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DF: Orbis vs Durango Spec Analysis

RoboPlato

I'd be in the dick
That BF4 leak is getting sweeter and sweeter if all of this pans out.
I was doubtful of 1080p/60fps with 64 players and advanced destruction but it seems like it might actually pan out. I'll be ecstatic if that happens. If we get that at launch just think of the possibities for the rest of the gen.
 

Reiko

Banned
I was doubtful of 1080p/60fps with 64 players and advanced destruction but it seems like it might actually pan out. I'll be ecstatic if that happens. If we get that at launch just think of the possibities for the rest of the gen.

Definitely. Should be good.
 

scently

Member
The problem is CG vs xbox is different than PS3vs360. That has leading more curious around here. Otherwise could have said PS3 vs 360 v2 if it will be repeat this gen situation.

Either way unless you chose to ignore what llherre said, my post is simply trying connect both perception in a manner that makes sense. ie at a base they are similar but in some instance one can be more capable than the other and vice versa. People always assume that ps360 are similar but that similarity depends on what you are trying to achieve. I remember reading about frostbite 2.0 engine and how the got it working by ofloading so much graphics calculation unto the Cell, they published a pdf about the optimizations the did on the ps3 to get it working that I thought "they is no way this will work on the 360" but guess waht, they later published another article detailing how they got it working on the 360. Basically they split most of what the cell was doing and allocated it to the 360 cpu's VMX128 units and the gpu. At the end of the day, they were able to get it working. My point is what llherre said and what thuway's source said make sense even though on the surface they seem to cotradict each other.

Actually on a design level they are pretty much xbox vs gcn, in that like the xbox, orbis is pretty much a straight forward design with its unified memory pool and durango is similar to gcn with it embedded RAM design alongside its normal memory pool.
 
As a Sony fan, I really really hope this advantage PS4 has is true and will show in multiplatform games. It was a bit embarrassing for the PS3 being out a year later than 360 and yet losing in that aspect.
 

Xun

Member
I always get excited for these 2 consoles, and then the realisation that both will probably lack the ability to play used games hits me.

It's depressing, and I hope it bites them in the arse.
 

nib95

Banned
As a Sony fan, I really really hope this advantage PS4 has is true and will show in multiplatform games. It was a bit embarrassing for the PS3 being out a year later than 360 and yet losing in that aspect.

Blame Nvidia. They royally screwed Sony on this one. They sold RSX as a tiger but delivered a domestic cat. Ok, slight exaggeration, but they fluffed the flop count stupendously. In the end it was Xenos that was more powerful, with Cell being the thing that carried the PS3 technically.

It's no wonder none of the big three went Nvidia this time. As unscrupulous as ever.
 

Izick

Member
I always get excited for these 2 consoles, and then the realisation that both will probably lack the ability to play used games hits me.

It's depressing, and I hope it bites them in the arse.

I said this in another thread, but the Publishers/Sony/MS are going about this all wrong. They need to try and but out places like Gamestop instead of hurting the consumer. People borrow friends, siblings, SO's, etc. games, and that can even get you more sales if there are co-op elements to them.

Why can't there just be a "not for resale" little box on the back of the game, like for DVD's?
 
Blame Nvidia. They royally screwed Sony on this one. They sold RSX as a tiger but delivered a domestic cat. Ok, slight exaggeration, but they fluffed the flop count stupendously. In the end it was Xenos that was more powerful, with Cell being the thing that carried the PS3 technically.

It's no wonder none of the big three went Nvidia this time. As unscrupulous as ever.

Kutaragi am cry

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtZ-rK349aY#t=22m18s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtZ-rK349aY#t=35m35s
 

artist

Banned
Blame Nvidia. They royally screwed Sony on this one. They sold RSX as a tiger but delivered a domestic cat. Ok, slight exaggeration, but they fluffed the flop count stupendously. In the end it was Xenos that was more powerful, with Cell being the thing that carried the PS3 technically.

It's no wonder none of the big three went Nvidia this time. As unscrupulous as ever.
I dont think Nvidia's to blame for the 1.8TFlop figure, also dont think the RSX was sold based on that metric. Sony knew the 360's 1TFlop figure :)lol) had to be trounced and probably said fair game using Nvidia's funky math.

The primary reason for not going with Nvidia was that their design contracts tend to be costlier (compared to AMD). Besides I dont think Nvidia had anything on their roadmap that involved a SoC design like AMD's APUs. Those two, I think are the primary reasons for both MS and Sony going with AMD over Nvidia.
 
EDIT- Where are you going, bgassassi?

I came back because of the Wii U GPU die thread and being "called out" in it. I waited since they were also going to get the CPU die shot and tried to get more info on the other consoles in the mean time. Since it's so close to the PS4 reveal I figured I might as well hang around for that madness, haha. The projects I left for are about ready to ramp up again so I want to get back in the mindset of focusing on them and hopefully this time for good.
 

Kleegamefan

K. LEE GAIDEN
Of course ubi and dice prefer a console where there is no risk of losing revenue from 2nd hand games...

Don't you think they like money?
 

El_Chino

Member
I came back because of the Wii U GPU die thread and being "called out" in it. I waited since they were also going to get the CPU die shot and tried to get more info on the other consoles in the mean time. Since it's so close to the PS4 reveal I figured I might as well hang around for that madness, haha. The projects I left for are about ready to ramp up again so I want to get back in the mindset of focusing on them and hopefully this time for good.

Are you a dev bgassassin?
 

James Sawyer Ford

Gold Member
bgassassin's new info basically confirms what I speculated about a month ago - that the info on Durango's CPU was sketchy (with them NOT being referred to as Jaguar cores), especially since it was widely rumored that Microsoft was teaming up with AMD to design a decently powerful CPU with 8 cores for at least a year. And that the CPU was more powerful than the one in the PS4.

However, it still does not bridge the power gap. We're looking at the following breakdown:

PS4:

1.84 TFLOP GPU (400 GFLOPs possibly used for either compute or rendering)

~100 GFLOP CPU

4GB of 176 GB/s RAM

720:

1.23 TFLOP GPU

~200 GFLOP CPU

8 GB OF 68 GB/s RAM

-------------------

PS4 still has a 500 GFLOP advantage, or 35% more potential computing power. And in any scenario, whether it be compute or graphics, PS4 comes out ahead. That is, PS4 has the ability to push 300 more GLOPS devoted to compute while also having 200 more GFLOPS devoted to graphics, and on the opposite spectrum PS4 can do 1.84 TFLOPs in pure rendering while 720 is limited to 1.23 TFLOPS.

PS4 has the power advantage and the flexibility advantage, not to mention an advantage in pure bandwidth.

I'd say the differences between system performance still look a good deal wider than PS3/360, if only because now the systems are more directly comparable.
 

Proelite

Member
bgassassin's new info basically confirms what I speculated about a month ago - that the info on Durango's CPU was sketchy (with them NOT being referred to as Jaguar cores), especially since it was widely rumored that Microsoft was teaming up with AMD to design a decently powerful CPU with 8 cores for at least a year.

However, it still does not bridge the power gap. We're looking at the following breakdown:

PS4:

1.84 TFLOP GPU (400 GFLOPs possibly used for either compute or rendering)

~100 GFLOP CPU

4GB of 176 GB/s RAM

720:

1.23 TFLOP GPU

~200 GFLOP CPU

8 GB OF 68 GB/s RAM

-------------------

PS4 still has a 500 GFLOP advantage, or 35% more potential computing power. And in any scenario, whether it be compute or graphics, PS4 comes out ahead. That is, PS4 has the ability to push 300 more GLOPS devoted to compute while also having 200 more GFLOPS devoted to graphics, and on the opposite spectrum PS4 can do 1.84 GFLOPs in pure rendering while

PS4 has the power advantage and the flexibility advantage, not to mention an advantage in pure bandwidth.

I'd say the differences between system performance still look a good deal wider than PS3/360, if only because now the systems are more directly comparable.

Well, not to dismiss your case, but Durango has an audio chip that needs 100 gflops of CPU power to emulate. Otherwise your comparison is sound but amateurish.

Devs should begin talking around E3 time and afterwards, we'll get a better sense then of the real world comparison.
 

Reiko

Banned
bgassassin's new info basically confirms what I speculated about a month ago - that the info on Durango's CPU was sketchy (with them NOT being referred to as Jaguar cores), especially since it was widely rumored that Microsoft was teaming up with AMD to design a decently powerful CPU with 8 cores for at least a year.

However, it still does not bridge the power gap. We're looking at the following breakdown:

PS4:

1.84 TFLOP GPU (400 GFLOPs possibly used for either compute or rendering)

~100 GFLOP CPU

4GB of 176 GB/s RAM

720:

1.23 TFLOP GPU

~200 GFLOP CPU

8 GB OF 68 GB/s RAM

-------------------

PS4 still has a 500 GFLOP advantage, or 35% more potential computing power. And in any scenario, whether it be compute or graphics, PS4 comes out ahead. That is, PS4 has the ability to push 300 more GLOPS devoted to compute while also having 200 more GFLOPS devoted to graphics, and on the opposite spectrum PS4 can do 1.84 TFLOPs in pure rendering while 720 is limited to 1.23 TFLOPS.

PS4 has the power advantage and the flexibility advantage, not to mention an advantage in pure bandwidth.

I'd say the differences between system performance still look a good deal wider than PS3/360, if only because now the systems are more directly comparable.

If I think we will definitely get a good idea about the power advantage in a year or so.

Well, not to dismiss your case, but Durango has an audio chip that needs 100 gflops of CPU power to emulate. Otherwise your comparison is sound but amateurish.

Devs should begin talking around E3 time and afterwards, we'll get a better sense then of the real world comparison.


Hmmmmmm...
 

Proxy

Member
Well, not to dismiss your case, but Durango has an audio chip that needs 100 gflops of CPU power to emulate. Otherwise your comparison is sound but amateurish.

Devs should begin talking around E3 time and afterwards, we'll get a better sense then of the real world comparison.

And Orbis has a dedicated audio processor, problem solved. :)
 

Reiko

Banned
And Orbis has a dedicated audio processor, problem solved. :)

While that is true. I still think there will be things that one console will be able to do while another can't do easily. And vice versa.

But like the BF3 console example stated previously, with enough talent both can be achieved on different hardware.
 
Are you a dev bgassassin?

No. After starting the first Wii U speculation thread, unexpected doors opened up that led to learning more about the other consoles. In 2011, I learned more about PS4 than Wii U, lol.

Hmmmmmm...

It is true though I didn't have a FLOPs number as a reference. I wasn't going to say it first though (directly), haha.

There's a sizable amount of power put into the audio in Xbox 3. Kinect is at least partially to blame as I understand it. See Siri-like capabilities.
 

Log4Girlz

Member
No. After starting the first Wii U speculation thread, unexpected doors opened up that led to learning more about the other consoles. In 2011, I learned more about PS4 than Wii U, lol.



It is true though I didn't have a FLOPs number as a reference. I wasn't going to say it first though (directly), haha.

There's a sizable amount of power put into the audio in Xbox. Kinect is at least partially to blame as I understand it. See Siri-like capabilities.

Are you an assassin?
 

Xamdou

Member
Sounds like MS want to make it appear that the Durango specs are much weaker than the Orbis GPU. Then when E3 arrives, they come out with the real X720 specs that matches or exceeds the PS4's. Only time will tell, can't wait for E3 :)
 

Proxy

Member
Sounds like MS want to make it appear that the Durango specs are much weaker than the Orbis GPU. Then when E3 arrives, they come out with the real X720 specs that matches or exceeds the PS3's. Only time will tell :)

Microsoft pulling a Wii U confirmed.
 
Are you an assassin?

Obviously. Just for you I'll take someone out with a wooden bullet.

Sounds like MS want to make it appear that the Durango specs are much weaker than the Orbis GPU. Then when E3 arrives, they come out with the real X720 specs that matches or exceeds the PS4's. Only time will tell, can't wait for E3 :)

More like their BoM was allocated to other areas more so than the GPU.
 

James Sawyer Ford

Gold Member
Well, not to dismiss your case, but Durango has an audio chip that needs 100 gflops of CPU power to emulate. Otherwise your comparison is sound but amateurish.

Devs should begin talking around E3 time and afterwards, we'll get a better sense then of the real world comparison.

I didn't really discuss the extra hardware bits, because the leaks seem to suggest that they're fairly comparable for both consoles. Both consoles are going to have dedicated hardware for audio/video.

While that is true. I still think there will be things that one console will be able to do while another can't do easily. And vice versa.

But like the BF3 console example stated previously, with enough talent both can be achieved on different hardware.

Well right now the only advantage I see on paper for 720 is in raw RAM count. But 720's 1.5X RAM advantage in quantity is also offset by PS4's 2.5X advantage in bandwidth. It's possible developers could leverage the extra quantity more than they would extra bandwidth, but I think that would be incredibly rare and most would prefer having a lot more bandwidth instead.

The better CPU of 720 is more than offset by the PS4's compute units. And especially if we look at the compute units as also being able to be utilized for rendering, you have a situation where the raw graphical performance of PS4 titles being 50% more theoretical performance in the scenario where compute functions aren't a huge priority.

Given these specs I can't really envision a scenario where 720 manages to perform better, except in the rare case where a developer manages to somehow leverage a larger pool of slower RAM
 

scently

Member
Well, not to dismiss your case, but Durango has an audio chip that needs 100 gflops of CPU power to emulate. Otherwise your comparison is sound but amateurish.

Devs should begin talking around E3 time and afterwards, we'll get a better sense then of the real world comparison.

Actually from what aegis said, the xb3 dev kit had 2 quad core xeons, dual threaded, one quad core was to emulate the cpu performance of the final cpu while the other way to emulate the capability of its audio dsp. And given bkillian assertion on the audio capabilities on the durango, its actually more than the 100 gflops figure you just stated.
 

Proelite

Member
And if that audio chip is just to be used by the Kinect, I don't see much of an advantage.

Nope. The multi channel echo cancellation chip is used by Kinect. The audio chip is purely motivated by lessons learned from 360 where developers used 50% of the 360's cores to mix audio.
 

Sky Chief

Member
Actually from what aegis said, the xb3 dev kit had 2 quad core xeons, dual threaded, one quad core was to emulate the cpu performance of the final cpu while the other way to emulate the capability of its audio dsp. And given bkillian assertion on the audio capabilities on the durango, its actually more than the 100 gflops figure you just stated.

What do they need all this power for in an audio chip?
 

Proxy

Member
Nope. The multi channel echo cancellation chip is used by Kinect. The audio chip is purely motivated by lessons learned from 360 where developers used 50% of the 360's cores to mix audio.

Interesting. Did developers face such problems on the PS3?

Also in what way is the audio chip in the Durango different from the one in Orbis?
 
Audio DSP is the new secret sauce?

Do you mean half of a single core or half of the cores plural? Presumably the former. The latter seems ridiculous.

How did developers fit all that audio processing into the PS3?
 
Well, not to dismiss your case, but Durango has an audio chip that needs 100 gflops of CPU power to emulate. Otherwise your comparison is sound but amateurish.

Devs should begin talking around E3 time and afterwards, we'll get a better sense then of the real world comparison.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Both feature dedicated audio processors.
 

Piggus

Member
Sounds like MS want to make it appear that the Durango specs are much weaker than the Orbis GPU. Then when E3 arrives, they come out with the real X720 specs that matches or exceeds the PS4's. Only time will tell, can't wait for E3 :)

That's extremely unlikely. Specs are very unlikely to change at this point. If what you say is true, it would suggest MS misled devs in an attempt to mislead Sony. They wouldn't do that. Both Sony and MS probably have their own sketchy ways of figuring each other out long before we get any solid rumors. Including Kinect in every box = less powerful, lower cost system unless MS is willing to take a big loss on every system or sell at a much higher price. Regardless, Kinect is the price you pay (assuming that rumor is true).
 

Proelite

Member
Interesting. Did developers face such problems on the PS3?

I guessing the work was offloaded to the SPEs on PS3, they were certainly up for the task.

I am suspecting some audio work would be also done on the some of the CUs in Orbis.

Also in what way is the audio chip in the Durango different from the one in Orbis?

If VGleaks was correct with 200 streams, that's much lower than Durangos.

I did hate to make an assumption, but I am going to assume that some Orbis games would be using parts of the 4 CUs for audio work. I think that's fair.
 

Proxy

Member
I guessing the work was offloaded to the SPEs on PS3, they were certainly up for the task.

I am suspecting audio work would be also done on the 4 CUs.

So are you saying that the dedicated audio processor in Orbis is virtually useless? Or are you saying that they'll have to augment it with some portion of 4 reserved CUs? In the case of either it seems a bit brash to proclaim because we have virtually no in depth information on any of Orbis's dedicated hardware. Unless I'm mistaken.
 

Reiko

Banned
So are you saying that the dedicated audio processor in Orbis is virtually useless? Or are you saying that they'll have to augment it with some portion of 4 reserved CUs? In the case of either it seems a bit brash to proclaim because we have virtually no in depth information on any of Orbis's dedicated hardware. Unless I'm mistaken.

I really hope Sony doesn't do that. A fucking waste of CUs.
 
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