PS4 - What to expect when you're expecting?

[Bm4n]

Well, as I see that this is very dead, how about we discuss a bit about the new PS4 and what's coming for these holidays. Lately, I'm tired of so much movement in the graphics market, few interesting titles for PC, and the elimination of the second-hand market... I almost only play on console.

What I would highlight the most is that they have finally abandoned the retrograde idea of only games, and have opened up to social networks and multimedia (perhaps it was Xbox's best asset), and the ability to instantly share a game on youtube or invite anyone to join the game or even let them take control. These are more PC things that seem like they are going to stop being so.

Also, I think they did well in copying the 3D camera from Xbox but along with the move tracking that is extremely precise (and in shooters it's quite enjoyable). I don't know if they will do something about the voice issue, or how that Vita-style touch panel will work, but it's clear that they intend to provide a more complete experience (WiiU touch, Kinect, Move).

In terms of architecture, I find it tremendously interesting that they finally adopt a more generalist CPU and, in addition to AMD, is this parallel race that AMD started a few years ago bearing fruit? And the RAM issue is interesting, it seems that they will use GDDR5 versus DDR3 in Xbox, a blunder by Microsoft or will they rectify?

[Wargreymon]

The problem is that the jump doesn't look like the one given by the ps3 and the xbox 360, it's a bit poor jump and in the case of the CPU the change I don't know if it will be too big, I think it will be quite modest. It must also be said that programming a game to use 8 threads must not be easy either.

Crytek already complained that the change was very small compared to what they expected, because as these consoles switch to a resolution of 1080p30 that jump in terms of GPU power is little.

[Bm4n]

We still don't know the architecture of the GPU+CPU but AMD has long had the idea that both work together and lately they have been performing well in graphics and at a good price. Cell is a great processor completely underutilized, I think that's going to be the big difference with the new ones because they are going to be a much easier architecture to use and besides it's nothing new for the engines that are made thinking about these new consoles not to take advantage of it.

The graphic change seems notable obviously we didn't go from 480 to 720 (it's triple the pixels) which was quite a shock, we went from 720 to 1080 (it's just over double) but we must not forget that this is not a PC, you always get much better performance out of a console because you know you have the same hardware for at least 5 years. What was left scarce in this generation in my opinion was the graphic memory and it seems that this won't happen with this one, that is, an 8-core CPU with a high-end GPU and 8GB of DDR5 I think is not being left short in capabilities, not like when the PS3 came out that we all thought that amount of RAM was scarce for the time.

On a PC "nobody" worries about optimizing to the max, some program with a preference for nvidia others ati, but the rest of the machine practically seems to not matter much. The evolution seems normal, in the presentation they gave some data on polygons and such, in the end as long as it doesn't stay poor (as happens with Wii) in consoles it's usually exploited pretty well. Of course making a game visually good doesn't depend mostly on polygons, and in the matter of filters and textures it seems that there will be a very considerable advance.

PD. And for Crytek I think anything is little, they have always been exaggerators.

[Wargreymon]

We know about it, the CPU is two Jaguar architecture CPUs stuck together and communicating via system bus, and the GPU is GCN architecture with 18CUs, something in between an HD7770 and an HD7850. It only has 8 ROPs, so I don't know if they will be able to show off much with filters, almost all desktop GPUs have 24 or 32, so in that sense it's a pretty big cut. I'm sorry they didn't put more tessellation capacity (They still only have 2 engines, like the desktop GCNs), but well, they do have some capacity for it. In the case of the XBOX Next, it seems that the GPU is poorer, it has 768 ALUs and 4 ROPs, but it has a complete redesign of the internal caches (Although this may also have the PS4) and a high-speed ESRAM memory like the one that comes with the current XBOX but with more capacity, so in the end I don't know how this can be left, because a priori the ps4 has more brute force but the XBOX Next has interesting details.

[Bm4n]

I doubt that they will be closed specifications, you never know, I imagine it will be based on the prototypes but we will see the sales model. And yes, tessellation I also don't think it will be very useful.

[Wargreymon]

In theory they are closed, but if at the last moment they decide to increase the GPU, the CPU or both, I won't complain ;D.

[Bm4n]

At first, I was under the impression that it was a weak GPU. It seems to be in the production process, so the components are what they are. The GPU is supposed to deliver 1.8 - 1.9 TFlops (HD7850-7870), but I doubt whether it can really be as good as one of those graphics cards and whether that pipeline can handle the performance. And remember, bigger isn't always better... or so they say. So we'll have to wait and see it in action, because since it's a somewhat different architecture, I'm not sure if it's correct to compare it to laptop or desktop graphics cards: Orbis GPU - Compute and pipelines - Besides, there are divided opinions on the matter. Remember that the CPUs are low-power and there are two points that I find very interesting: 1- The production cost is much lower, so we can expect reasonable prices. 2- Low power consumption, not thinking about the environment but what it means: less noise, smaller size and fewer cooling problems. I mean, if something as big as the first PS3 comes out, I'm not buying it, no matter what...