Well put -- power supplies, being tangible goods, are not free. They cost something more than $0, as they have since they were first created.
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Digital Foundry: PS4 Spec Analysis
- Thread starter RibbedHero
- Start date
Well put -- power supplies, being tangible goods, are not free. They cost something more than $0, as they have since they were first created.
Kazuma Kiryu
Member
could sony be using the h.265 new standard on their video stuff? that allows higher quality at lower bitrates right?
Pertaining to CU, can anyone outline the benefits of having 18 unified CUs as opposed to 14+4 configuration where those general purpose ones could have been individually used for GPU related tasks (effectively making it 18 CUs)? Also, is this a product of customization given I do not remember a normal pitcairn's CU being programmable for such diverse purposes?
Clamshell design.
That makes a lot of sense, however, that's why I said "part" of it (that can be reserved) and recording media would be done while actively playing the game in normal power mode.
Clamshell design.
That makes a lot of sense, however, that's why I said "part" of it (that can be reserved) and recording media would be done while actively playing the game in normal power mode.
statham
Member
who buy that much at a time?, you buy a few million, wait for price to drop, buy a few million more. you think sony or MS is buying 70 million graphics cards at one time?
Right, but in the previous generation the PS3 had under 500MB of usable RAM, and it was split between the CPU & GPU. And high-end graphics cards of that time were shipping with a minimum of 512MB of VRAM (768MB in the case of the 8800GTX which released just before the PS3), vs. the 256GB dedicated to RSX.
So in that case the PS3 had half of the video RAM of its PC contemporaries. In the case of PS4 we have 8GB of GDDR5 while high-end cards at the end of this year will probably all be in the 2-3GB range.
It's like Sony realized they had a headache, and decided to fix it by hooking up a morphine drip.
It's 8 gig per console. It's 8 million just for 1 million consoles...so yeah you will be buying millions of gigs of ram.
Ah, thanks. Hypothetically, can you have variable usage in the number of CUs for graphics and general purpose tasks depending upon priority of tasks in real time game environment instead of drawing a line in the sand from the beginning?
Highly doubtful that flash storage would have anything to do with the low power mode -- hard drives are pretty low-power as-is, consuming only a couple of watts at most. It's probably not unlike the way the Xbox 360 can download in standby after you shut it down, except that the PS3 can probably be programmed to wake up on a schedule and check for updates.
R10Neymarfan
Member
Really you are gonna use that excuse?! Maybe for current gen but developers know how 8GB to work with. They will use more then half of that. Games (PC for that matter) were only limited to that size because of the PS360. Not the case anymore sonny.
I would imagine that you can -- in a sense -- 'order' each CU to do whatever you want it to do at any sane point during runtime. Of course it's usually not that simple, and how you take advantage of the CUs has a lot to do with how the engine is designed.
However, I don't really have direct experience with this level of development so I can't speak authoritatively here.
Certainly multitasking is part of this. Last gen, we finally saw Sony and MS push forward with their plans of a console being a media hub. This gen we're going to see a paradigm shift that places the consoles were Sony and MS always wanted them to be. A true 'center of living room' (if not house) hub. Not just for media, but for stuff like social, potentially DVRing, home automation, etc. They want fast switching between all of those tasks.
But let's actually forget that for a moment. The reason for all the memory is simple when you look at history.
The single biggest bottleneck that developers hit as a generation goes on is always memory. That has always been true, because memory size increases/cost reduces at a pretty regular rate. While it's pretty easy to reduce effects, geometry, etc when porting to lower hardware ... what's not easy to cope with is a serious delta in memory. That impacts the fundamental game design. You have to either redesign levels, stunt PC/new console game design, or simply not bring out the game.
Every generation has dealt with this. So if you want to have your hardware remain viable for ports in the long-run, you need a lot of memory. And I can guarantee you ... both Sony and MS want this gen to last at least as long as the last gen. This is the only economically feasible way to do it. Actually I'd argue it's the only way to realistically do it regardless of costs.
statham
Member
we will see, I'm predicting atleast $100 price difference or six month later launch.
What excuse? I'm really confused by that.
I did consider that possibility as well, but I actually think that PC games are more limited by the need for most to scale down to at least be playable on newer Intel integrated graphics rather than PS360.
Still, I run a GTX 670 with a 1440p monitor and have never exhausted my video RAM in a game yet (I just checked a few to see). If I had a choice between giving the 670 more shaders vs. more VRAM, I'd certainly take the former. In the few instances where my framerate dips, it's because it could use a little more computational power.
Thanks. That makes the most sense in this case with the recent release of 512 modules. I guess the delay on Sony's end probably came down to a cost/benefit analysis of making the change.
This makes the most sense if they are actually including and utilizing 16GB flash chip in the system.
I think you've nailed it right there. The extra cost now is minuscule compared to the benefit in 2018 and beyond.
This is also why I don't think Sony will charge as much as some people think up front for the PS4 -- in fact I'd bet the rumored $429/529 is probably what they're leaning towards.
Yeah it's not so bad, I'm sure 1st party won't have any issue but you know, still. Also it's the same as the xbox one right? At least we don't have to worry about third parties not optimising for it..?
I don't want to argue on diversity of games. Ultimately I just think PC gaming has a different diversity.
On accessibility, of course I'm serious. PC gaming is clearly less accessible. For one thing, it requires you to keep track of the specs of your computer, the type of computer you have, etc. For another, it simply does require you to tweak your settings to get it right. If I have a Playstation, or Xbox or Nintendo, I need to know nothing about the game other than what system it was made for. I pop it in an play it. There's nothing more to it. This isn't true about PC games and I'm not even talking about constant patching and installing multiple of discs as was common in years past. I'm just talking about having to connect to Blizzard's server to play Starcraft and having to tweak the specs of the game to get it to even run on my laptop, or finding out that there's no cross play for Civ 5 between PC and Mac after I buy the game on Steam (who also wouldn't refund me). With Dark Souls on PS3 I just put the game in the machine, created a character and played the game.
Look, I'm not saying PC gaming is bad. Not at all. It's cool people who are into it. But PC gaming just isn't as accessible as console gaming, and PC gamers are as delusional as gun owners who claim guns aren't the problem if they try to argue otherwise. I have a computer that cost $2,400 and I can't play Civ 5 with my friends on the other side of the country. That's an accessibility problem.
RibbedHero
Member
You're forgetting about flash games and Facebook games! The most accessible games available.
they are building things specifically for you, where are you going to get this price drop? On pricewaitch? Alibaba?
i would assume that this involves long term contract with the pricing lower due to it being long term and millions of units.
You're forgetting about flash games and Facebook games! The most accessible games available.
Oh c'mon that's a bit broad within the definition of "PC games". But I conceded the point. Also, excuse the rantyness - I'm a little (but not too) drunk.
Yep.
The lack of R&D costs coupled with how well the system will cost-reduce will allow Sony to be quite a bit more aggressive with pricing (without actually hurting the bottom line) than people realize.
As a matter of fact, they've hinted at as much. http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=514833
It's basically Vita all over again (regardless of whether Vita succeeds or fails in the marketplace). Initially everyone was shouting $599 when in reality it was a very smart and elegant design in terms of power versus cost over the long-term. Both being quite developer friendly doesn't hurt things either.
For all the talk of Sony's management and engineering boondoggles ... it seems like at least the gaming side has really learned from their past missteps. The 'new Sony' actually appears to exist. Now if they can only prove they've learned how to properly take advantage of their vertical integration vis-à-vis media and CE, they might really be onto something
RibbedHero
Member
I was joking. No one (rightfully) includes them.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
Launching 1 year later, with third developers having issues with HW, tools, and maintaining feature/IQ parity in multi platform titles for some time == Launching side to side, with developers happy with tools, SDK, and the HW setup? Really?
That said, I hope, for my wallet, that PS4 is priced at $399 and not above that.
not a tech guy at all, but this CU thing looks like the equivalent of last generation unified shaders from 360gpu that was , along with unified memory, what gave 360 the edge on multiplatforms and ease of develepment.
Yeah, there's no way this comes out and the cheapest model is more than $450. Max $500-550 for the high end model if they go multi-SKU (which knowing Sony they will).
We don't know the production/manufacturing deals Sony has in place for being able to get their hands on all this stuff. I'm hoping that them cutting PS3 out will be saving them a lot more than we realize, or something.
Either way they're going to need to bite the bullet.
The RAM in the PS4 is unified, it's not just for graphics. It's there so devs can make bigger games with less loading and more varied detail. Comparing it with graphics cards isn't really a good comparison.
To be fair I'm pretty sure Durango was rumored to be doing something similar before (And I sort of expected it given the emphasis on non-gaming functionality in rumors).Panajev2001a said:Cerny method baby
Sad that Cell doesn't qualify as low-power enough to take that functionality though
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-Amon-
Member
Impossible to guess .... maybe pc architecture could hint at improved reliability when confronted with current generation, maybe.
Opus Angelorum
Member
When a parent is deciding which console to buy this holiday for their 12 year old son, do you think that will concern them?
BruceWayneIII
Member
Do you know how strong that ARM chip is compared to e.g. a smartphone or something like that?
There is really no point as you wouldn't really be able to use it for much more than cache because of it's lower bandwidth.
JonathanPower
Member
Well, I have an external recorder that can record lossless 1080p and it does have 128MB of RAM inside. Why would the PS4 need to use 2GB of ram for doing the same thing?
RibbedHero
Member
Well presumably your external recorder uses its own HDD, but the PS4 would be using its HDD which would be used by other functions at the same time.
Anyway, I already answered this above, saying I was wrong because I forgot to factor in the decoder chip which would compress the video making it far less strenuous on the HDD.
JonathanPower
Member
How does it compare in terms of FLOPS?
KungFucius
King Snowflake
Maybe PS4 is the reason Nvidia and AMD aren't launching their nextgen series until winter. Sony needs to secure all the GDDR5 chips they can.
I was thinking this myself. They might have increased the cost of this stuff buy buying up all the capacity. we are talking 16 modules times 5 million or so for the year. That's a ton of wafers.
I dont know that, i was calculating it some times ago based on applications tests of previous architecture and adding like 20-25% performance increase.
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