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[Dreamgazer]

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.

What are the hyperbole stances being taken and who are parties? (in terms of the discussion on the last page)

 

[deanos]

Sure.

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

just following the numbers. this secret sauce bullshit sounds like a wishful thinking.

 

[Reiko]

just following the numbers. this secret sauce bullshit sounds like a wishful thinking.

There's alot of stuff from both sides that are wishful thinking.

 

[TheOddOne]

What are the hyperbole stances being taken and who are parties? (in terms of the discussion on the last page)

I'm not going to point fingers, but the "It is all marketing spin" thing from the last page is up there with adding nothing to the discussion.

The problem also is that barely anybody here is championing the secret sauce, but people keep clamoring that everybody here says that. It is nothing more than trying to rub their noses and act superior because their preferred system is “better”.

 

[REMEMBER CITADEL]

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

If the architectures are really more divergent than what people believe, as some of those possessing the knowledge have asserted, then it's a genuine possibility, no magic or "wizard jizz" involved. We'll just have to wait and see.

 

[SlickShoesRUCrazy]

Just Listened to What The Tech.

52:00 mark roughly, Paul Thurrot asked about the next generation xbox.

Said certain specs that are out in the wild are wrong and things have changed. don't know if he is talking about the vgleaks stuff or the Yukon stuff leaked from 2010. He didn't go into those specifics.

Also once against mentioned that there is going to be multiple machines.

 

[Death Dealer]

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?

Your analogy is correct. The GPU is getting fed data at that rate, but it's not equivalent to having one giant pool at high speed. I don't know how to explain it, but you'd need an analogy where the water coming into the room is being requested by someone in the room. And there are millions of flavors of water. And you can't always predict what flavor to send in advance. So if all of a sudden the pips have been sending a certain combo of water and all of sudden there is enough change in demand of flavors that all of the water that goes down the 102 gallon per second pipe isn't enough, and so the rest that goes down the 68 gallon per second pipe gets there later. So you only have access to 32MB of memory at 102GB/s. The rest is at 68. The esram is definitely better than plain DDR3. But the memory system is definitely trickier to use than one fast pool of memory. Sony/AMD seems to have copied the best ideas from the Xbox 360 design.

 

[deanos]

Just Listened to What The Tech.

52:00 mark roughly, Paul Thurrot asked about the next generation xbox.

Said certain specs that are out in the wild are wrong and things have changed. don't know if he is talking about the vgleaks stuff or the Yukon stuff leaked from 2010. He didn't go into those specifics.

Also once against mentioned that there is going to be multiple machines.

multiple skus? god i hope not.

 

[DeadlySchnauzer]

So sick of the bandwidth arguments. Let me spell it out clearly.

Biggest bandwidth hog in game engines is filling render buffers (frame + ancillary buffers, z, shadow etc). With 1080p + AA + overdraw + post effects, at 60fps you will be approaching 100GBs just for these buffers.

On Durango, with buffer juggling, all this happens in eSRAM at 100GBs. Leaving 68 GBs for everything else.

On Orbis all this happens in main memory. Leaving 76 GBs for everything else.

 

[SlickShoesRUCrazy]

multiple skus? god i hope not.

Xbox TV and Xbox 720 wouldn't be a bad way to approach the living room....

 

[-ImaginaryInsider]

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.

You know what's sad, if it was 1.4 vs 1.5 teraflops, both sides would still fighting like this.

 

[les papillons sexuels]

Your analogy is correct. The GPU is getting fed data at that rate, but it's not equivalent to having one giant pool at high speed. I don't know how to explain it, but you'd need an analogy where the water coming into the room is being requested by someone in the room. And there are millions of flavors of water. And you can't always predict what flavor to send in advance. So if all of a sudden the pips have been sending a certain combo of water and all of sudden there is enough change in demand of flavors that all of the water that goes down the 102 gallon per second pipe isn't enough, and so the rest that goes down the 68 gallon per second pipe gets there later. So you only have access to 32MB of memory at 102GB/s. The rest is at 68. The esram is definitely better than plain DDR3. But the memory system is definitely trickier to use than one fast pool of memory. Sony/AMD seems to have copied the best ideas from the Xbox 360 design.

you're forgetting how latency plays into this. A lot of the talk about the orbis is that it latency will be a bottle neck, the ram will be waiting on commands for the "people in the room", while the pipes sit there unused.

Again, if a blitter is used to transfer data then there's no issue at all. You can demand what you want from either ram, do your calculation, then transfer that in and out of your memory pools.

 

[deanos]

So sick of the bandwidth arguments. Let me spell it out clearly.

Biggest bandwidth hog in game engines is filling render buffers (frame + ancillary buffers, z, shadow etc). With 1080p + AA + overdraw + post effects, at 60fps you will be approaching 100GBs just for these buffers.

On Durango, with buffer juggling, all this happens in eSRAM at 100GBs. Leaving 68 GBs for everything else.

On Orbis all this happens in main memory. Leaving 76 GBs for everything else.

1080p + AA + overdraw + post effects, at 60fps in eSRAM? lol.

 

[Dreamgazer]

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.

A blitter I can understand.
However, why would you need to move data from the esram to ddr3?
The transfer speed also isn't going to get any more high speed as it'll still be 68GB/s.

 

[iamshadowlark]

168 GBps in Durango? Since when?

 

[scently]

Quoting a random person from B3D is something that has to stop. If you are going to quote somebody from B3D it should be a dev or a knowledgeable mod. It seems like anybody that wants to validate his post for whatever reason can just quote a random guy from B3D. If you actually read that forum you will know that there is as much speculation there as here, and people who know absolutely nothing about tech also post there. Besides, most of the post are taken out of context anyway.

 

[TheOddOne]

Quoting a random person from B3D is something that has to stop. If you are going to quote somebody from B3D it should be a dev or a knowledgeable mod. It seems like anybody that wants to validate his post for whatever reason can just quote a random guy from B3D. If you actually read that forum you will know that there is as much speculation there as here, and people who know absolutely nothing about tech also post there. Besides, most of the post are taken out of context anyway.

Agree.

 

[les papillons sexuels]

A blitter I can understand.
However, why would you need to move data from the esram to ddr3?
The transfer speed also isn't going to get any more high speed as it'll still be 68GB/s.

shared cpu-gpu functionality? Have the cpu write something to the ram, then use the blitter to put it into the esram so that the gpu can perform the calculation then swap it back out.

 

[iamshadowlark]

Quoting a random person from B3D is something that has to stop. If you are going to quote somebody from B3D it should be a dev or a knowledgeable mod. It seems like anybody that wants to validate his post for whatever reason can just quote a random guy from B3D. If you actually read that forum you will know that there is as much speculation there as here, and people who know absolutely nothing about tech also post there. Besides, most of the post are taken out of context anyway.

I think alot of posts that get quoted are pretty useful. Only thing I don't like, is when the person quoting has little understanding of what his he quoting and is trying to bend the meaning to meet his point.

 

[jaosobno]

Quoting a random person from B3D is something that has to stop. If you are going to quote somebody from B3D it should be a dev or a knowledgeable mod. It seems like anybody that wants to validate his post for whatever reason can just quote a random guy from B3D. If you actually read that forum you will know that there is as much speculation there as here, and people who know absolutely nothing about tech also post there. Besides, most of the post are taken out of context anyway.

While I agree with you in general, that last quoted post made perfect sense.

 

[Perkel]

Quoting a random person from B3D is something that has to stop. If you are going to quote somebody from B3D it should be a dev or a knowledgeable mod. It seems like anybody that wants to validate his post for whatever reason can just quote a random guy from B3D. If you actually read that forum you will know that there is as much speculation there as here, and people who know absolutely nothing about tech also post there. Besides, most of the post are taken out of context anyway.

He wasn't quoted because he was dev. He was quoted because he perfectly summed up this special souce rumors changing with every new Orbin rumor to fill gap which only grow.

I personaly don't believe there is any special souce that can fill gap in 600Gflop and twice lower bandwidth just with better design.

From current rumors looks like Ms want to have buildin kinect and stay at the same price as competitor. They acheved that with lower spec

Imo that strategy looks better from console sales perspective than just better hardware without Kinect.

 

[deanos]

While I agree with you in general, that last quoted post made perfect sense.

the guy i quoted just said this:

It's not about which system is more powerful. It's the method of how both systems are discussed: We have concrete leaks (VGLeaks, DF) and we have special sauce leaks (Aegis, etc). The latter is what really annoys me. Evertime Orbis seems to be ahead of Durango, someone comes out with some unspecific blah blah. Orbis has better GPU? No problem, Durango has GPU special sauce. Orbis has better RAM? Nor problem, Durango has RAM special sauce. Orbis has 4 CUs for computing? No problem, Durango has CPU special sauce. But they never give concrete information.

http://beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1700001&postcount=901

i completely agree with him.
by the way, quoting a random person from B3D is a hell of a lot better than quoting some randon "insider" and treat his words as gospel.

 

[Proxy]

shared cpu-gpu functionality? Have the cpu write something to the ram, then use the blitter to put it into the esram so that the gpu can perform the calculation then swap it back out.

Are you suggesting that Durante is using a blitter?

 

[jaosobno]

i completely agree with him.
by the way, quoting a random person from B3D is a hell of a lot better than quoting some randon "insider" and treat his words as gospel.

Same here. I'm following B3D discussions about Orbis and Durango and his posts make perfect sense.

Are you suggesting that Durante is using a blitter?

I think he meant DME.

 

[amstradcpc]

The floating point unit in the Jaguar is being boosted as well, according to Rupley. In the Bobcat cores, the FP unit had a two-wide decoder with two execution pipelines that could handle 64-bit processing. With Jaguar, the FP unit gets 128-bit processing and a 128-bit wide data path. The FP unit will be able to do four single-precision multiplies and four single-precision adds at the same time; it will also be able to issue one double-precision multiply and two double-precision adds per clock.

If you double pump the FP unit, you can do one 256-bit AVX vector math instruction per clock. This 128-bit FP and 256-bit AVX processing is as good as a Bulldozer, Piledriver, or Steamroller core in the Opteron server chips can do.

So, beefing up the FPUs to 256-bits width would make Durango´s CPU closer to a desktop CPU....

 

[TheOddOne]

It is a cherry picked quote that disregards the fact that not all specs have been leaked. It's a nice pat on the back to say "deal with it".

There a more substantial posts to quote from B3D.

 

[scently]

Same here. I'm following B3D discussions about Orbis and Durango and his posts make perfect sense.



I think he meant DME.

I am not disagreeing with what he is saying, mind you, it makes perfect sense infact, I am just saying that using a random quote from B3D as fact is wrong.

 

[amstradcpc]

It is a cherry picked quote that disregards the fact that not all specs have been leaked. It's a nice pat on the back to say "deal with it".

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/29/amd_jaguar_core_design/

the 256 width-bus as always been in the AMD roadmap, but it is not necessary for netbooks and tablets, so it was going to launch initially with 128 bits fpus.

 

[TheOddOne]

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/29/amd_jaguar_core_design/

the 256 width-bus as always been in the AMD roadmap, but it is not necessary for netbooks and tablets, so it was going to launch initially with 128 bits fpus.

I was referring to the other B3D post being discussed

 

[-ImaginaryInsider]

If you guys can't see why quoting "randomdude69" over what the mods and people like ERP have said, than you are completely beyond help.

 

[Monty Mole]

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.

It annoys me that people think you're a fanboy if you prefer one current console to another.

I currently own a 360 and PS3 (sold my Wii U after only a few weeks).

I prefer my 360. It has - in my opinion - a more comfortable controller, generally better ports, a better online service, a superior user-interface and a better selection of downloadable titles.

Does that make me an Xbox fanboy? No. In fact, I think PS3's 2013 exclusive line-up is far, far better than 360's and I'm excited just thinking about it. But I still currently prefer my 360 overall because of the reasons listed above.

Next generation, I will likely get both consoles again and still have a preference - probably again swinging to the one which offers the best overall console experience. I don't care whether that's Microsoft or Sony. Or even Nintendo making a come-back again with the Wii U.

 

[deanos]

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/29/amd_jaguar_core_design/

the 256 width-bus as always been in the AMD roadmap, but it is not necessary for netbooks and tablets, so it was going to launch initially with 128 bits fpus.

he was referring to my quote.
and by the way, beefing up the FPUs to 256-bit would make both durango and orbis closer to desktop CPU.

 

[Reiko]

So it's settled then. Orbis will be a pure gaming machine rivaling high end PC hardware, while Durango will be a bloated DVR media box with console functions.

 

[meta4]

I am more curious about the controllers and new interface in these next gen consoles now that we more or less know how powerful they are going to be. I hope those details get leaked soon.

 

[Alx]

I am more curious about the controllers and new interface in these next gen consoles now that we more or less know how powerful they are going to be. I hope those details get leaked soon.

I'm impatient too, but I'd rather they keep a few surprises for the official reveal. I don't want another E3 full of "yeah, we knew about that already".

 

[amstradcpc]

he was referring to my quote.
and by the way, beefing up the FPUs to 256-bit would make both durango and orbis closer to desktop CPU.

It would have a lot of sense that Sony after leaving Steamroller for Jaguar beefed these cores to be more similar to the initially provided ones. We´ll see.

 

[-ImaginaryInsider]

So it's settled then. Orbis will be a pure gaming machine rivaling high end PC hardware, while Durango will be a bloated DVR media box with console functions.

8GBs for the OS, 32mb for the games.

 

[Krabardaf]

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.

IMO mandatory install is a given for this gen, considering everything will be distributed digitally. Look at the rumored HDD capacity.
But still, even at 70-90mo/s, you're correct that it would be very long to fill 8GB of ram.
This and faster RAM should pushes streaming even further this gen I think.

shared cpu-gpu functionality? Have the cpu write something to the ram, then use the blitter to put it into the esram so that the gpu can perform the calculation then swap it back out.

I guess why not but can you give an example of where this could benefits to a game?
And wouldn't it be faster to do theses computations entirely via GPGPU anyway?

 

[Perkel]

So it's settled then. Orbis will be a pure gaming machine rivaling high end PC hardware, while Durango will be a bloated DVR media box with console functions.

Orbis will consume rocket fuel but Durango will grow your plants in room.

 

[Perkel]

IMO mandatory install is a given for this gen, considering everything will be distributed digitally. Look at the rumored HDD capacity.
But still, even at 70-90mo/s, you're correct that it would be very long to fill 8GB of ram.
This and faster RAM should pushes streaming even further this gen I think.

Orbis has hardware decompresor build in so data read from disc or HDD won't be that much problem.

Durango probably will also include that.

 

[Reiko]

Orbis will consume rocket fuel but Durango will grow your plants in room.

 

[DeadlySchnauzer]

1080p + AA + overdraw + post effects, at 60fps in eSRAM? lol.

Thank you for the insightful rebuttal, you clearly have no clue.

This is where people miss the point in this memory argument. A small amount of memory ( ie render buffers, ie what goes in esram) consumes a large amount of available bandwidth due to repeated read/ writes to the same memory area (ie via overdraw, ie post effects ie lighting passes etc).

 

[Vashetti]

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

This is a big misconception. Sony don't own Blu-Ray, they were just one of the big early supporters and that's why people assume they own Blu-Ray.

 

[hodgy100]

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?

this analogy doesn't work as your "room" isnt one room its a swimming pool being filled with a garden hose and a paddling pool being filled with a fireman's hose

 

[El_Chino]

Man, I can't until developers spill all come GDC/E3.

 

[derFeef]

So it's settled then. Orbis will be a pure gaming machine rivaling high end PC hardware, while Durango will be a bloated DVR media box with console functions.

Yeah, it's settled. And MS will go out of bussines because of it even before the machine is announced.

 

[Proelite]

Man, I can't until developers spill all come GDC/E3.

Yep, new info instead of outdated info from the developer summit that took place in Feb 2012.

 

[davious88]

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?

Nope more like, say you have a house with only 2 rooms and 2 windows, the first room is an open plan, bedroom, living room, kitchen, bathroom and study. The second room is the box cupboard storing the boiler. The big room has a tiny window with water flowing in 68 gallons/s and the box cupboard has a bigger window with water flowing in at 102 gallons/s. The small room will fill up quickly and the big room will fill up slowly. The 'special sauce' (hate that term) then could be the mechanism sorting out the water (data) which flow through the windows.

 

[amstradcpc]

Yep, new info instead of outdated info from the developer summit that took place in Feb 2012.

So, what?. Things have changed?.

 

[Phonomezer]

Yeah, it's settled. And MS will go out of bussines because of it even before the machine is announced.

Genuinely surprised we haven't seen that thread yet...