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PS4 vs Xbox One console sizes - PS4 is small

TheD

The Detective
It's more a question about bandwidth vs latency. If you have to build your software around bandwidth you have to do a lot of caching to make sure stuff flows properly. If you have to build your software around latency, you can simply prioritize. There's no worrying about caching and fitting data into little pools of memory. It's all accessible at the same time. Volia, developers can just get shit done.

HSA / hUMA proposes to say "hey, we want to base everything on priority rather than caches." It simplifies the entire process. The ideal computer scientist architecture uses a single address space OS and avoids task switching and is effectively functional. But that's beyond the scope of this discussion. A unified memory space merely moves us to that eventuality.

Bandwidth is far more important than latency at this level.

No, bandwidth is not important past a point (with modern CPUs), about 20 odd GB/s.

They flat out can not process more data.

Thus claiming GDDR5 is an advantage over PCs is not true.

Caching by definition is automatic, you can not just decide to make programs that are insensitive to latency, you will always need a small, fast memory pool (unless people get great latency with stacking).

Sharing a memory space with a GPU does not change that.
 

Ashes

Banned
8OqHmQ0.jpg

It's like they had a chalk board of everything that was seemingly wrong with the ps3 launch.

guess somebody didn't like references to big ass grills when the ps3 was announced.

edit: @joshcryer: cheers mate. Was looking for a super close up. I can now see the power button/eject button.

anyone know whether hard drives are easy to take out/put in?
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
I just took nib's numbers for the size, honest guv!

changed now - used 40% as a neater number, close enough IMO and what's 1% between friends? :)



+ No new DRM
+ Allows used games
+ No mandatory online check in
+ No forced camera sensor
+ Region free
+ No external power brick
+ Upgradeable hard drive
+ 40% smaller
+ 20% less expensive
+ 50%+ more powerful
+ 250%+ more memory bandwidth
+ 40% more ram available for games
+ Easier to develop for
+ Self publishing for Indies
 

cartridge

Banned
@TheD

How is GDDR5 not useful to the CPU? Are you developing for PS4?

Also, how do you know the 8 cores are slow?

Also, how is the bandwidth not important beyond 17GB/s? Last I checked the CPU is not the only component in the PS4. Do you think that because the CPU processes at a certain speed, that information doesn't have to physically travel between components?
 

joshcryer

it's ok, you're all right now
No, bandwidth is not important past a point (with modern CPUs), about 20 odd GB/s.

They flat out can not process more data.

Sharing a memory space with a GPU does not change that.

Thus claiming GDDR5 is an advantage over PCs is not true.

Your original edit of 17 GB/s is what AMD is using and I agree, CPU-side it's unimportant. What's important is you're not having to shuffle data into small caches one chunk at a time. The CPU side of the APU can go about its business doing AI and other software stuff (sound events, game logic), while the GPU side of the APU can go about its business shuffling huge amounts of data quickly and effortlessly.

In normal PC architecture you have two separate environments where the CPU has to wait, and vice versa, the GPU has to patiently access the memory pool. It's arguably the biggest bottleneck in the system. Sure, with GPUs that have massive amounts of high bandwidth RAM it's not noticeable (so next gen PCs will dominate a PS4), you're still offloading that data to the GPU+GPURAM process. That is a step that the XB1 will have to do that the PS4 doesn't give a crap about. It's all there, all available at the lowest level.

The highest end PCs will definitely be superior to PS4 but a unified memory architecture (GDDR5 or better) will remove the cache complications that PC architecture has had to deal with for a long time.

I think ease of software development is superior than brute force calculation ability.

mrklaw, it's 38% smaller. 2% discrepancy is enough to discredit you. If you want to be a fanboy and slant the numbers in your favor just say, "+ XB1 is 65% larger."
 
anyone know whether hard drives are easy to take out/put in?

They haven't released a shot of the underside of the PS4 yet, which is presumably where the HDD compartment will be. No word on whether it'll have one of those diabolical, un-turnable blue screws that kept the original PS3's hard drive in :p
 

Ashes

Banned
Let's play devil's advocate:

xbone

+ discs needed only once.
+ cable run/through
+ motion control standard
+ voice activation standard



Ps. You forgot bluetooth enabled for Ps4. xbox doesn't have it.
 

TheD

The Detective
How is GDDR5 not useful to the CPU? Are you developing for PS4?

Also, how do you know the 8 cores are slow?

Also, how is the bandwidth not important beyond 17GB/s? Last I checked the PS4 is more than just one component.


Because CPUs have been proven not to need huge amounts of bandwidth!

The 8 CPU cores are jaguar cores, they are the replacement for bobcat (a netbook and low power processor). AMD themselves have said that they are about 15% clock for clock faster than bobcat (which are not fast to start with) they have also been benchmarked and are quite slow.

Your original edit of 17 GB/s is what AMD is using and I agree, CPU-side it's unimportant. What's important is you're not having to shuffle data into small caches one chunk at a time. The CPU side of the APU can go about its business doing AI and other software stuff (sound events, game logic), while the GPU side of the APU can go about its business shuffling huge amounts of data quickly and effortlessly.

In normal PC architecture you have two separate environments where the CPU has to wait, and vice versa, the GPU has to patiently access the memory pool. It's arguably the biggest bottleneck in the system. Sure, with GPUs that have massive amounts of high bandwidth RAM it's not noticeable (so next gen PCs will dominate a PS4), you're still offloading that data to the GPU+GPURAM process. That is a step that the XB1 will have to do that the PS4 doesn't give a crap about. It's all there, all available at the lowest level.

The highest end PCs will definitely be superior to PS4 but a unified memory architecture (GDDR5 or better) will remove the cache complications that PC architecture has had to deal with for a long time.

I think ease of software development is superior than brute force calculation ability.

What you describe are not cache related problems.
 

cartridge

Banned
Because CPUs have been proven not to need huge amounts of bandwidth!

The 8 CPU cores are jaguar cores, they have been benchmarked and are slow, that is a fact!

I will say again. The CPU is ONE of many components. Do you know how electronics work? Do you know the system bandwidth should not be dictated by only what the CPU can process?

Jaguar is a code name for an entire line of CPUs. Do you have a benchmark for the CPU in the PS4?
 

Fafalada

Fafracer forever
TheD said:
No, bandwidth is not important past a point (with modern CPUs), about 20 odd GB/s.
It is when you have multiple devices contending for the same bus.
But the whole notion of comparing to PC as some unified platform is nonsense - at best you're trying to measure against an endlessly moving target, at worst you're comparing to hundreds of varying architectures with different considerations to performance. There's nothing there worth of note, other than acknowledging that you can build one which has higher absolute numbers on every individual component.
The unfortunate part being that software for it will be accordingly (un)optimized.
 
Not sure if posted and sorry no pics, but for comparison to the PS3 slim (not super slim, just the Slim model):

PS3 Slim = 11.42 x 2.56 x 11.42 inches
PS4 (tentatively, not including the protrusion) = 10.83 x 2.09 x 12.01 inches

Weight of PS3 Slim = 7.7lbs (3.49kg)
Weight of PS4 = 6.17lbs (2.8kg)
 

Ashes

Banned
PS4 is 30.5cm and the fat 360 is 25.8 in length how come the PS4 is smaller both ways? It's confusing. I have to say they look similar in size to me going by the pictures of the guys holding them.

Shouldn't you be measuring the width? 29vs30
 

TheD

The Detective
I will say again. The CPU is ONE of many components. Do you know how electronics work? Do you know the system bandwidth should not be dictated by only what the CPU can process?

Jaguar is a code name for an entire line of CPUs. Do you have a benchmark for the CPU in the PS4?

It does not matter that the CPU is only part of the system, you tried to brag about it!

I never said the bandwidth would not help a GPU (in fact, that is what I have said in just about every PS4 vs Xbone thread!), just that it will not help a CPU!

Jaguar is a code name for a microarchecture, all jaguar cores are only slightly different from each other.
 

TheD

The Detective
It is when you have multiple devices contending for the same bus.
But the whole notion of comparing to PC as some unified platform is nonsense - at best you're trying to measure against an endlessly moving target, at worst you're comparing to hundreds of varying architectures with different considerations to performance. There's nothing there worth of note, other than acknowledging that you can build one which has higher absolute numbers on every individual component.
The unfortunate part being that software for it will be accordingly (un)optimized.

I am talking about dedicated CPU bandwidth.
Of course you need more if you are sharing.
 

cartridge

Banned
It does not matter that the CPU is only part of the system, you tried to brag about it!

I never said the bandwidth would not help a GPU (in fact, that is what I have said in just about every PS4 vs Xbone thread!), just that it will not help a CPU!

Jaguar is a code name for a microarchecture, all jaguar cores are only slightly different from each other.

I was bragged about nothing. You, however, claimed the PS4's specs were "anemic"

The bandwidth actually does help the CPU, indirectly.

So you're telling me you know, for a fact, the cores in the PS4 are "slow," because apparently you are also an engineer and know the limitations of the microarchitecture you had no part in designing?
 

Fafalada

Fafracer forever
TheD said:
I am talking about dedicated CPU bandwidth.
Well you made the argument that higher peak-bandwith is not a net-gain for CPU performance. Which is only true in isolated scenarios where CPU has the bus all to itself - ie. never in real world.
There's no single-answer to how often CPU will be bus-starved, but I can pretty much guarantee it will happen sometimes with all 8 cores doing stuff, on both consoles.

The rest of the rant(sorry about that) was in response to debating whether there's a benefit relative to PC "architecture" - which as I noted already, doesn't actually exist in a concrete form.
 

joshcryer

it's ok, you're all right now
As promised, to scale comparisons of the three next gen consoles.

PS3XboxOneWiiUDimensionsTop-2.png~original


PS3XboxOneWiiUDimensionsFrontSML.png~original

Flawless. This is perfect. Now you see what I mean about PS4 being "longer" length-wise (or depth or however you want to state it). It's still thinner overall, but there's where the dimension comparison gets confusing. The whole illusion of the PS4 being slimmer doesn't help. Thanks for making this, I think it's the definitive version. :)
 

serial number, power requirements, model number etc.


both machines look a lot nicer than the first versions of the ps3 & the xb360. i really like the xbox one's aesthetics, it's a shame it's quite large. hopefully the smaller size doesn't inhibit the ps4's ability to vent heat & keep noise levels down.
 

TheD

The Detective
I was bragged about nothing. You, however, claimed the PS4's specs were "anemic"

The bandwidth actually does help the CPU, indirectly.

So you're telling me you know, for a fact, the cores in the PS4 are "slow," because apparently you are also an engineer and know the limitations of the microarchitecture you had no part in designing?

I did not say the PS4 specs were anemic!
That was someone else you fool!

You claimed that the GDDR5 was a plus over PCs, that is not true!

I do not need to be a damn engineer to tell you Jaguar is slow, we have this thing called benchmarks (and data on it's speed VS bobcat from AMD!)

Get over it.

Well you made the argument that higher peak-bandwith is not a net-gain for CPU performance. Which is only true in isolated scenarios where CPU has the bus all to itself - ie. never in real world.
There's no single-answer to how often CPU will be bus-starved, but I can pretty much guarantee it will happen sometimes with all 8 cores doing stuff, on both consoles.

The rest of the rant(sorry about that) was in response to debating whether there's a benefit relative to PC "architecture" - which as I noted already, doesn't actually exist in a concrete form.

No, I said that having the bandwidth of GDDR5 for a CPU is not an advantage over a PC CPU having it's own bus, even when the max bandwidth is a fair bit lower.
 

Thoraxes

Member
Oh man, I hope those pics in here of the DS4 on a charging stand are true.

I will buy the shit out of official charging docks.
 

Fafalada

Fafracer forever
TheD said:
No, I said that having the bandwidth of GDDR5 for a CPU is not an advantage over a PC CPU having it's own bus, even when the max bandwidth is a fair bit lower.
Ok fair enough - I should have read further back in the thread :p
I do think when it comes to operations exchanging data with GPU (or even other subsystems), PCs are generally at a considerable disadvantage (relatively speaking) but I'll grant you that's not so much due to memory speeds alone.
 
I don't care about size. I care about heat and noise. Noisy blu-ray drives and a hissing spinning fan.


The PS4 seems small. Wonder if it has an external PSU. Seems like it would generate A LOT of heat with that GPU.
 

televator

Member
Not sure if posted and sorry no pics, but for comparison to the PS3 slim (not super slim, just the Slim model):

PS3 Slim = 11.42 x 2.56 x 11.42 inches
PS4 (tentatively, not including the protrusion) = 10.83 x 2.09 x 12.01 inches

Weight of PS3 Slim = 7.7lbs (3.49kg)
Weight of PS4 = 6.17lbs (2.8kg)

735.gif


I just have to laugh at how absurdly amazing these PS4 specs are compared to to the PS3 slim.
 

Jonsend

Member
To me the PS4 looks higher quality than any of the Playstation consoles before it. The texture and tone of the materials, the finish, the gloss, the subtle hints of colour etc. Does not look like it is made cheaply, where previously the consoles may have looked sexy in certain releases, they often still looked a tad cheap or less premium. Not the case for the PS4.

Oh my god, it even has a watermark!
 

omonimo

Banned
I just took nib's numbers for the size, honest guv!

changed now - used 40% as a neater number, close enough IMO and what's 1% between friends? :)



+ No new DRM
+ Allows used games
+ No mandatory online check in
+ No forced camera sensor
+ Region free
+ No external power brick
+ Upgradeable hard drive
+ 40% smaller
+ 20% less expensive
+ 50%+ more powerful
+ 250%+ more memory bandwidth
+ 40% more ram available for games
+ Easier to develop for
+ Self publishing for Indies
+ online to pay

Fixed.
 
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