stance both parties take adds nothing but mudslinging than an actual rational discussion.

 

[Reiko]

i think you got it backwards.

Sure.

You're just reading complete specs from one console and coming to a conclusion.

Until we see complete specs from both... Then, and only then we can come to that conclusion.