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[Karak]

I see Moneyhatting being a big force next gen like it was during the past 3 years. Timed Exclusive type shit. Hopefully not but with the way this gen ended.....idk man.

It will be a huge factor especially in the first year or so. That is the name of the business now. Even though we can go on and on how it won't happen. Instant money up front versus POSSIBLE sales across 2 systems. Some devs go with that.

 

[seattle6418]

Proelite has been posting information and disinformation to avoid leaks tracing back to the source. It's smart and a good way to avoid the MS or Sony ninja van.

That's the only thing i'm still debating. I know why they are doing this and sometimes i wonder what's a new tidbit and what's a rumor they are saying to protect their sources.

I will say that i appreciate that very much, because without this, we wouldn't even have a topic to discuss.

I hope one of the misinformation bits are regarding the flops numbers, for both consoles. I know, i'm not a programmer or engineer, but after so many forum reading i was "convinced" we needed 2.5 Tflops to be good, and expecting 3.0 Tflops to be blown away and go bananas.

I know 1.84 + 4 GDDR5 is good, but maybe i just need to read more to be certain that this is good enough until 2018-2020. I don't want them to be gimped in any way.

As for the mention of GT5, i know Kaz has a say on things, but the game was gimped a lot due to PS3 limitations. The car models they spend months to do for example, are not used in their full details due to RAM, processing issues and stuff. The game was also severely constrained because of memory.

Let's hope for the best this time tough.

I'm starving for next gen godness, keep the tidbits coming guys!

 

[Globox_82]

6001 replies....we need help...

 

[Karak]

That's the only thing i'm still debating. I know why they are doing this and sometimes i wonder what's a new tidbit and what's a rumor they are saying to protect their sources.

I will say that i appreciate that very much, because without this, we wouldn't even have a topic to discuss.

I hope one of the misinformation bits are regarding the flops numbers, for both consoles. I know, i'm not a programmer or engineer, but after so many forum reading i was "convinced" we needed 2.5 Tflops to be good, and expecting 3.0 Tflops to be blown away and go bananas.

I know 1.84 + 4 GDDR5 is good, but maybe i just need to read more to be certain that this is good enough until 2018-2020. I don't want them to be gimped in any way.

As for the mention of GT5, i know Kaz has a say on things, but the game was gimped a lot due to PS3 limitations. The car models they spend months to do for example, are not used in their full details due to RAM, processing issues and stuff. The game was also severely constrained because of memory.

Let's hope for the best this time tough.

I'm starving for next gen godness, keep the tidbits coming guys!

Ya its best just to understand that EVEN if they are all not true the jump will still be a very large jump. That is the 1 real truth to new systems coming out.

6001 replies....we need help...

It has just been time.
For a long time.
Despite some great late games.

 

[weekend_warrior]

6001 replies....we need help...

we need new consolez!

 

[CLEEK]

This thread will have a 10 year life span.

 

[i-Lo]

It'll be interesting to see what comparative specs can be speculated from the leaks pertaining what forms the January 2013 Devkit, given that this will be the 2nd to last one.

6001 replies....we need help...

we need new consolez!

This thread will have a 10 year life span.

Wow, very good replies in succession.

 

[Can Crusher]

The person in the quote is regurgitating facts from the article. RAM has been increased to 4 GB recnetly. Either stacked or 2.5D wide for fast bandwith. An underclocked 7770 will only net you 1.3 TF, so that can't be right.

It will be 1.8 TF underclocked Pitcairn, 4 GB High Bandwith memory, all on one APU. Should be amazing . Also no $499, this machine will cost less than $399 to manufacture.

Also Fall of 2013 son -_-.

How does this compare to the Durango?

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

So we are back to 4GB GDDR5 I see. Getting a bit worried given that'll NOT be the amount dedicated for game development. I have this but let me ask again, why not two unified pools; one for game development at 4GB GDDR5 and another for about 1-1.5GB LPDDR3 for OS (including GUI) related tasks? I don't see switching between the two memory banks would be a tedium with today's processing power.

I kind of wish they'd go this route too, but 4GB of GDDR5 is still good. I see Sony probably keeping the OS footprint fairly small compared to MS. Maybe 512MB.

 

[stryke]

How does this compare to the Durango?

1.25-1.5 TF was thrown around a few pages back.

 

[Can Crusher]

1.25-1.5 TF was thrown around a few pages back.

Yeah but flops aren't the end all be apparently, from what I've been told. I doubt either Sony or MS spent a whole bunch of money just to pick some off the shelve stuff. Why spend the money, why hire so many engineers and why have them work on these designs for so long if that told the tale.

 

[Karak]

Yeah but flops aren't the end all be apparently, from what I've been told.

Well they aren't and you have the durango unique structure with their custom chips. But what we have is HOPEFULLY another reason to be excited for these systems coming!
A good back and forth about the various differences supposedly between the rumours about the systems and how they match out.
Linky

 

[Can Crusher]

Well they aren't and you have the durango unique structure with their custom chips. But what we have is HOPEFULLY another reason to be excited for these systems coming!

Knowing the basic list of hardware components no longer suffices for me man, I want to know more, I wanna know exactly what they are inside now!!!

 

[Karak]

Knowing the basic list of hardware components no longer suffices for me man, I want to know more, I wanna know exactly what they are inside now!!!

Well you have kits. Kits don't equal end systems right now. They can go lower, or higher as their target moves Sorry man. Only like...almost a year to wait hahahahahaha.

 

[Can Crusher]

Well you have kits. Kits don't equal end systems right now. They can go lower, or higher as their target moves Sorry man. Only like...almost a year to wait hahahahahaha.

One year? Don't tell me they are gonna withhold specific information on the system! They have to do the whole hardware tour during E3 or something no?

 

[Karak]

One year? Don't tell me they are gonna withhold specific information on the system! They have to do the whole hardware tour during E3 or something no?

I meant to get them into your hands

 

[androvsky]

EXTRA HARDWARE:

video encoder/ decoder
audio processing unit, ~200 concurrent MP3 streams
HW zlib decompressor

That's an interesting collection of chips to throw on the motherboard. I wonder if Sony has a multi-purpose chip laying around that's abnormally good at a/v encoding and decoding, as well as zlib... and maybe plays PS3 games too.

 

[phosphor112]

That's an interesting collection of chips to throw on the motherboard. I wonder if Sony has a multi-purpose chip laying around that's abnormally good at a/v encoding and decoding, as well as zlib... and maybe plays PS3 games too.

NO DUDE DAT ULL MAKE IT 599 AGAIN! SONY WONT DO DAT!1

I honestly think itll be in there for media purposes and BC...

EDIT: Or those "SPU" modules that Jeff keeps talking about. It almost makes no sense to keep them out.

 

[thuway]

Truth is i don't mine these specs if next gen is 5 years long .
I know some people think that next gen going to last as long as this one but i feel it going to be shorter .
This gen lasting so long was a mistake and i think most companies can see that .

Systems that make profit early or day 1 and after 5 years do all over until hardware no longer need .

The truth is most people have no idea what they are talking about when it comes to specs. Both machines are 10X their predecessors and even more in other aspects.

This cannot be stated enough:
FLOPs are not the absolute reference for graphical performance.


Hardware engineers with bona fide pedigrees, programmers working on top tier games, and billions of dollars behind these machines will insure no one is going to come out doing any thing stupid. Both these machines will sell for a profit, and third parties won't break any banks paying for exotic expensive dev kits. It is a win-win situation for every party involved.

 

[Can Crusher]

Sell for a profit? Highly doubt it. Wii U didn't....

 

[thuway]

thuway, if the ps4 isn't getting 4gb of gddr, i will hunt you down. kidding obviously

Do you remember what happened to the PS3? At the last minute Sony decided to underclock the RSX considerably due to heat issues. You never know with these things, but currently these are projected targets. The GDDR is not what I'm worried about either. Steamroller was delayed recently, and that could cause quite a sweat.

I'm at that point now where I am through dreaming of 4TF+ machines, and praying that Sony includes a Cell processor on board. It would increase board complexity, but it might give a semblance of hope that we could see backwards compatibility. (Which won't happen :'()

 

[gundamkyoukai]

Sell for a profit? Highly doubt it. Wii U didn't....

Yes but it's not a big lost they get it back with one game sale .
I also sure it's not a loss every where and they going to most likely make profit in less than a year .

The truth is most people have no idea what they are talking about when it comes to specs. Both machines are 10X their predecessors and even more in other aspects.

This cannot be stated enough:
FLOPs are not the absolute reference for graphical performance.


Hardware engineers with bona fide pedigrees, programmers working on top tier games, and billions of dollars behind these machines will insure no one is going to come out doing any thing stupid. Both these machines will sell for a profit, and third parties won't break any banks paying for exotic expensive dev kits. It is a win-win situation for every party involved.

I agree i just hope next gen is shorter .

 

[thuway]

So we are back to 4GB GDDR5 I see. Getting a bit worried given that'll NOT be the amount dedicated for game development. I have this but let me ask again, why not two unified pools; one for game development at 4GB GDDR5 and another for about 1-1.5GB LPDDR3 for OS (including GUI) related tasks? I don't see switching between the two memory banks would be a tedium with today's processing power.

I want to know the same thing. Sony is purchasing LPDDR in bulk (for Vita), and it is stupidly cheap since its an industry wide part. My suspicion is board complexity. Perhaps the LPDDR could not fit onto the APU?

 

[B.O.O.M]

Yes but it's not a big lost they get it back with one game sale .
I also sure it not a loss every where and they going to make profit in less than a year .



I agree i just hope next gen is shorter .

I believe it was recently told that the one game to profit bit was not true. But honestly I wonder when they speak of profits they refer on a console by console basis or an overall cost including R&D. Either way without an expensive controller Sony might be able to break even profit sooner than with the ps3

 

[thuway]

seems pretty reasonable, been speculated all along etc. and i think lherre tacitly said it some time ago (he said other next gen at least 2x ram of wii u, which means 4gb plus)

my fun project is:

Durango:

1.25 TF
8 1.6ghz Jaguar cores CPU
Custom hardware of some sort to improve performance
8GB DDR3+ESRAM

Vs PS4

1.84 TF
4 Steamroller cores
4GB GDDR5

fight!

PS4 looks a little better to me, but Durango would have advantages too (such as more RAM, presuming it wasn't too slow to fully utilize)

I could see after OS reserves, it being something more like 5GB Durango vs 3.5 GB Orbis game RAM, but that's still an edge for Durango, again provided it has the bandwidth to take advantage.

I am not being subtle when I say this- this post is exactly what I've heard. This is a VERY strong indication of what is in devkits at the moment and what to expect next-gen.

Also, don't take the Durango customizations lightly. They are allowing the next Xbox to perform at GTX 680 levels. I don't know what Sony has done to customize their GPU, but I do know Microsoft's machine has DSPs, ED RAM, and three pieces of silicon dedicated to improving performance. Esoteric things that are currently unavailable in the market place. Microsoft machine is "inspiring" confidence among developers according to Kotaku, that alone, should be enough to rub off any nagging suspicion it is a slouch.

 

[Reiko]

I am not being subtle when I say this- this post is exactly what I've heard. This is a VERY strong indication of what is in devkits at the moment and what to expect next-gen.

Also, don't take the Durango customizations lightly. They are allowing the next Xbox to perform at GTX 680 levels. I don't know what Sony has done to customize their GPU, but I do know Microsoft's machine has DSPs, ED RAM, and three pieces of silicon dedicated to improving performance. Esoteric things that are currently unavailable in the market place.

So using a GTX 680 to demo Watch Dogs and Star Wars 1313 is making alot more sense. Both consoles are shaping up.

 

[thuway]

So using a GTX 680 to demo Watch Dogs and Star Wars 1313 is making alot more sense. Both consoles are shaping up.

BUT TEH TERALOPZZZ?!?! WHY NO 2.5?!!! -_-

Yes sir.

 

[Pistolero]

If I were Sony -I won't mention Mirosoft since they've done better when it comes to this area-, I would make sure not to fall into the trap of putting an off the shelf GPU again, and think aout ways to make the part more efficient and more competitive...
But knowing Sony, RSX2, here I come!

 

[gundamkyoukai]

BUT TEH TERALOPZZZ?!?! WHY NO 2.5?!!! -_-

Yes sir.

It was my dream of monster customize discrete parts that died but that happen from since we start hearing rumors , looking at TDP and seeing it made no sense .
I know they still going to do customizations so i look forward to that .

 

[patsu]

I am not being subtle when I say this- this post is exactly what I've heard. This is a VERY strong indication of what is in devkits at the moment and what to expect next-gen.

Also, don't take the Durango customizations lightly. They are allowing the next Xbox to perform at GTX 680 levels. I don't know what Sony has done to customize their GPU, but I do know Microsoft's machine has DSPs, ED RAM, and three pieces of silicon dedicated to improving performance. Esoteric things that are currently unavailable in the market place. Microsoft machine is "inspiring" confidence among developers according to Kotaku, that alone, should be enough to rub off any nagging suspicion it is a slouch.

Sounds like they have optimized their dollars and potentials using dedicated hardware. Besides speeding up performance handling polygons, SIMD math, ray casting/tracing, parallel image processing type work automagically, it should simplify and speed up development too. It will be hard for Sony to match with just general purpose GPU and CPU if these dedicated hardware are used fully.

If Sony want to match the price too, they will have to think of more functionality. This time round, MS will also add a lot of home automation features to Xbox since MS just acquired Krikorian's company and assign him to the Entertainment division.

Basically, Sony will need to work smarter and harder compared to the PS3 days. It will be an even tougher fight. ^_^

 

[thuway]

Sounds like they have optimized their dollars and potentials using dedicated hardware. Besides speeding up performance handling polygons, SIMD math, ray casting/tracing, parallel image processing type work automagically, it should simplify and speed up development too. It will be hard for Sony to match with just general purpose GPU and CPU if these dedicated hardware are used fully.

If Sony want to match the price too, they will have to think of more functionality. This time round, MS will also add a lot of home automation features to Xbox since MS just acquired Krikorian's company and assign him to the Entertainment division.

Basically, Sony will need to work smarter and harder compared to the PS3 days. It will be an even tougher fight. ^_^

Just to be clear, I have zero idea if Sony has customized their machine, or if they are going totally off the shelf. Conventional wisdom would indicate Sony would opt for some level of customization as well. The Sony CTO interview is pretty indicative of what level of modification Sony is after.

Previous rumors had painted this rosary where both machines were essentially the same thing, but current rumors indicate architectures are varying considerably. Different architectures will lead to different engines and will make software development a more creative process. Two platforms similar in power, conventional, but with completely different approaches to a similar goal.

Raw power versus intelligent design.

 

[Pistolero]

If I may ask, thuway, are your interventions based on things you've heard personally, or mere conjecture work?

 

[Hydrargyrus]

I would bet for 400€ at launch with those specs... for both.

Unless they will add some gimmicks

 

[thuway]

If I may ask, thuway, are your interventions based on things you've heard personnally, or mere conjecture work?

Personally.

Before you ask which system is more powerful, the truth is, I don't know. How will Microsoft's customization assist the unit? How much RAM is dedicated to the OS in Orbis? I don't know.

What I do know is- what is under the hood in a vague sense. Developers are happy, and you should be too.

 

[mrklaw]

The person in the quote is regurgitating facts from the article. RAM has been increased to 4 GB recnetly. Either stacked or 2.5D wide for fast bandwith. An underclocked 7770 will only net you 1.3 TF, so that can't be right.

It will be 1.8 TF underclocked Pitcairn, 4 GB High Bandwith memory, all on one APU. Should be amazing . Also no $499, this machine will cost less than $399 to manufacture.

Also Fall of 2013 son -_-.

So basically *don't* read that linked article because you just changed most of the important bits

You think it'll be steamroller rather than the smaller jaguar though?

1.8TF discrete GPU plus the smaller one on the APU giving over 2TF, or is it ALL on the single chip?

And total ram 4GB? Or 4GB plus the 2GB faster ram?

 

[thuway]

So basically *don't* read that linked article because you just changed most of the important bits

You think it'll be steamroller rather than the smaller jaguar though?

1.8TF discrete GPU plus the smaller one on the APU giving over 2TF, or is it ALL on the single chip?

And total ram 4GB? Or 4GB plus the 2GB faster ram?

Only ONE GPU. It will be incorporated into the APU. The machine will be 1.84 TF total. All on a single chip. The RAM currently is a unified 4 GB of GDDR5.

mrklaw, the article is 100% genuine, but the poster was referencing something someone wrote in the comment section.

 

[B.O.O.M]

edit: nvm found a nice article on steamroller

 

[mrklaw]

Thanks.

So why is this suddenly coming out now? Controlled reaction to the MS leaks? I know we had rumours before but this seems more solid.

Everything on one APU should b great for internal bandwidth.

Key differences with Durango (rumours) seem to be more ram for Durango which might impact texture quality maybe? And how the edram compensates for slower main ram. Sounds like it might be easier to tap orbis with its more straightforward architecture this time (tools notwithstanding)


Will Sony be having a small amount of separate memory for OS, or carving out some of the 4GB?

 

[thuway]

Thanks.

So why is this suddenly coming out now? Controlled reaction to the MS leaks? I know we had rumours before but this seems more solid.

Everything on one APU should b great for internal bandwidth.

Key differences with Durango (rumours) seem to be more ram for Durango which might impact texture quality maybe? And how the edram compensates for slower main ram. Sounds like it might be easier to tap orbis with its more straightforward architecture this time (tools notwithstanding)


Will Sony be having a small amount of separate memory for OS, or carving out some of the 4GB?

This is the current piece of the puzzle we are trying to solve. Another mystery is why Sony hasn't opted to include 1 GB of LPDDR onto the main board. It would insure Vita apps would work in the background, and would leave the precious GDDR5 all unto GameOS.

 

[mrklaw]

Ok then Sony, give us a proper fast SATA interface to the HDD and give every game an install to HDD option so you can fill your more limited ram nice and quick so streaming engines aren't starved compared to the nice big pool of ram MS look to have.

 

[Pistolero]

Both machines seem quite capable, although there is no doubt in my mind that Microsoft will win the graphics race (past empahsis on GPU centric machines, the heavy customization involved this time... . Not by a huge margin though!

 

[mrklaw]

I want to know the same thing. Sony is purchasing LPDDR in bulk (for Vita), and it is stupidly cheap since its an industry wide part. My suspicion is board complexity. Perhaps the LPDDR could not fit onto the APU?

Screw the APU, the CPU still needs to talk to the external world - HDD for example. You could probably slap some cheap ram on the board for OS stuff fairly easily. Small, slow ass bus, doesn't matter for OS it'll still be plenty fast.

Surely when Sony were initially looking at 2GB GDDR5 they weren't seriously using a portion of that for the OS? We'd have been in Wii U ram territory then.

Just seems a waste to use up 0.5-1Gb of lovely gddr5 for the OS.

Just to be clear, I have zero idea if Sony has customized their machine, or if they are going totally off the shelf. Conventional wisdom would indicate Sony would opt for some level of customization as well. The Sony CTO interview is pretty indicative of what level of modification Sony is after.

Previous rumors had painted this rosary where both machines were essentially the same thing, but current rumors indicate architectures are varying considerably. Different architectures will lead to different engines and will make software development a more creative process. Two platforms similar in power, conventional, but with completely different approaches to a similar goal.

Raw power versus intelligent design.

This is interesting. As you say, sony's CTO has been vocal in talking about FPGAs and DSPs and yet we don't hear anything of that in the current PS4 rumours, but we do hear it in the MS ones.

I'm also curious what magic pieces of silicon you can have to speed things up? Dedicated small OS CPU? Kinect processor? I can't think of anything that'd particularly speed up a CPU or GPU (why not just have a larger CPU or GPU), but you could effectively speed it up by offloading other tasks from it.

 

[systemfehler]

Only ONE GPU. It will be incorporated into the APU. The machine will be 1.84 TF total. All on a single chip. The RAM currently is a unified 4 GB of GDDR5.

mrklaw, the article is 100% genuine, but the poster was referencing something someone wrote in the comment section.

Why the sudden change of heart? A few weeks ago you even thought that 2.2+ TFlops are possible and now you "know" that it won't be more than 1.84 TFlops? The same goes for Proelite - on one hand posting the "weak" specs and in a B3D thread he posts that 8 times the performance of a PS3 is a conservative estimate. Makes the discussion and credibility rather difficult.

 

[Proelite]

That's an interesting collection of chips to throw on the motherboard. I wonder if Sony has a multi-purpose chip laying around that's abnormally good at a/v encoding and decoding, as well as zlib... and maybe plays PS3 games too.

Interesting but not quite there.

 

[Gorillaz]

Interesting but not quite there.

So possible cell parts could be in?

 

[jeff_rigby]

That's an interesting collection of chips to throw on the motherboard. I wonder if Sony has a multi-purpose chip laying around that's abnormally good at a/v encoding and decoding, as well as zlib... and maybe plays PS3 games too.

<grin> we can hope but Zlib hardware compression was mentioned in a 2011 AMD article when they touted the AMD APU as best for on-line web viewing. The webkit standard compression is now zlib. Hardware Video decoding also part of the basic hardware built in for web viewing. Encoding, I don't know, that can be allot more difficult to do.

 

[thuway]

Why the sudden change of heart? A few weeks ago you even thought that 2.2+ TFlops are possible and now you "know" that it won't be more than 1.84 TFlops? The same goes for Proelite - on one hand posting the "weak" specs and in a B3D thread he posts that 8 times the performance of a PS3 is a conservative estimate. Makes the discussion and credibility rather difficult.

Let's just say the stars have aligned and the proper voices have spoken. The information I have is referencing current devkits. Whatever ships in the Summer will indicate final specs.

 

[systemfehler]

Let's just say the stars have aligned and the proper voices have spoken. The information I have is referencing current devkits. Whatever ships in the Summer will indicate final specs.

So you claim to know the (january) devkit hardware or at least know someone who does? Instead of talking about rather useless Flop numbers we could talk about if the APU will feature GCN 2.0, if it is a mobile version of a card, if it is Steamroller/Jaguar, if there is BC and so on. Especially if there are no custom parts, no delay for Steamroller/HD8xxx series why is there such a long hold up? Why are there worries for a 2014 release and why does Aegies only hears that Sony is quiet and doesn't know the "direction"...

 

[mrklaw]

<grin> we can hope but Zlib hardware compression was mentioned in a 2011 AMD article when they touted the AMD APU as best for on-line web viewing. The webkit standard compression is now zlib. Hardware Video decoding also part of the basic hardware built in for web viewing. Encoding, I don't know, that can be allot more difficult to do.

they'll need hardware video encoding - surely remote play to vita of all PS4 games should be expected?

 

[LightOfTruth]

Oooh sounds good...but if they can make it even more powerful...give it to me...