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VGLeaks: Durango GPU detailed

mrklaw

MrArseFace
Can we stop saying orbis has 50% more GPU FLOPs? It doesn't. If the latest leaks are true, then its 12CU vs 14CU, a minor difference, complicated more by the different approaches to ram.

Orbis also has 4CU for 'compute' and could be used to assist graphics with effort, but that may be ignored entirely for Multiplatform titles if it is too different to Durango. First party titles will use it well though I expect.
 
If that actualizes as 360 games running better and/or with cleaner IQ on Durango, than would make it a day-1 purchase for me.

It seems unlikely, but something like that would be a bigger tipping point then any hardware advantage I've seen so far based on the leaks.

So much to play out yet.
 

gofreak

GAF's Bob Woodward
Can we stop saying orbis has 50% more GPU FLOPs? It doesn't. If the latest leaks are true, then its 12CU vs 14CU, a minor difference, complicated more by the different approaches to ram.

Orbis also has 4CU for 'compute' and could be used to assist graphics with effort, but that may be ignored entirely for Multiplatform titles if it is too different to Durango. First party titles will use it well though I expect.

We need more clarification about the 14:4 thing. There's a couple of different theories about it with pretty different ramifications about how easily/transparently or not 14 vs 18 CUs could be leveraged 'in a regular way'.
 

Pug

Member
Can we stop saying orbis has 50% more GPU FLOPs? It doesn't. If the latest leaks are true, then its 12CU vs 14CU, a minor difference, complicated more by the different approaches to ram.

Orbis also has 4CU for 'compute' and could be used to assist graphics with effort, but that may be ignored entirely for Multiplatform titles if it is too different to Durango. First party titles will use it well though I expect.

You're not with the Kids, ROPS is where its at.
 
Could the reason for a large OS overhead on Durango be because games are being developed on a unified OS layer (similar to iOS) instead of to the metal, to allow future compatibility?
 
Color me completely shocked that Microsoft will not unveil their new console before Sony. It seems incredibly stupid to me considering that Microsoft launching a year earlier than Sony benefited them greatly this time around. I think that this was an opportunity for them to strike the iron while it's hot but they seem to have opened the door for Sony instead.

The GPU does not impress me and I'm not sure if I like the direction Microsoft is going in.
 
Can we stop saying orbis has 50% more GPU FLOPs? It doesn't. If the latest leaks are true, then its 12CU vs 14CU, a minor difference, complicated more by the different approaches to ram.

Orbis also has 4CU for 'compute' and could be used to assist graphics with effort, but that may be ignored entirely for Multiplatform titles if it is too different to Durango. First party titles will use it well though I expect.
Well such things may be ignored just to have parity, but doesn't mean exclusives will ignore them
 

Pug

Member
Color me completely shocked that Microsoft will not unveil their new console before Sony. It seems incredibly stupid to me considering that Microsoft launching a year earlier than Sony benefited them greatly this time around. I think that this was an opportunity for them to strike the iron while it's hot but they seem to have opened the door for Sony instead.

The GPU does not impress me and I'm not sure if I like the direction Microsoft is going in.

Here's my guess, maybe they don't have much to show at this point. Well they could show a beta development PC running some wireframes.
 

Erasus

Member
I like that i can turn on one machine (360) and can do just about anything. I dont have to worry about turning on this device, finding that remote, etc.... Plus i might plan on watching Netflix but see my friends are in a Halo party and I may change my mind and decide to join. If i was streaming it through my TV i would have no idea who is playing online at that moment.

But that is the PS3 for me... without paywall.

Gaming, Movies (I just want mkv and srt support), Blu-Ray, Youtube, dont have netflix but its there too...

Only ESPN is exclusive to 360 and its not a thing here.
 
Can we stop saying orbis has 50% more GPU FLOPs? It doesn't. If the latest leaks are true, then its 12CU vs 14CU, a minor difference, complicated more by the different approaches to ram.

Orbis also has 4CU for 'compute' and could be used to assist graphics with effort, but that may be ignored entirely for Multiplatform titles if it is too different to Durango. First party titles will use it well though I expect.

No because Durango still needs to find 410gflops sitting around to be used for compute or use gpgpu with some of its CUs(which wont work as well as Orbis's 4CU set up plus it will take away from the rendering budget). Not to mention the 410gflops could still be used for rendering. You act like this made Orbis weaker, when in fact the 14+4 thing is a good thing and made the architecture much more efficient and therefor more powerful. The 4CU's are also specialized for compute and each have an extra ALU. Once again this is based on the VGleaks article.
 
Color me completely shocked that Microsoft will not unveil their new console before Sony. It seems incredibly stupid to me considering that Microsoft launching a year earlier than Sony benefited them greatly this time around. I think that this was an opportunity for them to strike the iron while it's hot but they seem to have opened the door for Sony instead.

The GPU does not impress me and I'm not sure if I like the direction Microsoft is going in.

Color me completely shocked that you might feel this way considering you have basically said the same thing in numerous threads for weeks.
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
Yup. I'm sticking with my guns earlier that everyone already has an everything box and what will set a box apart from "I can do this too! look at me! over here!" is that one will be full tilt gaming while another tries to become a replica box of the dozens of current tech peripherals already cemented in the living room. Another box that does what every other box does that also hides everything behind a paywall (could change) isn't exactly an ace in the hole.

I think a primary gaming box is the ticket. Too many pieces of tech do "everything". A straight games-machine is the better bet.

I could be wrong tho. Wouldn't be the first time.



People don't like how it's comparing to the PS4. Not that it's not a great upgrade from what we have now - just that it appears to fall a bit shy of the mark when comparing it to its competitor box. I think it will perform fine tho for games.

There is still a big gap for the 'all in one media box' in the living room. On demand services have exploded, DVRs are commonplace and people don't watch as much live TV as they used to (its all timeshifted). But they are all fragmented, siloed experiences. Even current streamer boxes like roku or Apple TV treat each service separately. On a content consumption device you can't even search for content - you have to go into an app first and look there.

A box that properly brings that all together in a meaningful way could be huge. Cross service search, combining all the metadata into one place, potential video overlay so mixing live with online.

TBH something that google TV should have nailed but they were too busy trying to shoehorn the Internet in there and not enough focus on media.
 
Weren't some supposed multiplat devs saying that the two consoles should be fairly similar? Don't the specs we've seen indicate that the difference is actually going to be a fairly significant advantage for Orbis (in terms of the hardware)?

I'm a little confused as to Microsoft's approach here. Are they betting the farm on Kinect and hoping for Wii-like results from the casual gaming crowd? Seems like a pretty ballsy move. Maybe they think they can do gaming things with Kinect that are going to blow everyones minds.
 

spwolf

Member
sony's os didn't start at 50mb did it? I thought it had a much bigger footprint.

regarding tyhe dvr functionality, you needed an accessory to get that to work, so I'm not sure if it really counts.

some of your other features are stretching the facts a little. very few games actually support uploading to youtube, and the web browser was and still is the worst pile of shit I've ever had the misfortune of using.

os footprint needs to be bigegr because the machines will be doing more natively. game recording at an os level, dvr functions at an os level (possibly), multi-tasking, video chat in game (god, I hope this is in for both) amongst other features we can't yet imagine.

to clear things up, <50 MB is OS usage with game running. DVR accessory is just an passthrough for video in, nothing else. It was running at OS level... one SPU was reserved for OS, and it could record a movie while you game.

So you really dont need more than 512 MB for all of that running together at the same time. Individual features like chat, youtube and others, that could be enabled by devs for in-game, had pretty small footprint, from 8 to 20 MB max... problem was that PS3 had total of 256 MB of RAM... so 200 available for games (+256 video ram).

PS4 OS should have >10x more RAM when game is running at 15x more when game is not running.

so with 512 MB of fast RAM for OS, they can have all those features and many more, and make it all a lot faster and nicer.


I really dont know why would there be 3 GB reserved for OS in Durango, I dont think that it will happen like that. Even if they have features like streaming movies from Durango to tablet, it is not memory heavy, it could only be cpu heavy.
 

mr_nothin

Banned
Weren't some supposed multiplat devs saying that the two consoles should be fairly similar? Don't the specs we've seen indicate that the difference is actually going to be a fairly significant advantage for Orbis (in terms of the hardware)?

I'm a little confused as to Microsoft's approach here. Are they betting the farm on Kinect and hoping for Wii-like results from the casual gaming crowd? Seems like a pretty ballsy move. Maybe they think they can do gaming things with Kinect that are going to blow everyones minds.

In terms of actual hardware, it seems to be a "wash". The GPU in Orbis is better but the difference isnt too huge. Memory/Bandwidth goes to Orbis definitely. CPUs are pretty much the same.

That's when it comes to specs on paper. When hearing that Microsoft wants the next xbox to do all of this extra stuff besides gaming then I think that's where Durango takes a big hit. Especially if 3GB of memory and 2 CPU cores are reserved for non-gaming related things. Whereas the Orbis seems more gaming focused and will be able to use a lot more of the hardware by default.
 
Can we stop saying orbis has 50% more GPU FLOPs? It doesn't. If the latest leaks are true, then its 12CU vs 14CU, a minor difference, complicated more by the different approaches to ram.

Orbis also has 4CU for 'compute' and could be used to assist graphics with effort, but that may be ignored entirely for Multiplatform titles if it is too different to Durango. First party titles will use it well though I expect.

What? Why on earth would devs ignore additional CUs? I don't think they will be hard to use - I mean they are CUs. It's not some kind of exotic, never-seen-before technology. And of course this translates to more FLOPS.
 
Color me completely shocked that Microsoft will not unveil their new console before Sony. It seems incredibly stupid to me considering that Microsoft launching a year earlier than Sony benefited them greatly this time around. I think that this was an opportunity for them to strike the iron while it's hot but they seem to have opened the door for Sony instead.

The GPU does not impress me and I'm not sure if I like the direction Microsoft is going in.

When a console is revealed suddenly means something now? Vita unveiled a year in advance. Wii U even longer in advance. How'd all that work out? The general buying public doesn't care until it's actually in stores.
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
to clear things up, <50 MB is OS usage with game running. DVR accessory is just an passthrough for video in, nothing else. It was running at OS level... one SPU was reserved for OS, and it could record a movie while you game.

So you really dont need more than 512 MB for all of that running together at the same time. Individual features like chat, youtube and others, that could be enabled by devs for in-game, had pretty small footprint, from 8 to 20 MB max... problem was that PS3 had total of 256 MB of RAM... so 200 available for games (+256 video ram).

PS4 OS should have >10x more RAM when game is running at 15x more when game is not running.

so with 512 MB of fast RAM for OS, they can have all those features and many more, and make it all a lot faster and nicer.


I really dont know why would there be 3 GB reserved for OS in Durango, I dont think that it will happen like that. Even if they have features like streaming movies from Durango to tablet, it is not memory heavy, it could only be cpu heavy.

The only thing I can think of is that MS want a machine within a machine. So eg you play your games, you're having fun. Meanwhile your dad/kids can connect into Durango and stream movies access all the features.

However, assuming you are using a tablet/ computer, wouldn't you be able to do most things directly from the Internet without needing to go through the console?


Gemüsepizza;47327040 said:
What? Why on earth would devs ignore additional CUs? I don't think they will be hard to use - I mean they are CUs. It's not some kind of exotic, never-seen-before technology. And of course this translates to more FLOPS.

I mean that, if the extra CUs are specifically for compute, and MS don't have similar, then Multiplatform devs might simply go with lowest common denominator which is CPU+GPU. In that case it's 8+12 vs 8+14. Like early devs on PS3 just used the PPE and ignored the SPEs
 

gofreak

GAF's Bob Woodward
Gemüsepizza;47327040 said:
What? Why on earth would devs ignore additional CUs? I guess it will be not really hard to use them, I mean they are CUs. And of course this translates to more FLOPS.

It may be more or less transparent for a developer to use them for whatever they want.

Depending on the setup they might have to explicitly shuffle off certain tasks to those four CUs.

However, even if that is the case, I don't think they would be ignored in multiplat situations. I think many or most multiplat games will have some non-negligible amount of compute shader work going on and it ought to be easy to utilise the 4 CUs for that task.

Depending on the setup it might be trickier to utilise them if you have very little compute work going on and can't transparently leverage them for other rendering tasks. Even then, though, there's probably some low hanging fruit that can be chunked off for those CUs from the main rendering pipeline.

A bit more clarity on how this is set up is needed to be able to tell how much effort will be needed to use them well for 'just' rendering work, in low compute-shader contexts. It might be nothing or might require some extra work. It would be less effort than it was to, say, use SPUs for graphics work though.
 
In terms of actual hardware, it seems to be a "wash". The GPU in Orbis is better but the difference isnt too huge. Memory/Bandwidth goes to Orbis definitely. CPUs are pretty much the same.

That's when it comes to specs on paper. When hearing that Microsoft wants the next xbox to do all of this extra stuff besides gaming then I think that's where Durango takes a big hit. Especially if 3GB of memory and 2 CPU cores are reserved for non-gaming related things. Whereas the Orbis seems more gaming focused and will be able to use a lot more of the hardware by default.
I'm not very well versed in the GPU lingo and what the ultimate significance of the terms is; is the best measure of the GPU's power the TFLOP rating, or ROPS, or CUs, or something else? Just looking at the TFLOPs and ROPs specs on paper the Orbis GPU seems to have an advantage of 50% and 100% respectively doesn't it? And it also has a CU advantage as well if I'm reading things correctly? Aren't those pretty significant differences?

These aren't rhetorical questions, as I said I don't really have any understanding of GPU tech. Am I reading things wrong here?
 

MaulerX

Member
timeshifted)A box that properly brings that all together in a meaningful way could be huge. Cross service search, combining all the metadata into one place, potential video overlay so mixing live with online.


The 360 already does cross service search with Bing. It's pretty awesome. Search for a movie and the system tells you which apps offer said movie. Some apps offer movies that other apps don't, so this sure as hell beats searching individual apps. The Bing search obviously works for anything (including actual IE results). It's a convenience that is often taken for granted. I'm sure people that have come accustomed to this functionality and convenience will have a hard time parting from it.
 

Domstercool

Member
And yet no game running at a decent framerate on the card looks as good....I should know, I had that card.

Crysis 2, Very High 1680x1050

Advanced-1680x1050.png


http://www.geforce.com/optimize/guides/crysis-2-benchmarks#4
 

Neo C.

Member
There's something I don't understand.

Don't these specs confirm what we've always more or less known ?
A machine 6x/8x the power of Xbox 360 ?

Why are people acting like this is a 'downgrade total' or another Wii ?

Some guys don't want to believe the rumours and hold former leaps dearly, which were somewhere between 8x/16x. But ultimately, those guys are going to be disappointed no matter what, because they just don't take all the circumstances into their consideration. We have repeatedly told them how wattage, rising complexity of the consoles and growing game development costs probably influence the console development more than ever...





And then you have console warriors only interested in the tech gap between Durango and Orbis.
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
It may be more or less transparent for a developer to use them for whatever they want.

Depending on the setup they might have to explicitly shuffle off certain tasks to those four CUs.

However, even if that is the case, I don't think they would be ignored in multiplat situations. I think many or most multiplat games will have some non-negligible amount of compute shader work going on and it ought to be easy to utilise the 4 CUs for that task.

Depending on the setup it might be trickier to utilise them if you have very little compute work going on and can't transparently leverage them for other rendering tasks. Even then, though, there's probably some low hanging fruit that can be chunked off for those CUs from the main rendering pipeline.

A bit more clarity on how this is set up is needed to be able to tell how much effort will be needed to use them well for 'just' rendering work, in low compute-shader contexts. It might be nothing or might require some extra work. It would be less effort than it was to, say, use SPUs for graphics work though.

so if most games have some compute tasks (perhaps more likely given the relative weakness of the CPUs), then Durango would have to allocate some of the GPU shaders for that?
 
I think the misperception about PCs primarily being the home of console ports stems from the fact that:

a) the PC exclusives that dominate this list generally are not visual spectacles
and
b) GAF likes to talk about visual spectacles, especially when it comes to PC-console comparisons.

Personally, I think it's mostly brand loyalty and marketing. I've seen the "99% of PC games are console ports" argument a number of times in this thread and I've debunked it multiple times with facts. If you own a gaming PC you get to play a shit ton of PC exclusive games AND the definitive version of most multiplatform games.

Several PC exclusives are not graphical powerhouses, that much is true. PC developers want the largest audience possible and as such, they have to optimize their games to include laptops with weak gfx cards.

Console GAF does like to talk about visual spectacles but only when it supports its argument. "lol Torchlight 2's graphics suck!" when people want to discredit a quality exclusive, "it's not about the graphics and high-res but about the games!" when they want to take focus away from the fact that a game's PC version is clearly superior. It's kinda funny actually :)
 

SparkTR

Member
And yet no game running at a decent framerate on the card looks as good....I should know, I had that card.

Jack down the resolution to 720p, lock the framerate to 30 and disable all IQ features. You'd be surprised at what it could run at these 'console settings', not AS great as those exclusives but nowhere near the visual differential I hear on GAF in my experience. The issue is that PC games are held at higher standards for a variety of reasons, and they would look pretty crappy on a 1080p+ monitor.
 
And yet no game running at a decent framerate on the card looks as good....I should know, I had that card.

I still have a PC with that card (an AMD quad core with 4GBs of RAM) and it runs Battlefield 3 single player on high with no problems. The rest of your PC was probably bottlenecking it.

Stealth edit: Beaten
 

Pug

Member
so if most games have some compute tasks (perhaps more likely given the relative weakness of the CPUs), then Durango would have to allocate some of the GPU shaders for that?

Again we really don't know much about the CPU's in each machine. To be honest theres a ton of stuff we don't know on both machines.
 

scently

Member
It may be more or less transparent for a developer to use them for whatever they want.

Depending on the setup they might have to explicitly shuffle off certain tasks to those four CUs.

However, even if that is the case, I don't think they would be ignored in multiplat situations. I think many or most multiplat games will have some non-negligible amount of compute shader work going on and it ought to be easy to utilise the 4 CUs for that task.

Depending on the setup it might be trickier to utilise them if you have very little compute work going on and can't transparently leverage them for other rendering tasks. Even then, though, there's probably some low hanging fruit that can be chunked off for those CUs from the main rendering pipeline.

A bit more clarity on how this is set up is needed to be able to tell how much effort will be needed to use them well for 'just' rendering work, in low compute-shader contexts. It might be nothing or might require some extra work. It would be less effort than it was to, say, use SPUs for graphics work though.

DF said that these are dedicated to compute work, and vgleak says basically the same thing, adding that it will only provide a "minor" improvement went used for rendering, although "minor" in this case is an unknown quantity as we don't have all the details. EDGE said that their insider said that the ps4 is "slightly more powerful than the x720" and as such we will see a situation just like the ps360. All this coupled, with what llherre said about both system being close with somethings favouring each console, it seems something is amiss from these raw specs. And since we are speculating the possibility of Sony increasing the memory to 8gb (however improbable it seems), I think we should also consider the strong possibility that these 4CUs are really cut out exclusively for compute work and as such we are now comparing a 12 CU gpu to a 14CU gpu for graphics work. Of course even if it is so, I still think the ps4 would have an advantage in games that make extensive us of compute work as the 720 would have to get that resource from somewhere. Conversely, Epic and Crytek pushed for more RAM, which would have its own advantages too.

I won't stand here and tell you either way, as we really don't know and such conclusions are simply too early to make. These are simply raw specs and needs a developer to interpret it into proper context, but the only dev who has given us his take on it has been pressed into protecting himself lest he enters into trouble with NDA.

At the end of the day, if we are going to speculate on rumors we should discuss it all and there implications, both positive and negative.
 
The specs are good enough, everyday people will be satisfied even if it was only 3X the Xbox 360 in power.


some people are only complaining because the PS4 specs seem to be higher.

People are complaining because after 8 years Microsoft can't manage a full recognised generation leap forward, its pathetic. Outside of the Wii, this is the smallest leap forward from any major console manufacturer in memory and it took a ridiculous 8 years to come about. Its awful and people should stop sugar coating and defending such a disappointment. Time for reality to set in.

Orbis doesn't have high end specs either, its at the baseline of what you could reasonably call a full console generation ahead. Is nothing spectacular and not a officially high bar to sty and yet Microsoft still can't reach the same ballpark.
 
Personally, I think it's mostly brand loyalty and marketing. I've seen the "99% of PC games are console ports" argument a number of times in this thread and I've debunked it multiple times with facts. If you own a gaming PC you get to play a shit ton of PC exclusive games AND the definitive version of most multiplatform games.

Several PC exclusives are not graphical powerhouses, that much is true. PC developers want the largest audience possible and as such, they have to optimize their games to include laptops with weak gfx cards.

Console GAF does like to talk about visual spectacles but only when it supports its argument. "lol Torchlight 2's graphics suck!" when people want to discredit a quality exclusive, "it's not about the graphics and high-res but about the games!" when they want to take focus away from the fact that a game's PC version is clearly superior. It's kinda funny actually :)


The problem with graphics with games like Torchlight is not a technical problem, it is an astethic problem or artistic problem.

A lot of low budget PC games just can't afford to spend a lot of budget on artists.

For technical graphics issues, there are a lot of AAA games that have very poor IQ on consoles. GTA, SR3, BF3 come to mind. On thoses games better IQ helps the game a lot more. While on Torchlight, few will care.
 

Joe White

Member
It seems unlikely, but something like that would be a bigger tipping point then any hardware advantage I've seen so far based on the leaks.

Very unlikely, because even standard BC isn't certain. But that would be bigger selling point than some % difference in specs, an actual feature.
 
Was there some sort of revelation that indicated that these 4 CUs in Orbis couldn't be leveraged easily for graphical tasks and/or are different in some way?
 
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