(RUMOR) Xbox One GPU reserve getting smaller soon, down from 10% to 2%

Except you forget the fact that they might STILL have frame rate problems at 720P. Hence why they're asking Microsoft to increase the amount of power available to devs.

Infinity Ward apparently asked Microsoft to do this. And they're running COD at 720P@60FPS. Obviously they're having technical issues maintaining a rock solid frame rate on the Xbox One.
how can it still have issues?is it really that weak?
 
But how could it use 8% GPU just to run apps? The overlay/snap part wouldn't - that'd be a tiny fraction. So it must be available for the apps themselves. Seems a lot for decoding video.

We don't know. If Esram is the bottleneck it would an be no advantage. This really blows my mind. If snap is disabled people will be pissed that a feature they bought the system for doesn't work for the games they play on the system. Kinect also won't be "free" making developers less likely to support it.

This seems like a walking contradiction.
 
We don't know. If Esram is the bottleneck it would an be no advantage. This really blows my mind. If snap is disabled people will be pissed that a feature they bought the system for doesn't work for the games they play on the system. Kinect also won't be "free" making developers less likely to support it.

This seems like a walking contradiction.
who buys it for snap anyways? also what do you mean kinect "free"?
 
how can it still have issues?is it really that weak?

What is essentially a 7770 coupled with DDR3….It was never going to be especially impressive. First party at least should be able to cook up some nice things, but it will never close that gap. If anything the gap will only get wider.

I get the feeling many of the Xbox One's future tent pole exclusives will be linear experiences (Ryse esque), in order to maintain visual parity with the competitor.
 
It would be pretty impressive if you could have video software by only using 0.8% of your graphics card, so on this I agree with you. The point that strikes me is that per mille (o/oo) isn't exactly a common keyboard key, while % is.

You have a point, that "‰" in no way a typo. He must copied it from somewhere.
 
Snap was always pretty pointless anyway. As is Kinect in general in my opinion. I'd rather the extra 8% extra graphical boost over snap tbh. But can't help think they might be giving away one of their unique features to bump up specs and after all is said and done, still be a long way off their competition in terms of performance.

I think it goes to show the XB1 is underpowered. Especially considering how ambitious MS's plans for the system are.
 
The 8% they'd win back by disabling features doesn't even get them in the same ballpark as the PS4. It makes no sense to make a cornerstone feature optional, creating a bunch of confusion about what the system can and can't do when Snap is literally the first thing about the system they ever advertised on TV, and still the focal point of many ads. Not saying I don't believe this will be the case, but it's just further evidence of the knee-jerk panic-based management style they're using these days at Microsoft. If this could get them to parity with PS4, that would be one thing, but as it stands they'd still have demonstrably worse games at a higher price point and now one of the only features that differentiates the platform can't be relied on. Even if they're dumping Kinect and dropping the price to $400 they're still slower with one less feature advantage.
 
The 8% they'd win back by disabling features doesn't even get them in the same ballpark as the PS4. It makes no sense to make a cornerstone feature optional, creating a bunch of confusion about what the system can and can't do when Snap is literally the first thing about the system they ever advertised on TV, and still the focal point of many ads. Not saying I don't believe this will be the case, but it's just further evidence of the knee-jerk panic-based management style they're using these days at Microsoft. If this could get them to parity with PS4, that would be one thing, but as it stands they'd still have demonstrably worse games at a higher price point and now one of the only features that differentiates the platform can't be relied on. Even if they're dumping Kinect and dropping the price to $400 they're still slower with one less feature advantage.

$400 is better than having that feature.
 
I searched and found the store page for Lego Marvel does indeed mention that it is "snappable":

CAtyK4W.jpg

"Snappable" seems like a weird way to convey that video can be snapped alongside the game. It almost makes it sound like the game itself can be snapped.
 
The 8% they'd win back by disabling features doesn't even get them in the same ballpark as the PS4. It makes no sense to make a cornerstone feature optional, creating a bunch of confusion about what the system can and can't do when Snap is literally the first thing about the system they ever advertised on TV, and still the focal point of many ads. Not saying I don't believe this will be the case, but it's just further evidence of the knee-jerk panic-based management style they're using these days at Microsoft. If this could get them to parity with PS4, that would be one thing, but as it stands they'd still have demonstrably worse games at a higher price point and now one of the only features that differentiates the platform can't be relied on. Even if they're dumping Kinect and dropping the price to $400 they're still slower with one less feature advantage.

I was about to post basically to say this. The change doesn't make sense, if its true. This change only makes sense to me if they've figured out a way to give that 8% back while retaining Snap and other Kinect functions too.

But very little of MS' actions have made sense to me this round, so it won't surprise me if this turns out to be true.
 
So is Pete saying that the xbone reserves 20% of system resource?

10% for the three OS
10% for kinect

Now ms are releasing 8% of the kinect reserve. which still leaves 12% locked to Microsoft?

Isn't this going to cause a bit of a backlash between those who want better res/fps and those that use snap?

I know ms probably try to see this as a positive move but I just feel they are still gonna cop some flak.
 
It was expected that the reserved parts would lessen over time as things got efficient but that's a bit extreme 2 months in MS must be really really self concious of the technical gap from the PS4 if Panello's comments are to be taken as a sign of the thought process in MS HQ.
 
No, we can't currently snap games.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I can't snap any game that I own. So it's obviously optional for games as well as apps. But does anyone have Lego Marvel on Xbone and can try? I bought it on 360.

edit: So, I found the "Snappable apps and games" menu. Lego Marvel is the only game listed. All of the snappable apps are listed. I don't know why anyone would want to snap a game, but that's pretty cool if Lego actually has that option.
 
So they make a tiny portion of juice available that won't really help combat the performance gap by sacrificing a differentiator function. Not sure if the wisest strategy.
 
Fully expect optimisations to continue, only gets better from here on. If we're to believe last minute fixes were being implemented to create a stable system optimisation or at least comprehensive "aggressive optimisation" has yet to be fully implemented. I expect the second wave of games to be jaw dropping on the One
 
$400 is better than having that feature.

They can drop the price without losing that feature. Having price parity against the PS4 AND unmatched features like that would make the Xbox One more competitive than not having that feature but having games only 40% slower than PS4 rather than 45%.
 
Fully expect optimisations to continue, only gets better from here on. If we're to believe last minute fixes were being implemented to create a stable system optimisation or at least comprehensive "aggressive optimisation" has yet to be fully implemented. I expect the second wave of games to be jaw dropping on the One

Major Nelson? Is that you?
 
This moving around of resources or clawing back tiny % means very little in real world terms... maybe a few fps.

It's nothing.. Move along.
 
Fully expect optimisations to continue, only gets better from here on. If we're to believe last minute fixes were being implemented to create a stable system optimisation or at least comprehensive "aggressive optimisation" has yet to be fully implemented. I expect the second wave of games to be jaw dropping on the One
"the one"
 
Snap Optional games are probably meant to be titles like Clash of Clans that have timers so they can be run in the background and be brought to the foreground when required. Hell you could be playing Forza and then snap to Scrabble, make a word, wait for your buddy's turn, and then snap back.
 
I'm pretty sure the Kinect 2 does its own on-board processing. It was the Kinect 1 which did everything on the console-side. So I don't know why some people are thinking that it would decrease skeletal tracking or whatnot.
 
Good news if true but how much is that "extra" 8% anyway? 100gf? 110gf?
100gf won't make a 720p game to 900p/1080p or 30fps to 60fps.
 
Its obvious that this system wasn't designed with a games first mantra. The fact that they are already trying to claw back limited resources means they fucked up the design. Kinect was a bad idea plain and simple. Too many sacrifices were made just to get it in the box.

Why would a portion of the system be reserved for a feature which might not even be used 100% of the time? Any gains made in the graphics department means somewhere else will take cuts. If that means snap goes then the gain isn't worth it.
 
I certainly wouldn't mind not being able to snap during gameplay. I've only ever snapped something on accident on my xbox one. Thoroughly enjoying the console though, and I would be happy for any extra power to go towards gaming. No matter how small.
 
Fully expect optimisations to continue, only gets better from here on. If we're to believe last minute fixes were being implemented to create a stable system optimisation or at least comprehensive "aggressive optimisation" has yet to be fully implemented. I expect the second wave of games to be jaw dropping on the One

you know.. jaws have already been dropped..

HDQU81T.gif
 
sacrificing something that actually differentiates your console (snap) for a 3fps boost strikes me as very silly. nobody's going to buy it because of a 3fps boost but some people might buy it for snap (or at least get some use out of snap).
 
Curious if anything becomes of this. I would imagine if they somehow do manage to reallocate 8% of the GPU for gaming it will be at the sacrifice of another feature. I seriously doubt they'd be able to optimize that much ever let alone in 2 months of launch. It sounds far more like they are debating about making snap optional or maybe they are only freeing up 4% or something and just getting rid of skeletal tracking or whatever Kinect requires

I can only imagine that if this is real it is not the resolution/framerate gate scandals whatever that is doing this but the 3rd party developers doing it. That they are and have been very vocal and very adamant that they are having real trouble getting their games up to snuff on the XB1. And maybe Respawn are having problems but I had thought they pretty much had titanfall ready to go whenever and it was up to EA to make the release date?
 
Ms needs to figure out its console isnt the strongest. Accept that fact and market it for its ecosystem os. Its not lke tey are half the power of the ps4. There is a gap yes. ps4 has better ram yes. Their pr department needs to stop all the fud about parity and straight up say. We have a performance gap yes, but look at our ecosystem os controller exclusives etc. Seriously someone needs to go over and school this group. Iphone is weaker than galaxy s and other android phones half the time. I stick to my iphone cause i like it. Its irrational etc. You product can be appealing on way more fronts than just hardware. Instead they use some stupid movie theatre analogy etc ... just dont get whats up with their pr department. Guess sony really really caught them off guard with the 8gb ram and Cerny and sony hardware just did a great job I guess.

EDIT and personally im prefer sony consoles and plan on getting a ps4 once i can track one down. but so far ms has shown more games to get me excited. I know sony is sitting on its exclusives etc but so far ms has shown me a better lineup of exclusives. Even the ones sony had which had me excited driveclub/order etc have just totally vanished off the map marketing wise. If MS would just focus on its games games games I might even consider picking it up as a secondary console. Instead we got this silly pr drama theatre going on.
 
edit: So, I found the "Snappable apps and games" menu. Lego Marvel is the only game listed. All of the snappable apps are listed. I don't know why anyone would want to snap a game, but that's pretty cool if Lego actually has that option.

I just found it too (for those curious, select Snap from the main menu, then scroll down to Get More). It definitely appears the game itself is snappable.
 
sacrificing something that actually differentiates your console (snap) for a 3fps boost strikes me as very silly. nobody's going to buy it because of a 3fps boost but some people might buy it for snap (or at least get some use out of snap).

And thats why I think this rumor isnt true. They cant sacrifice a great feature, thats tied with the UI in order to boost 3 frames per second. That GPU is still limited, 8% or whatever wont magically add some new ROPs or CUs that could compensate some of the bottlenecks. There is still the small ESRAM and the low memory bandwith in the first place. It still amazes me that a game based on source engine struggles at 720p60fps.
 
And thats why I think this rumor isnt true. They cant sacrifice a great feature, thats tied with the UI in order to boost 3 frames per second. That GPU is still limited, 8% or whatever wont magically add some new ROPs or CUs that could compensate some of the bottlenecks. There is still the small ESRAM and the low memory bandwith in the first place. It still amazes me that a game based on source engine struggles at 720p60fps.

Eh well, while it doesnt look insane guess some of the physics and ai involved are intensive. I mean it is still about 12 ai per team right (6 silly grunt types and 6 mechs etc)
 
Making one of their main USP optional seems short sighted. MS should really just accept their machine is grossly under powered compared to the PS4 and focus on improving the few USP they do have over the PS4 as well patching in a goddamn storage mamangement option and battery indicator.

Embarrassing that this still hasn't been addressed.
 
The 8% figure doesn't sound plausible to me. I'd guess that they are optimizing system-level functions by attempting to schedule free resources dynamically to them instead of giving them a fixed budget. That would free some part of that 8%. But in order to reduce that reservation altogether, you would have to do the same with snapped apps, likely crippling or canceling Snap in the process.

Currently, it seems that they are employing some sort of time-slice scheduling, since that provides the best form of isolation and reliability. A scheduling that assigns different execution parts of the GPU-hardware to different processes dynamically is possible, but that must necessarily break isolation and reliability/predictability for at least some concurrently running processes.

However, those characteristics are especially important if you're scheduling resources between two independent applications that cannot have any assumptions about each other. If some snapped app wants to render animations while the game is maxing out its GPU budget, and you cannot find a dynamic scheduling that finds enough "holes" to satisfy both needs in time, one application will "starve".

My best guess that something was lost in translation: they are trying to dial-down system functions that use parts of that 8%, but not the budget assigned to snapped apps.

Personally, I would welcome them dropping Snap, but I don't think that's likely.

That's a good point.
 
Eh well, while it doesnt look insane guess some of the physics and ai involved are intensive. I mean it is still about 12 ai per team right (6 silly grunt types and 6 mechs etc)

Sure, but even 360 manages this experience (though not with that fidelity in the visual department). I wonder why its so hard for devs to run a (competitive) shooter in 1080p. Neither, BF, CoD or Titanfall could pull it off and those or some of the best devs worldwide.
 
Fully expect optimisations to continue, only gets better from here on. If we're to believe last minute fixes were being implemented to create a stable system optimisation or at least comprehensive "aggressive optimisation" has yet to be fully implemented. I expect the second wave of games to be jaw dropping on the One

Calling it "the One" will not win you many friends around here
 
thinking about this a little it still really feels like MS just don't get it. they're still trying to make something out their specs instead of getting serious about making first party titles and supporting indies. when people complained about the specs they weren't asking for 3fps more.
 
I'm not sure why you guys are still talking about snap being made optional. It's not part of the rumor as posted in the OP and Microsoft spoke just a few months ago about freeing up the GPU without sacrificing any system functionality.

At first I didn't think they were taking the snap feature away and this was what was mentioned previously that resources allocated for future non-game related stuff to be switched over to the game OS.

But after reading several posts in this thread it seems to be the general consensus that existing features are going to be taken away.

The snap feature sounded really useful at first until I realised that the video window would be so small and most of the snapped screen would be an empty space (which makes sense unless you want to take a 16:9 image and scale it to some horrible stretched ratio). I hope it doesn't go away and become optional as remembering what games allow it and what don't would be a little annoying (but then again I want to play games more so it might be worth dropping).

Also if this is true this makes me very worried for the feature I want most added to the OS (background audio playback without the need for snapping something to part of the screen).

I really hope it's just allocated unused resources they are reallocating to the games side.
 
I'm not sure why you guys are still talking about snap being made optional. It's not part of the rumor as posted in the OP and Microsoft spoke just a few months ago about freeing up the GPU without sacrificing any system functionality.

Good link.

I was also wondering how we got from the good news of a performance boost to this somehow crippling the the whole system without ANY confirmation, but whatever.

I'm all for whatever makes these systems better, so this seems like welcome news unless we hear something confirmed to be different.
 
At first I didn't think they were taking the snap feature away and this was what was mentioned previously that resources allocated for future non-game related stuff to be switched over to the game OS.

But after reading several posts in this thread it seems to be the general consensus that existing features are going to be taken away.

The snap feature sounded really useful at first until I realised that the video window would be so small and most of the snapped screen would be an empty space (which makes sense unless you want to take a 16:9 image and scale it to some horrible stretched ratio). I hope it doesn't go away and become optional as remembering what games allow it and what don't would be a little annoying (but then again I want to play games more so it might be worth dropping).

Also if this is true this makes me very worried for the feature I want most added to the OS (background audio playback without the need for snapping something to part of the screen).

I really hope it's just allocated unused resources they are reallocating to the games side.

The GAF consensus is pretty meaningless when only Microsoft knows all the details of the hardware, software, and the direction they plan to take.
 
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