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VGLeaks Durango specs: x64 8-core CPU @1.6GHz, 8GB DDR3 + 32MB ESRAM, 50GB 6x BD...

JAYSIMPLE

Banned
To this day I can't get over how horrible the ps3 os is. It's a gamers nightmare. Especially an older gamer with not as much time on their hands. It's upsetting :(


I think ms os far exceeds it. It's far from perfect tho. I'm just up in the air about next gen consoles :/ over pc
 

Boss Man

Member
To this day I can't get over how horrible the ps3 os is. It's a gamers nightmare. Especially an older gamer with not as much time on their hands. It's upsetting :(
Huh? I wouldn't call the XMB a grand triumph of OS design or anything, but I wouldn't call it 'bad' either. It's pretty darn straight-forward.

Maybe too extensive? I mean, it's sort of designed so that every single thing is only 1-2 levels away- maybe to a fault. I don't see how it could be considered time consuming though.
 

JAYSIMPLE

Banned
What about it?


Just the constant updates, slow downloading, slow store. I love ps plus. Great idea, but I download a game. Think ill have a blast then there's an update, we'll multiple of a few hundred megs each and I'm sat there, then my gaming time is up :(


Actually I agree about the xmb. I like it. I'm a techie so I love tinkering with things and having the options. It's just the store/patch process etc I don't like. I never feel connected to friends on psn either
 

PSGames

Junior Member
This might be a really stupid question but if MS needed 8GBs of RAM so bad but was concerned about bandwidth why not go with split memory that both the CPU and GPU can access. Say 6GBs of ddr3 and 2GBs of gddr5? Gddr5 has greater bandwidth than the esram they are supposedly using anyway plus they would have much more to play with.
 

kitch9

Banned
To this day I can't get over how horrible the ps3 os is. It's a gamers nightmare. Especially an older gamer with not as much time on their hands. It's upsetting :(


I think ms os far exceeds it. It's far from perfect tho. I'm just up in the air about next gen consoles :/ over pc

WTF are you on about?

Scroll to game, play game.....Fucking gamers nightmare that, oh the humanity!
 

rdrr gnr

Member
Just the constant updates, slow downloading, slow store. I love ps plus. Great idea, but I download a game. Think ill have a blast then there's an update, we'll multiple of a few hundred megs each and I'm sat there, then my gaming time is up :(
Yeah, I can understand some of that. The new store is insultingly slow. But I think most of this will be remedied with the PS4. Can't you do background updates and patches via PS+? That way you have your time.
 

JAYSIMPLE

Banned
WTF are you on about?

Scroll to game, play game.....Fucking gamers nightmare that, oh the humanity!


I mean how the os handles updates, it's store etc, it all seems like separate executables it has to load into, like the vita, they all have to launch things, that take time, and the patching process. Sorry if I implied the entire os is how to launch a game


Muse, yeh a lot of stuff will auto update, that's awesome. It's just things that I will buy there and then. Like everybody's golf complete. God of war beta, psn plus games. I'll think I'll play that tonight, still forgetting after 6 years it doesn't download the latest version and I'm sat there through hundreds of megs of updates. I think the auto update only does recently played games?
 
WTF are you on about?

Scroll to game, play game.....Fucking gamers nightmare that, oh the humanity!

Download game. Wait forever for it to install. Load store, wait 30 seconds for store to load. System software that appears to need a complete download and reinstall to work rather than patching. Game updates that take forever. Perhaps that's what he's referring to. Also, unless I just didn't notice they fixed it, you can't watch a bluray and download a game at the same time. The PS3 OS isn't Nintendo-bad, but it's not in the same league as the 360 OS.
 

Boss Man

Member
Well PSN download speeds are very weird and there's no telling there. You'd expect PSN to improve though.

But as for the OS issues, I'm pretty sure the stuff you mentioned is very clearly an issue of memory limitations- which will definitely be remedied in the new system. I sincerely doubt you'll have 'separate executables' (ie, it should be able to do this stuff in the background).
 
Well PSN download speeds are very weird and there's no telling there.

But as for the OS issues, I'm pretty sure the stuff you mentioned is very clearly an issue of memory limitations- which will definitely be remedied in the new system. I sincerely doubt you'll have 'separate executables' (ie, it should be able to do this stuff in the background).

I doubt PSN download speeds are a function of the OS. I always had horrible speeds from PSN, which is one of many reasons I used the 360 as my main this gen. I have one of the new slimmer slim PS3s and my PSN download speed problem is non-existant. Nothing else changed, just the new slim behaving differently than the old model.
 

Boss Man

Member
I doubt PSN download speeds are a function of the OS. I always had horrible speeds from PSN, which is one of many reasons I used the 360 as my main this gen. I have one of the new slimmer slim PS3s and my PSN download speed problem is non-existant. Nothing else changed, just the new slim behaving differently than the old model.
Oh right it's definitely not, that's what I meant to imply.

If there's one single thing going on, it's that the PS3's WiFi is weak (maybe different in that new model? idk). But people running wired connections seem to run into issues randomly as well, and there seems like there might be a weird throttling issue that occurs between PSN and PS3s specifically. It looks almost like something an ISP would do and makes no sense to me.
 
Oh right it's definitely not, that's what I meant to imply.

If there's one single thing going on, it's that the PS3's WiFi is weak (maybe different in that new model? idk). But people running wired connections seem to run into issues randomly as well, and there seems like there might be a weird throttling issue that occurs between PSN and PS3s specifically. It looks almost like something an ISP would do and makes no sense to me.

With my PS3 Fat and the first Slim it didn't matter if I was wired or wireless, it did everything poorly. Netflix had issues hitting HD quality and maintaining it, NFL Sunday Ticket was terrible, as was Amazon. With the new one, no problem. So you're probably right that it's something with their hardware. Also I never have had a speed issue on a Vita. Weird stuff.
 

rdrr gnr

Member
I mean how the os handles updates, it's store etc, it all seems like separate executables it has to load into, like the vita, they all have to launch things, that take time, and the patching process. Sorry if I implied the entire os is how to launch a game


Muse, yeh a lot of stuff will auto update, that's awesome. It's just things that I will buy there and then. Like everybody's golf complete. God of war beta, psn plus games. I'll think I'll play that tonight, still forgetting after 6 years it doesn't download the latest version and I'm sat there through hundreds of megs of updates. I think the auto update only does recently played games?
I've got some bad news.
 

Jack_AG

Banned
Windows 8 is the fastest and most efficient OS yet and Windows Phone follows a similar philosophy on the mobile end.

And if we're only talking about Developer tools then this post is downright stupid.

A) I hope you are comparing Win8 only to itself and no other OS in existence... because if so... wow... just... wow. I can throw several distros of Linux and sit with less than HALF the resource consumption at idle and a rather large margin of performance improvement under identical conditions on the same box... and do it every day right here... please please please tell me you are joking bro...

B) Also no on their phone.

C) Again you don't pay attention to anything. I wouldn't call Sony tools better - but from what my little friends tell me - they are almost on par with how great they are as of late. Some devs even say more so - some say less.

Just sayin bro - it's not 2006 anymore - time to catch up on current events.
 
A) I hope you are comparing Win8 only to itself and no other OS in existence... because if so... wow... just... wow. I can throw several distros of Linux and sit with less than HALF the resource consumption at idle and a rather large margin of performance improvement under identical conditions on the same box... and do it every day right here... please please please tell me you are joking bro...

B) Also no on their phone.

C) Again you don't pay attention to anything. I wouldn't call Sony tools better - but from what my little friends tell me - they are almost on par with how great they are as of late. Some devs even say more so - some say less.

Just sayin bro - it's not 2006 anymore - time to catch up on current events.

I have used a lot of Linux distros (even on server side) and none are faster than Windows 8. The fast boot is crazy fast.
 

Jack_AG

Banned
I have used a lot of Linux distros (even on server side) and none are faster than Windows 8. The fast boot is crazy fast.

I don't see a loading screen - just my bios posting then poof - i'm at a login screen. Depends on the distro tho - some are kinda meh on the initial load. Do you often use your computer while its booting? Curious if that matters in the grand scheme of running applications... ?

Well - on my rig pick Mint, Arch, Fedora - all are faster than Win8 when I had it installed for a brief moment in time before reverting to Win7.

But still - a little OT so... not going on about this much further.
 
It's all relative. What customized or esoteric means for next-gen is almost unrecognizable from what it meant for this gen. You don't have a multi-billion dollar custom architecture that causes headaches.

I get what your saying when it comes to comparing it to the current gen. That still doesn't answer my question about how Durango is more complex than Orbis? Don't the rumors point to it being the other way around.

Regarding PSN and slow downloads I've never really had a problem. Downloads always seem to start out slow, but then the last 40% goes by in a few seconds.

JAYSIMPLE I don't understand how your complaining about updates if you have PS+? As long as you have the feature turned on, it will do the updates overnight so it's always ready to go when your ready to game. One thing I think Sony should do though for DL titles is always have the most updated file on the server when you download it the first time. They should include all the updates.
 
another intriguing erp crosspost from b3d

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1697943&postcount=568

There are ways the rumored Durango design could offset the difference in CU's on the currently rumored Orbis design.

We know very little about the SRAM pool, AFAICS it's there because of the low latency access from the GPU, but it could also be multi-ported which would increase the total effective bandwidth for the system.

It's my understanding that the ESRAM is Durango is not intended to be used like the EDRAM in 360, rather in most cases the primary target buffer will be in DDR3 memory, and the data reads will be from the ESRAM.

Depending on how much better the latency of the ESRAM is that could lead the the CU's getting better utilization.

All of that depends on being able to stream textures and other input data EFFICIENTLY through ESRAM, I don't believe this is easy to do, and it's probably why the MS docs apparently devote a lot of time to the Data Move Engines.

I wouldn't even like to posit a guess as to how much sourcing data in SRAM would actually help in efficiency, a lot depends on how much shaders are memory vs ALU limited both now and in the future, and if you can schedule the data moves efficiently.

There are other pieces to this, I'd imagine you render shadows to ESRAM directly, but if modern engines are predominantly deferred, what do you do with the first pass, can you send some of the MRT's to DDR3 and some to ESRAM?

In the end if the leak is accurate and I believe the Durango leak at least probably is, then optimizing the usage of the ESRAM is going to be a lot of rope for developers to hang themselves with.

dang, i'm not sure i like the sound of that last bit lol.

at a glance seems almost a bit more like ps3, could be difficult but perhaps a lot of power to be tapped by the brave few.

and another

What are the cases where cache misses are common ?


A lot of compute jobs.
Any Shader with unpredictable access.
Any Shader with enough inputs that the cache can't handle it.
Any unswizzled input

My guess would be that it's designed the way it is for a reason, MS do a lot of measurement of 360 titles and GPU utilization, and I'd guess that they found that a lot of the compute resources were under utilized because of data stalls.
There isn't much you can do on a PC to fix this, you need API support for something like a fast memory pool, all you can really do on a PC is increase the size of register pools to increase the number of threads in flight and increase the caches, and that might be more expensive for a given performance gain than throwing more CU's ar the problem.

As I said I wouldn't like to posit how much CU's are underutilized in the average modern renderer because of data stalls. If I were guessing I would GUESS it is a significant amount.
I do know it's stupidly easy to write a compute job that you think will run 100x faster than your trivial CPU solution, benchmark it and discover it's actually slower, because the ALU's are all sitting there waiting for data. It's one of the reasons I've been saying that FLOPS are not a useful performance metric.

And as I said before the danger with the solution MS has come up with is you need to schedule moves of source data to the fast RAM, that eats bandwidth, and if you can't get it there fast enough the entire rendering pipeline stalls.

I also have questions as to how deferred renderers are best handled with such a small fast memory pool. It wouldn't be unusual for a deferred renderer to write 28 bytes/pixel, and that won't fit in 32MB at 1080P. Can you split the MRT's to different pools? Does MS provide guidance for devs trying to do this?

To me it's an interesting approach, How effective it is will depend on how ALU bound vs Data bound shaders are in modern games, I just haven't looked at enough data or spoken to anyone who has to have a good idea.
 

Jack_AG

Banned
another intriguing erp crosspost from b3d

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1697943&postcount=568



dang, i'm not sure i like the sound of that last bit lol.

at a glance seems almost a bit more like ps3, could be difficult but perhaps a lot of power to be tapped by the brave few.

Will it matter to you in the end? Will it sway your decision to buy Durango if true? I'm honestly curious. For me I'm going with Orbis since I don't like paywalls and have already built up a nice collection of PSN titles that will (allegedly) transfer over with BC and I'm paying no mind to which next-gen console will have more "power".

It's going to be a dead heat with 3rd parties so your real concern is exclusives and whether or not you have a library to bring over to the next console.

But... why the fuck am I even talking about this in a speculation thread since it defeats the purpose, anyhow... man I'm fucking dense late at night (most of the time, actually).
 

Proxy

Member
Oh right it's definitely not, that's what I meant to imply.

If there's one single thing going on, it's that the PS3's WiFi is weak (maybe different in that new model? idk). But people running wired connections seem to run into issues randomly as well, and there seems like there might be a weird throttling issue that occurs between PSN and PS3s specifically. It looks almost like something an ISP would do and makes no sense to me.

It's indeed probably the WiFi chip. The download speeds on the Vita are certainly faster.
 
Will it matter to you in the end? Will it sway your decision to buy Durango if true? I'm honestly curious. For me I'm going with Orbis since I don't like paywalls and have already built up a nice collection of PSN titles that will (allegedly) transfer over with BC and I'm paying no mind to which next-gen console will have more "power".

It's going to be a dead heat with 3rd parties so your real concern is exclusives and whether or not you have a library to bring over to the next console.

i like the ms franchises, gears and halo. so i'll have to get a durango.

but in the end i'm a gfx whore, if ps4 turns up significantly better, yes i will have to consider it.

most likely if thats the case i would own both. i cant really see a scenario where i dont own the durango. but if the ps4 is good enough then basically i will be forced to buy it too.

i also am of the opinion gfx determines market winners, so i think if ps4 is way better, then eventually durango could be in trouble and stop getting games. just as for example i am sure the wii u will.

i just hate the dual shock, it makes the ps3 unfun for me, so i hope sony's alleged new controller is good.
 
i like the ms franchises, gears and halo. so i'll have to get a durango.

but in the end i'm a gfx whore, if ps4 turns up significantly better, yes i will have to consider it.

most likely if thats the case i would own both. i cant really see a scenario where i dont own the durango. but if the ps4 is good enough then basically i will be forced to buy it too.

i also am of the opinion gfx determines market winners, so i think if ps4 is way better, then eventually durango could be in trouble and stop getting games. just as for example i am sure the wii u will.

i just hate the dual shock, it makes the ps3 unfun for me, so i hope sony's alleged new controller is good.

I'm with you, I really want that MS make a great console with great games because I like Xbox game more than PS games, but there are things that looks suspicious and I'm worry about MS business choices.
 
In my opinion the big question is this: With the recently quoted focus on profitability, did Microsoft skimp on pure gaming horsepower in order to both include Kinect/media services and make a profit from day 1? And if so, how will that affect Durango in the long run?
 

Jack_AG

Banned
I'm with you, I really want that MS make a great console with great games because I like Xbox game more than PS games, but there are things that looks suspicious and I'm worry about MS business choices.

Don't be. I think they have been "off" lately but I cannot see it affecting their gaming side when it comes to XBOX. They were on the money this gen with the 360 and what gamers really wanted in a product whereas Sony was completely out of touch. While Sony did pull back into the game, MS still manages to stay ahead of the curve.

Who knows what new features they will throw in the new box that the PS4 won't have. I'm quite sure they have some feature tricks up their sleeves. They may be re-aligning but I don't think they will screw it up and if they do - they won't be Sony circa 2006 bad so I wouldn't worry, IMO.
 
In my opinion the big question is this: With the recently quoted focus on profitability, did Microsoft skimp on pure gaming horsepower in order to both include Kinect/media services and make a profit from day 1? And if so, how will that affect Durango in the long run?

Bingo!

I don't want Durango being 1/3 less gaming machine (including power) than PS4 thanks to Kinect and set-top box things.

Don't be. I think they have been "off" lately but I cannot see it affecting their gaming side when it comes to XBOX. They were on the money this gen with the 360 and what gamers really wanted in a product whereas Sony was completely out of touch. While Sony did pull back into the game, MS still manages to stay ahead of the curve.

Who knows what new features they will throw in the new box that the PS4 won't have. I'm quite sure they have some feature tricks up their sleeves. They may be re-aligning but I don't think they will screw it up and if they do - they won't be Sony circa 2006 bad so I wouldn't worry, IMO.

I have some hopes, but MS is not helping xD
 

Reiko

Banned
In my opinion the big question is this: With the recently quoted focus on profitability, did Microsoft skimp on pure gaming horsepower in order to both include Kinect/media services and make a profit from day 1? And if so, how will that affect Durango in the long run?

Both companies are focusing on profitability. I would actually say Sony more so than MS for a very good reason. But there's also a shift in business focus, due to changes in the market. Microsoft and Sony adjusted accordingly.

But I really don't think MS is purposely gimping their product. If the rumors are true, there is a method to this madness. You just can't get by throwing a high end GPU in a box and calling it a day.

I mean a card like this would be ludicrous for a console.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=509459
 

derFeef

Member
In my opinion the big question is this: With the recently quoted focus on profitability, did Microsoft skimp on pure gaming horsepower in order to both include Kinect/media services and make a profit from day 1? And if so, how will that affect Durango in the long run?

It makes no sense making a lewss poweful machine because of those two. You can have both.
 

Mascot

Member
i just hate the dual shock, it makes the ps3 unfun for me, so i hope sony's alleged new controller is good.

This could be the deciding factor for me. If Sony release yet another unergonomic clusterfuck of a controller then I won't even entertain the thought of a PS4.
 

Proelite

Member
In my opinion the big question is this: With the recently quoted focus on profitability, did Microsoft skimp on pure gaming horsepower in order to both include Kinect/media services and make a profit from day 1? And if so, how will that affect Durango in the long run?

Not day 1. The console WILL be sold at loss.

They want profitability in the same fiscal year.
 
i also am of the opinion gfx determines market winners

How can you have an opinion that graphics determines the market winner when there has been plenty of history to the contrary? You can't just ignore facts (or at least you shouldn't). There are entirely too many people trying to form opinions about these consoles right now, why? You can't buy them, nor will you be able to anytime soon. There will be plenty of time to evaluate the actual components of these systems as well as what tricks they have up their sleeves to be able to sit back and make an informed decision as to what is best for you. This thread is just like a bunch of dogs chasing their tails, geeze. Discuss the leaks and all that jazz, but all these definitive opinions about consoles that the vast majority of you know close to nothing about (as far as confirmed facts) is pretty ridiculous
 

Reiko

Banned
How can you have an opinion that graphics determines the market winner when there has been plenty of history to the contrary? You can't just ignore facts (or at least you shouldn't)

It sure helped the PS2 over Dreamcast.

Not so much for the original Xbox. PS2 won over developers and marketshare.
 

milsorgen

Banned
This might be a really stupid question but if MS needed 8GBs of RAM so bad but was concerned about bandwidth why not go with split memory that both the CPU and GPU can access. Say 6GBs of ddr3 and 2GBs of gddr5? Gddr5 has greater bandwidth than the esram they are supposedly using anyway plus they would have much more to play with.

It's hard to gauge what you'll want to do 5 years from now or the programming techniques that will have improved. I'd say the pooled memory is a good way to hedge your bets.
 
In my opinion the big question is this: With the recently quoted focus on profitability, did Microsoft skimp on pure gaming horsepower in order to both include Kinect/media services and make a profit from day 1? And if so, how will that affect Durango in the long run?
I think that the engineering teams for all the platform holders are probably confined by overarching business goals leading to prioritization of certain aspects.

For Nintendo, aside from their touch screen they seemed determined to have:
  • a tiny form factor
  • very low power draw
  • backwards compatibility
  • very low cost
  • while being satisfied with only a small increase in power ~PS360
And it shows in the design.

Microsoft appear determined to:
  • get some form of W8 into the living room ecosystem
  • attract the expanded audience with Kinect 2.0
  • be a set-top/cable box
  • better/faster profitability than before
  • while still having a notable increase in hardware power
And that seems to be reflected in the design as well.

I really can't tell what the overarching objectives from on-high would be for Sony; beyond the obvious of aiming for fast profitability. There's no media format to push this time. I don't see how this would push 4K content either.
 

Gorillaz

Member
I would say the PS2's success was based heavily on how much market and mind share it had from the ps1. High and/or low Graphics aren't the deciding factor for who "wins" a gen.

How can you have an opinion that graphics determines the market winner when there has been plenty of history to the contrary? You can't just ignore facts (or at least you shouldn't). There are entirely too many people trying to form opinions about these consoles right now, why? You can't buy them, nor will you be able to anytime soon. There will be plenty of time to evaluate the actual components of these systems as well as what tricks they have up their sleeves to be able to sit back and make an informed decision as to what is best for you. This thread is just like a bunch of dogs chasing their tails, geeze. Discuss the leaks and all that jazz, but all these definitive opinions about consoles that the vast majority of you know close to nothing about (as far as confirmed facts) is pretty ridiculous

I see this is your first time entering the console war. You seem pretty green. The veterans of the war will eat you alive come E3.
 
This might be a really stupid question but if MS needed 8GBs of RAM so bad but was concerned about bandwidth why not go with split memory that both the CPU and GPU can access. Say 6GBs of ddr3 and 2GBs of gddr5? Gddr5 has greater bandwidth than the esram they are supposedly using anyway plus they would have much more to play with.

i dont exactly know but i guess costs. for the cpu and gpu to access two pools each requires like 4 busses.

i am sure they looked into everything. i've never seen a console with system/vram split. it's not in ps4, durango, ps3, 360, there must be a reason. and no ps3 wasnt really that way, it could texture from xdr, meaning it essentially had two pools of vram.

you always see unified, or unified with ed/sram.
 
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