VGLeaks rumor: Durango CPU Overview

I find it funny that some think Sony wont match the Xbox 720 price because it's got 8GB DDR5 in the box. Sony took over $300 lost on the PS3 when it was launched sure they may not be in the same position they were a few years ago when they didn't have much debt but this is Sony we're talking about. They could take a $100 hit for the first year and still be profitable in the end. they even said it themselves that they didn't have to put much into R&D or build factories like they did with the PS3 so I think the price will shock a few people like the Vita did.
 
Gemüsepizza;49360302 said:
Why would core gamers which are not interested in Microsoft's first party output stay with the Xbox? All those CoD / BF / Madden / FIFA players? To mitigate this, Microsoft would have to massively increase their first party output. But that would mean they would have to invest a lot of money. Which I think they don't want to do - or why did they choose such a relatively cheap console design in the first place?

You said "They can't launch at the same time as the PS4 with these specs and think core gamers will stay", a real "core gamer" will choose with games in mind, not specs. And your are assuming that Xbox 720 will continue as current Xbox 360 state, and it is currently unknown.
 
For all this talk about "core gamer", I don't think anybody can even identify what that word really means. One thing I can say for certain is that GAF is not representative of the core gamer. I'd say GAF represents a very miniscule slice of the overall core gamer demographic, whatever that is.

"Core gamers" are a much more solid target group than "casuals" or "non-gamers", which seem to be a big focus at Microsoft. Yes Kinect and such was a nice success. But is this enough to carry a whole console? Do people even want this kind of gaming anymore? This just seems so incredibly risky... and to me it seems Microsoft is taking core gamers for granted. They think they have "checked" that box, but I think they are very wrong.

Remember, GAF was head over heals for the Vita and its dead in virtually every market on this planet. Enthusiasm here does not reliably translate to the buying decisions of any demographic other than the most hardcore of hardcore gamers. Using expectations here to predict what the core gamer will do is just a futile exercise.


PS Vita -> Horrible third party support

PS4 -> Unlimited support from every major third party developer.

You said "They can't launch at the same time as the PS4 with these specs and think core gamers will stay", a real "core gamer" will choose with games in mind, not specs. And your are assuming that Xbox 720 will continue as current Xbox 360 state, and it is currently unknown.

Are CoD / BF / Madden / FIFA not games?
 
Gemüsepizza;49361421 said:
"Core gamers" are a much more solid target group than "casuals" or "non-gamers", which seem to be a big focus at Microsoft. Yes Kinect and such was a nice success. But is this enough to carry a whole console? Do people even want this kind of gaming anymore? This just seems so incredibly risky... and to me it seems Microsoft is taking core gamers for granted. They think they have "checked" that box, but I think they are very wrong.




PS Vita -> Horrible third party support

PS4 -> Unlimited support from every major third party developer.



Are CoD / BF / Madden / FIFA not games?

I mean first party support, you don't know the line up for launch.

But that would mean they would have to invest a lot of money. Which I think they don't want to do

How do you know they don't want to invest in games?
 
I find it funny that some think Sony wont match the Xbox 720 price because it's got 8GB DDR5 in the box. Sony took over $300 lost on the PS3 when it was launched sure they may not be in the same position they were a few years ago when they didn't have much debt but this is Sony we're talking about. They could take a $100 hit for the first year and still be profitable in the end. they even said it themselves that they didn't have to put much into R&D or build factories like they did with the PS3 so I think the price will shock a few people like the Vita did.

come on, just take a look at Sony's financial situation right now, do you think they can afford to sell at a loss? plus, they already said they won't be selling at a loss again, look at Vita.

if you think Sony will sell at a loss, prepare to be disappointed.
 
I mean first party support, you don't know the line up for launch.

Well, I have already answered that. They would have to massively increase their first part output imo to mitigate the spec difference. And I honestly can't see them do that, because they will have at least a couple of games for their new Kinect version. It would make no sense to release a console with Kinect 2 as a major bullet point for your console and not have any games which are built for it. I guess this will bind a significant amount of their ressources. Then they will of course have a new Halo and Forza... but how much ressources will they have or want to invest after that? Because I don't think that's enough.

How do you know they don't want to invest in games?

They seem to not want to invest much in specs which looks to me like a signal that they care much about profitabitly.
 
Gemüsepizza;49359222 said:
No it's not. The PS4 seems much more powerful and will have an advantage in every game, unlike the PS3. The PS4 is not comparable with the PS3, which wasn't much more powerful than the competition, was hard to develop for and expensive. And a Vita comparison is just absurd, totally different product and market. Unlike the Vita, the PS4 will have unlimited support from all major third party developers, and they seem to be quite happy with the specs.
Sorry, until Sony proves once again that they're no longer the Sony that's been screwing up left and right the past 8+ years, they don't get the benefit of the doubt. You're also assuming that the PS4 is more powerful in every way than the competition. Might want to wait for official announcements before making that proclamation. Sony's biggest error was assuming they'd never lose America the way they did. Doing that decimated their marketshare. I hope they pull their collective head out of their ass soon because it would be nice to have at least one console that targets gamers.
 
I find it funny that some think Sony wont match the Xbox 720 price because it's got 8GB DDR5 in the box. Sony took over $300 lost on the PS3 when it was launched sure they may not be in the same position they were a few years ago when they didn't have much debt but this is Sony we're talking about. They could take a $100 hit for the first year and still be profitable in the end. they even said it themselves that they didn't have to put much into R&D or build factories like they did with the PS3 so I think the price will shock a few people like the Vita did.

The question is how low can Sony afford to go. MS can afford to go 299 if they want. The 360 hasn't even hit the $199 price point yet.
 
Gemüsepizza;49362078 said:
Well, I have already answered that. They would have to massively increase their first part output imo to mitigate the spec difference. And I honestly can't see them do that, because they will have at least a couple of games for their new Kinect version. It would make no sense to release a console with Kinect 2 as a major bullet point for your console and not have any games which are built for it. I guess this will bind a significant amount of their ressources. Then they will of course have a new Halo and Forza... but how much ressources will they have or want to invest after that? Because I don't think that's enough.

Maybe you need to visit certain thread.

EDIT: No mor off-topic xD
 
Sorry, until Sony proves once again that they're no longer the Sony that's been screwing up left and right the past 8+ years, they don't get the benefit of the doubt. You're also assuming that the PS4 is more powerful in every way than the competition. Might want to wait for official announcements before making that proclamation. Sony's biggest error was assuming they'd never lose America the way they did. Doing that decimated their marketshare. I hope they pull their collective head out of their ass soon because it would be nice to have at least one console that targets gamers.

From the rumours it is more powerful in practically every way and there tools are getting a lot better.

Low latency ram may make a difference but it is not going to make up for the gulf of a power difference.
 
come on, just take a look at Sony's financial situation right now, do you think they can afford to sell at a loss? plus, they already said they won't be selling at a loss again, look at Vita.

if you think Sony will sell at a loss, prepare to be disappointed.

They'll likely be selling at a loss but it'll probably their smallest for a console. Nothing like the $240 loss per PS3 it launched with. They'll also likely be pushing PS+ subs a lot to counter any loss on hardware sales.
 
Gemüsepizza;49360302 said:
Why would core gamers which are not interested in Microsoft's first party output stay with the Xbox? All those CoD / BF / Madden / FIFA players? To mitigate this, Microsoft would have to massively increase their first party output. But that would mean they would have to invest a lot of money. Which I think they don't want to do - or why did they choose such a relatively cheap console design in the first place?

I think the knockon effects of a strong launch can cover for/cover up power differences: the "my friends are all on Live" effect. And much of the decisionmaking would have been going on in a time period when Kinect was selling 6m/month rather than 6m/year.

I also think MS expected to carry the ease-of-programming advantage over and compensate for nominal performance deficit/lack of first-party like they did with the 360.
 
Sorry, until Sony proves once again that they're no longer the Sony that's been screwing up left and right the past 8+ years, they don't get the benefit of the doubt. You're also assuming that the PS4 is more powerful in every way than the competition. Might want to wait for official announcements before making that proclamation. Sony's biggest error was assuming they'd never lose America the way they did. Doing that decimated their marketshare. I hope they pull their collective head out of their ass soon because it would be nice to have at least one console that targets gamers.

And yet they still managed to keep up in Sales with the 360 with all the mistakes they made so what do you think is going to happen when they get most of their shit together and is launching around the same time this year?
 
Gemüsepizza;49362078 said:
Well, I have already answered that. They would have to massively increase their first part output imo to mitigate the spec difference. And I honestly can't see them do that, because they will have at least a couple of games for their new Kinect version. It would make no sense to release a console with Kinect 2 as a major bullet point for your console and not have any games which are built for it. I guess this will bind a significant amount of their ressources. Then they will of course have a new Halo and Forza... but how much ressources will they have or want to invest after that? Because I don't think that's enough.



They seem to not want to invest much in specs which looks to me like a signal that they care much about profitabitly.

So much speculation my head hurts. I do love the assumption that Sony is only invested in core games. That sony conference was brim full of announced titles.

I'm gonna purchase both consoles, and have about 10x more PS3 games than 360 games...but this crazy assumption that Kinect 2.0 is going to kill any major development seems bizarre to me. If anything, Sony is going to have to account for 3 systems while MS focuses on 1...
 
That's a bingo. Gaffers may like the sound of PS4 specs and philosophy better than MS' strategy but they do have a very good one. Less powerful but not less enough to get left behind like the Wii/U and with a good scaler to make up any possible resolution drops. Combine that with all the extra Live features and they'll have a successful console that they don't have to break the bank to put out. Sony's taking a gamble by targeting enthusiasts and MS is taking a gamble with their wider approach. Only time will tell which one pays off.

if the Wii U GPU is 352GFLOPS? it will be 878GFLOPS away from the Xbox 3's 1.23TFLOPS & Xbox 3's 1.23TFLOPS GPU is 610GFLOPS away from the PlayStation 4's 1.84TFLOPS GPU


a 878GLOPS difference don't seem so much bigger than a 610GFLOPS difference.


if pushed to it's limits shouldn't the Wii U be able to push out a 720P 30FPS game that look pretty close to what the Xbox 3 would be doing at 1080P 60FPS?

shouldn't the same reasons that people say you're not going to see a big difference between the Xbox3 & PS4 still apply for the Wii U & Xbox3?
 
And yet they still managed to keep up in Sales with the 360 with all the mistakes they made so what do you think is going to happen when they get most of their shit together and is launching around the same time this year?

"keeping up" with the 360 is not much of an achievement coming from the PS2

Especially when 360 does not even compete in 1/3 major regions

Go and look at threads from 2005 and it was also all about how the PS3 was going to crush the 360 in power and sales
 
And yet they still managed to keep up in Sales with the 360 with all the mistakes they made so what do you think is going to happen when they get most of their shit together and is launching around the same time this year?

Yes, the company that destroyed all the competition in the prior generation managed to "keep up" in the current generation with the 2nd place console(a console that had to pay out a billion dollars in rebate support due to RROD). And in the process of doing so lost more money this gen than they made in all of the previous two generations combined. Ask Sony's board how they feel about that minor "victory". People keep saying Sony has gotten their shit together, but where is this being evidenced? Their insurance business? Yes. Electronics? Nope. I'm anxiously awaiting to see how they handle their next console as well as TVs, computers, and music hardware. I'm not one of those people that will dismiss the Vita as a lark. No way. The Vita epitomizes Sony.
 
if the Wii U GPU is 352GFLOPS? it will be 878GFLOPS away from the Xbox 3's 1.23TFLOPS & Xbox 3's 1.23TFLOPS GPU is 610GFLOPS away from the PlayStation 4's 1.84TFLOPS GPU


a 878GLOPS difference don't seem so much bigger than a 610GFLOPS difference.


if pushed to it's limits shouldn't the Wii U be able to push out a 720P 30FPS game that look pretty close to what the Xbox 3 would be doing at 1080P 60FPS?

shouldn't the same reasons that people say you're not going to see a big difference between the Xbox3 & PS4 still apply for the Wii U & Xbox3?

very interesting point. I wonder how it will play out with devs having to make games for 3 tiers. Target 720 then scale up/down?
 
So much speculation my head hurts. I do love the assumption that Sony is only invested in core games. That sony conference was brim full of announced titles.

I'm gonna purchase both consoles, and have about 10x more PS3 games than 360 games...but this crazy assumption that Kinect 2.0 is going to kill any major development seems bizarre to me. If anything, Sony is going to have to account for 3 systems while MS focuses on 1...

MS has to support 2, unless you're assuming they're just going to let the 360 wither on the vine instead of milking it for the 20 million or so sales+2-3 holidays of games it has left. And if they're pants-on-head retarded enough to do that, that's the best evidence possible that they're completely out of the loop.
 
if the Wii U GPU is 352GFLOPS? it will be 878GFLOPS away from the Xbox 3's 1.23TFLOPS & Xbox 3's 1.23TFLOPS GPU is 610GFLOPS away from the PlayStation 4's 1.84TFLOPS GPU


a 878GLOPS difference don't seem so much bigger than a 610GFLOPS difference.


if pushed to it's limits shouldn't the Wii U be able to push out a 720P 30FPS game that look pretty close to what the Xbox 3 would be doing at 1080P 60FPS?

shouldn't the same reasons that people say you're not going to see a big difference between the Xbox3 & PS4 still apply for the Wii U & Xbox3?

Does Wii U have all the "helpers" that Durango have? is Wii U GPU DX11-like? what about the CPU? and the ram quantity? (1GB vs 5GB).
 
The question is how low can Sony afford to go. MS can afford to go 299 if they want. The 360 hasn't even hit the $199 price point yet.

the 360 has been at $199 for years now the even have a $99 with Xbox Live subscription thing going on right now. the PS4 and the Xbox 720 will be priced the same they're basically using the same parts with minor Modification and one who think GDDR5 is going to make the price $100+ higher than the Xbox 720 are exaggerating.
 
Does Wii U have all the "helpers" that Durango have? is Wii U GPU DX11-like? what about the CPU? and the ram quantity? (1GB vs 5GB).

Your over thinking how useful some DMA with compression is, microsoft has done well to advertise units that are in every modern PC as a advantage for Durango.
 
Yes, the company that destroyed all the competition in the prior generation managed to "keep up" in the current generation with the 2nd place console(a console that had to pay out a billion dollars in rebate support due to RROD). And in the process of doing so lost more money this gen than they made in all of the previous two generations combined. Ask Sony's board how they feel about that minor "victory". People keep saying Sony has gotten their shit together, but where is this being evidenced? Their insurance business? Yes. Electronics? Nope. I'm anxiously awaiting to see how they handle their next console as well as TVs, computers, and music hardware. I'm not one of those people that will dismiss the Vita as a lark. No way. The Vita epitomizes Sony.


Lets forget the over a year head start and lower price point just to make your point seem more valid....
 
Of all the times I've seen this reply (many) there hasn't been any good comeback for it.

Momentum is a fairy tale for forumites. Only one console has successfully ridden momentum to a clear victory, and it did it against one competitor that tried the WiiU's half-gen approach and then literally went broke due to preexisting debt/two competitors that launched a year late and didn't bother marketing or recruiting developers outside their home regions.
 
You said "They can't launch at the same time as the PS4 with these specs and think core gamers will stay", a real "core gamer" will choose with games in mind, not specs. And your are assuming that Xbox 720 will continue as current Xbox 360 state, and it is currently unknown.
Yes they care about the best console version of games. And with no backwards compatibility there's nothing stopping people from jumping ship next Gen and I predict a very large number will.
 
Momentum is a fairy tale for forumites. Only one console has successfully ridden momentum to a clear victory, and it did it against one competitor that tried the WiiU's half-gen approach and then literally went broke due to preexisting debt/two competitors that launched a year late and didn't bother marketing or recruiting developers outside their home regions.

I think that MS is poised to have a lot of momentum in ways that previous generations didn't have, thanks to online gaming and XBOX Live in general.
 
Lets forget the over a year head start and lower price point just to make your point seem more valid....

You're using price as an excuse? Did Microsoft set that price for Sony? Did Nintendo force Sony to pull memory from the Vita, make it proprietary and then sell it for idiotically high prices? It's never Sony's fault, eh? Just those damn circumstances completely out of their control, right?
 
if the Wii U GPU is 352GFLOPS? it will be 878GFLOPS away from the Xbox 3's 1.23TFLOPS & Xbox 3's 1.23TFLOPS GPU is 610GFLOPS away from the PlayStation 4's 1.84TFLOPS GPU

a 878GLOPS difference don't seem so much bigger than a 610GFLOPS difference.
Does this really make sense to you? By your own numbers, the Wii U is 2.5 Wii Us away from Durango, while Durango is only 0.5 Durangos away from PS4. It's a much smaller difference relatively. (And that's before going into architectural differences -- GCN is more efficient than VLIW -- or the CPUs)
 
very interesting point. I wonder how it will play out with devs having to make games for 3 tiers. Target 720 then scale up/down?

I'd imagine you'd target the more powerful platform and scale down, by reducing/removing effects, and/or reducing resolution and frame rate. Even using the lower polygon LOD models.

More of an issue would be if games use complex GPGPU processing, that the lower tier consoles might not be able to replicate..

Ultimately, any studios targetting multi platform releases will need to have a flexible engine that allows them to scale with relative ease and not re-write big chunks of code for each platform.
 
if the Wii U GPU is 352GFLOPS? it will be 878GFLOPS away from the Xbox 3's 1.23TFLOPS & Xbox 3's 1.23TFLOPS GPU is 610GFLOPS away from the PlayStation 4's 1.84TFLOPS GPU


a 878GLOPS difference don't seem so much bigger than a 610GFLOPS difference.


if pushed to it's limits shouldn't the Wii U be able to push out a 720P 30FPS game that look pretty close to what the Xbox 3 would be doing at 1080P 60FPS?

shouldn't the same reasons that people say you're not going to see a big difference between the Xbox3 & PS4 still apply for the Wii U & Xbox3?

A car that can go 120mph and a car that can go 185mph are both sporty, even though one's far better than the other. A car that can go 35mph is a golf cart.
 
I'd imagine you'd target the more powerful platform and scale down, by reducing/removing effects, and/or reducing resolution and frame rate. Even using the lower polygon LOD models.

They'll target the middle(and the middle wont be that far from the top) and port up most likely. Nintendo is going to be lucky to get anything they do get from third parties. I don't imagine there will be a lot of downports since the jump in quality/specs from middle to bottom is going to be large.
 
if the Wii U GPU is 352GFLOPS? it will be 878GFLOPS away from the Xbox 3's 1.23TFLOPS & Xbox 3's 1.23TFLOPS GPU is 610GFLOPS away from the PlayStation 4's 1.84TFLOPS GPU


a 878GLOPS difference don't seem so much bigger than a 610GFLOPS difference.


if pushed to it's limits shouldn't the Wii U be able to push out a 720P 30FPS game that look pretty close to what the Xbox 3 would be doing at 1080P 60FPS?

shouldn't the same reasons that people say you're not going to see a big difference between the Xbox3 & PS4 still apply for the Wii U & Xbox3?

I'd look at the proportion not the raw numbers. Wii U GPU if 352 gflops is less than 1/5 the power of the PS4 GPU, and well less than 1/3 the power of the Durango GPU. That's if it's even 352 gflops/320 shaders. I'm still not convinced those numbers arent halved. Plus theres the matter of RAM where it would be at a minimum 5:1 deficit to Durango, bandwidth, etc.

Another way to look at it is Wii U @352 gflops would be ~27% as powerful as the Durango GPU and ~19% as powerful as the PS4 GPU, where the Durango GPU would be ~67% as powerful as the PS4 GPU.

your basically saying something like "a 352 man army would have just as good a chance against a 1230 man army, as a 1230 man army would have against a 1840 man army". Intuitively, that should be obviously wrong. Taken to it's logical extreme, your thinking would then have a 1 million man army with a worse chance against a 2 million man army than a 1 man army against a 1 million man army, because the raw numerical difference is less...
 
They'll target the middle(and the middle wont be that far from the top) and port up most likely. Nintendo is going to be lucky to get anything they do get from third parties. I don't imagine there will be a lot of downports since the jump in quality/specs from middle to bottom is going to be large.

I'd read devs say it's easier to scale down than up. Art assets are usually of a higher than in-game quality to begin with, then reduced according to what the actual platform can handle.

But anyway, it can be argued that it's a moot point to talk about how devs will port PS4/Xbox3 games to the WiiU, as this is unlikely to be a common event.
 
Sony's biggest error was assuming they'd never lose America the way they did. Doing that decimated their marketshare. I hope they pull their collective head out of their ass soon because it would be nice to have at least one console that targets gamers.

Pretty sure Sony lost more than 10% of their market share... :p
 
Why not calling them "DMEs"? do you know how those DMEs works? how do you know that they "help a bit"?

Because compression generally helps alleviate bandwidth issues?. Also I'm calling them what they are, microsoft is the one who likes to rename things not me.
 
Lets forget the over a year head start and lower price point just to make your point seem more valid....

Or blu ray, which is the main reason why the ps3 was so expensive in the first place, and why it was delayed.

It's as if Sony is delaying the ps4 to release an over expensive media format that will drive up the cost of the console exponentially in order to take over the living room.

The ps3-->ps4 comparison is so asinine.
 
if the Wii U GPU is 352GFLOPS? it will be 878GFLOPS away from the Xbox 3's 1.23TFLOPS & Xbox 3's 1.23TFLOPS GPU is 610GFLOPS away from the PlayStation 4's 1.84TFLOPS GPU


a 878GLOPS difference don't seem so much bigger than a 610GFLOPS difference.


if pushed to it's limits shouldn't the Wii U be able to push out a 720P 30FPS game that look pretty close to what the Xbox 3 would be doing at 1080P 60FPS?

shouldn't the same reasons that people say you're not going to see a big difference between the Xbox3 & PS4 still apply for the Wii U & Xbox3?
The Wii U's architecture for CPU and GPU are archaic and the RAM is very slow. Flops don't tell the whole story. PS4 and Durango are probably the most directly comparable consoles ever given their architecture similarities.
 
I think that MS is poised to have a lot of momentum in ways that previous generations didn't have, thanks to online gaming and XBOX Live in general.

There's room for a bit more stickiness there, sure, but I personally don't see it being that effective. People just don't seem to have a problem being on multiple social networks. Especially launch-window consumers, the hardcore or the guys with money to burn, who are already managing their friends across Live/PSN/Steam/BNet/Origin/Skype.
 
Because compression generally helps alleviate bandwidth issues?. Also I'm calling them what they are, microsoft is the one who likes to rename things not me.

A DMA is for copy data from/to memory independently of the CPU, DMEs can compress/decompress data. And there are more than 1 DME, and they can work in parallel.

Maybe it's you who is underestimating one element that can be useful for performance.
 
A DMA is for copy data from/to memory independently of the CPU, DMEs can compress/decompress data. And there are more than 1 DME, and they can work in parallel.

Nothing stopping someone from putting compression on the end of a DMA unit (which is all it is). Theres more then 1 DMA in a PC, and they can work in parallel to and just like the DME units they work off a shared bus usually, so just like DME if you use all 4 you get 1/4 the total bus bandwidth (25.6GBs/4).

All GCN Video Cards including PS4 have 2 DMA Units that can tile/untile, no idea why microsoft renamed these two to DME.

I am well of aware of what implications DMA have in a system, more so then most people on this board.
 
Your over thinking how useful some DMA with compression is, microsoft has done well to advertise units that are in every modern PC as a advantage for Durango.

The DMEs are not just DMAs though. Reading the vgleaks article on them should tell you as much. Writing them off as just DMAs (not even taking into account the number, bandwidth and position in the system) is being disingenuous.
 
All GCN Video Cards including PS4 have 2 DMA Units that can tile/untile, no idea why microsoft renamed these two to DME.
Well, they renamed pretty much every single part of their hardware. It makes no sense to me honestly, especially in developer documentation.
 
Nothing stopping someone from putting compression on the end of a DMA unit (which is all it is). Theres more then 1 DMA in a PC, and they can work in parallel to and just like the DME units they work off a shared bus usually, so just like DME if you use all 4 you get 1/4 the total bus bandwidth (25.6GBs/4).

All GCN Video Cards including PS4 have 2 DMA Units that can tile/untile, no idea why microsoft renamed these two to DME.

I am well of aware of what implications DMA have in a system, more so then most people on this board.

Who is talking about PS4? WTF? I was talking about Wii U and Xbox 720.
 
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