• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Is Sony missing the point of hardware upgrades?

Elios83

Member
What about Xbox One and Xbox One S though? It proves it can be done right.

Different situation imo.
Xbox One S is the same architecture of Xbox One. There is just a really small upclock in the GPU. Chances of ruining compatibility are really low.
The PS4 Pro, if you read the Mark Cerny article, has many internal differences compared to the standard PS4 and an interesting point he makes is that they are using a mirrored second GPU they turn off to keep compatibility in old titles.
Chances of fucking up compatibility with old titles are much higher compared to Xbox One S and having all the PS4 games working flawlessly is vital for a system that IS a PS4.
Do you expect Microsoft to let Xbox One games running on Scorpio outside of a compatibility mode for example?
 

ethomaz

Banned
I think you don't understand the point at all.

That was a choose option to not create incompatibility.

Phones apps needs to be patched to the new iOS to run so Pro is smart and it won't require patch to old apps.
 
I have no idea why people think The Xbox S encompasses some big tangible hardware boost. It's something like 1-3 fps extra sometimes in some games. It's really not even something worth mentioning as a talking point. It's just silly.

I agree, I also love you avatar.
 

BigEmil

Junior Member
The point of the PS4pro was to trump the Nintendo Switch. So id say they completely understand the point
Definitely not, way off its meant to rival the close upcoming Scorpio and aimed for enthusiasts who wanted more power mid-way through this generation and with the quicker adoption of 4k TV's now they had to put this out to keep up
 

Portugeezer

Gold Member
Have you seen those bad PC ports that run really fast when made to be 60fps? My take is that a lot of console exclusives would have this problem if PS4 Pro would just upclock them to run at higher framerates, which is why older ones that benefit from PS4 Pro will be done via a patch, and only future games will support PS4 Pro upgrades out of the box.

The console games until now weren't designed to be scalable.
 

ethomaz

Banned
Reading this thread makes me think Xbox One S had a huge boost in performance.

While in real world it barely increased 1-2fps in games that had issues to reach the minimum 30fps.
 
This doesn't surprise me. Nintendo does this as well with the 3ds. It's not that big of a deal.


However in regards to Scorpio Phil said that a game with variable resolution like halo 5 will benefit from Scorpio. However not all games will be like this either.

But this brings be to BC for ps5. If Sony uses a newer amd CPU like Zen would that break BC with a different instruction set?
 

rec0ded1

Member
Just read the Digital Foundry article. Jesus fuck.

Lack of 4k Blu-Ray is something I couldn't care less about, but this forced downclocking has me riled up. I was so looking forward to play Bloodborne at a more stable performance.

I feel you. The forced downclock sucks, I wanted some improvements on the base games out of the box even if minimal.
 

DBT85

Member
We still don't know if the general GCN improvements will boost the FPS of PS4 games a few FPS.

As I said in another threat, for me since it a "Pro" I should have the option to tell it to run at full tilt. With a warning and a disclaimer before doing so that my head might explode.
 
Have you seen those bad PC ports that run really fast when made to be 60fps? My take is that a lot of console exclusives would have this problem if PS4 Pro would just upclock them to run at higher framerates, which is why older ones that benefit from PS4 Pro will be done via a patch, and only future games will support PS4 Pro upgrades out of the box.

The console games until now weren't designed to be scalable.

You miss the point. This thread is not about making a former 30fps locked game to run at 60fps but instead having the additional power to mitigate frame dips into the 20s.

Isn't there a thread that's already open that explains this or was OP to bothered not to read?

You could link it.
 

Kinyou

Member
Reading this thread makes me think Xbox One S had a huge boost in performance.

While in real world it barely increased 1-2fps in games that had issues to reach the minimum 30fps.
The point is that it was able to use the improved hardware on old titles without any need for a patch
 

Elios83

Member
Reading this thread makes me think Xbox One S had a huge boost in performance.

While in real world it barely increased 1-2fps in games that had issues to reach the minimum 30fps.

Pretty much. It's the same system and the upgrades are really minor such as the risk of compromising compatibility.
I wonder if the expectations will be the same around Scorpio. Are people expecting XB1 games to run unbounded on the new system?
 

Harp

Member
Definitely not, way off its meant to rival the close upcoming Scorpio and aimed for enthusiasts who wanted more power mid-way through this generation and with the quicker adoption of 4k TV's now they had to put this out to keep up

Also there is zero reason for a person that buys a Playstation after Nov 10 to not get the pro. Sony will sell a lot of systems to existing users but they still have alot of sales to go in this generation. Anyone that is going to the store and cant afford the extra 100 dollars between the slim and the pro should just save there money wait a couple of months.
 

Arttemis

Member
If the S, with a minor up clock, can improve frame rates by 5-10% in already released games, then it is upsetting that there can't be any similar implementation in the Pro.

Why isn't there even a user-toggled setting? A base stock mode for complete compatibility, and a seemingly-perfectly-viable-as-shown-by-the-S upclock for marginal improvements.
 

Bsigg12

Member
Also there is zero reason for a person that buys a Playstation after Nov 10 to not get the pro. Sony will sell a lot of systems to existing users but they still have alot of sales to go in this generation. Anyone that is going to the store and cant afford the extra 100 dollars between the slim and the pro should just save there money wait a couple of months.

That's not how retail works. $100 cheaper, bindled with a game or 2 goes a long way to making up someone's mind. The Slim will absolutely sell more than the Pro because it is a cheaper point of entry for the same games.
 

SpokkX

Member
The point is that it was able to use the improved hardware on old titles without any need for a patch

Yes

That Sony shuts down part of the gpu and downclocks gpu/cpu because they are afraid of compability problems is just.. well laughable

These issues have been handled by the os/api on x86 platform since 20+ years ago

Suddenly Sony acts like forward compabilty has not been done before on this exact platform. Like it "is not possible"..

yeah well look at xbox s and i bet scorpio (it basically runs windows 10 and it just works on pc with new hardware + drivers)
 

GribbleGrunger

Dreams in Digital
I think once again it's forum users that are missing the point. If it could improve performance of the PS4 then there's even less reason to upgrade to a Pro (that's the bottom line). I'm sure stability and consistency has something to do with it too ...
 
If the S, with a minor up clock, can improve frame rates by 5-10% in already released games, then it is upsetting that there can't be any similar implementation in the Pro.

Why isn't there even a user-toggled setting? A base stock mode for complete compatibility, and a seemingly-perfectly-viable-as-shown-by-the-S upclock for marginal improvements.

I would be ok with an option to disable to forced downclock with a disclaimer which states that some unpatched games might not behave correctly, just so we can see for ourselves.
 

Jumeira

Banned
I have no idea why people think The Xbox S encompasses some big tangible hardware boost. It's something like 1-3 fps extra sometimes in some games. It's really not even something worth mentioning as a talking point. It's just silly.

It's generally a 10% increase in performance, it's mild and thats due to the hardware MS packed in. So the question on everyone mind id, why can't PSPro offer a mild upgrade when the pipeline is there, out the box. No patch, no developer resource, it should just work.

Because I'm expecting this from Scorpio without needing special attention from Devs given X1 S can do this, but with better gains then X1 S obviously. A Scorpio patch would be something dramatically better but that's a case by case basis so, as a baseline isnt ideal.
 

Arklite

Member
From the article:

"For variable frame-rate games, we were looking to boost the frame-rate. But we also wanted interoperability. We want the 700 existing titles to work flawlessly," Mark Cerny explains. "That meant staying with eight Jaguar cores for the CPU and pushing the frequency as high as it would go on the new process technology, which turned out to be 2.1GHz. It's about 30 per cent higher than the 1.6GHz in the existing model."

But surely x86 is a great leveller? Surely upgrading the CPU shouldn't make a difference - after all, it doesn't on PC. It simply makes things better, right? Sony doesn't agree in terms of a fixed platform console.


"Moving to a different CPU - even if it's possible to avoid impact to console cost and form factor - runs the very high risk of many existing titles not working properly," Cerny explains. "The origin of these problems is that code running on the new CPU runs code at very different timing from the old one, and that can expose bugs in the game that were never encountered before."

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/d...tation-4-pro-how-sony-made-a-4k-games-machine

So apparently from their testing they maybe encountered more bugs than not. PCs accommodate a huge range of configurations but even there it's common to require some tweaking/troubleshooting or even patching form the devs. Seems they opted to play it safe for better or worse.
 
Stability reasons - you can run the New 3DS at higher clock all the time with homebrew and it works - for most games. That's the key thing, if it's not 100% compatible you can't just let it run like that.


Well can't they just sort off this fucking thing on their side?

They could simply test every game that came out and boost the ones that do not show any compatibility issues and restrict the ones that do. We're talking about 700 games. It wouldn't be that long for 20 peoples to test all of them in a way that covers most of the gameplay technicalities. We're not talking about beta testing each game from top to bottom, wall to wall either. Seriously, if they can potentially enhance 90% of the games freely with no "apparent" sign of compatibility issues, I'm glad to take that chance and risk encountering a weird bug one time or another in a game that was enhanced and supposedly bug-free.
 

Moosichu

Member
I think once again it's forum users that are missing the point. If it could improve performance of the PS4 then there's even less reason to upgrade to a Pro (that's the bottom line). I'm sure stability and consistency has something to do with it too ...

Read the OP again, that isn't what they are saying.

This

As a computer dev, some posts in here make me shake my head.

99% of games should be forward compatible with even just a simple upclock. If some games turn out not to work, is it so hard to black-list them and downclock for them?
 

icespide

Banned
Well can't they just sort off this fucking thing on their side?

They could simply test every games that came out and boost the ones that do not show any compatibility issues and restrict the ones that do. We're talking about 700 games. It wouldn't be that long for 20 peoples to test all of them in a way that covers most of the gameplay technicalities. We're not talking about beta testing each game from top to bottom, wall to wall either. Seriously, if they can potentially enhance 90% of the games freely with no "apparent" sign of compatibility issues, I'm glad to take that chance and risk encountering a weird bug one time or another in a game that was enhanced and supposedly bug-free.
lol
 
Changing the clock speeds could reveal race conditions that never previously came up in game titles, and cause bugs and/or crashes.

There's likely to be some performance impact from the newer, more efficient GPU though.
 

Guymelef

Member
Well can't they just sort off this fucking thing on their side?

They could simply test every games that came out and boost the ones that do not show any compatibility issues and restrict the ones that do. We're talking about 700 games. It wouldn't be that long for 20 peoples to test all of them in a way that covers most of the gameplay technicalities. We're not talking about beta testing each game from top to bottom, wall to wall either. Seriously, if they can potentially enhance 90% of the games freely with no "apparent" sign of compatibility issues, I'm glad to take that chance and risk encountering a weird bug one time or another in a game that was enhanced and supposedly bug-free.

Not sure if serious... lol
 

eFKac

Member
Yes

yeah well look at xbox s and i bet scorpio (it basically runs windows 10 and it just works on pc with new hardware + drivers)

Because I'm expecting this from Scorpio without needing special attention from Devs given X1 S can do this, but with obviously better gains. A Scorpio patch would be something dramatically better.

Now I can't wait for Scorpio to come out and disappoint.

I think I even have a perfect name for a thread "Is MS missing the point of hardware upgrades"
 

icespide

Banned
Xbox One S and PS4 Pro are practically the same when you think about it

rather the One S is even better because it provides performance boosts without patches!
 

etta

my hard graphic balls
Nice fud with the 1-2 fps increase on the S. The reality is it gets anywhere from 3-7 fps, and for 30fps games that is enough to get them to a locked 30fps where otherwise it would drop on the OG. QB, B:AK, GTA 5 all run much closer to 30fps.
A bunch of fps doesn't sound like much of anything on paper, but when the game is targeting 30fps and would drop to sub 30, instead now is a tear-free, input fluctuations-free 30fps.
This is what PS4 Pro should've done. I wouldn't expect it to make 30fps games 60fps. But I think it's reasonable to expect the 30fps games that drop to keep a locked framerate a lot more often, which in the case of the Pro with double the power, it should be locked 30fps 100% of the time.
 
Well can't they just sort off this fucking thing on their side?

They could simply test every game that came out and boost the ones that do not show any compatibility issues and restrict the ones that do. We're talking about 700 games. It wouldn't be that long for 20 peoples to test all of them in a way that covers most of the gameplay technicalities. We're not talking about beta testing each game from top to bottom, wall to wall either. Seriously, if they can potentially enhance 90% of the games freely with no "apparent" sign of compatibility issues, I'm glad to take that chance and risk encountering a weird bug one time or another in a game that was enhanced and supposedly bug-free.
You don't know how any of this works.

It takes way more than 20 people in most large studios YEARS to test a single game that has bugs on launch day. That's nightmare enough.

Also, a "weird bug" can brick your console. No thanks.

Or are you just being sarcastic? Hard to tell.
 
Give them 6 months? A year? Unlock the power on them gradually? Surely they can get the job done one day or another.

You're asking a tiny Q&A team to test hundreds of games (a Q&A team that would be considered too small to handle one average AAA game). Games that were designed to work on a very specific hardware configuration and so would need to be thoroughly tested to make sure nothing has broken. And if they find something broken, all they can do is disable Pro mode on the game - they can't fix anything.

What they're actually doing is far smarter - they made it easy to add PS4 Pro features to existing titles and they're strongly encouraging developers to go and add them themselves. Developers are better equipped to know how to test their own game and if they find issues, they can fix them.
 

icespide

Banned
You don't know how any of this works.

It takes way more than 20 people in most large studios YEARS to test a single game that has bugs on launch day. That's nightmare enough.

Also, a "weird bug" can brick your console. No thanks.

Or are you just being sarcastic? Hard to tell.
nah just grab a few interns, launch the game, and click on a few things. What's the issue? It's not like we're beta testing from top to bottom here.
 

ethomaz

Banned
The point is that it was able to use the improved hardware on old titles without any need for a patch
Pro too because Polaris itself add about 10% increase in perfomance over PS4 old GPU at the same clock.

You will see a huge boost of 1-2fps in games that are not hitting the minimum.
 
Pro too because Polaris itself add about 10% increase in perfomance over PS4 old GPU at the same clock.

You will see a huge boost of 1-2fps in games that are not hitting the minimum.

I know you're joking but 1-2fps are can make a difference too when there is only 30 of them total.
 
Well can't they just sort off this fucking thing on their side?

They could simply test every game that came out and boost the ones that do not show any compatibility issues and restrict the ones that do. We're talking about 700 games. It wouldn't be that long for 20 peoples to test all of them in a way that covers most of the gameplay technicalities. We're not talking about beta testing each game from top to bottom, wall to wall either. Seriously, if they can potentially enhance 90% of the games freely with no "apparent" sign of compatibility issues, I'm glad to take that chance and risk encountering a weird bug one time or another in a game that was enhanced and supposedly bug-free.


as a dev, serious lolz.

i've been out of the loop for a while and was looking to buy a pro. didn't know they had this "restriction".
 
You don't know how any of this works.

It takes way more than 20 people in most large studios YEARS to test a single game that has bugs on launch day. That's nightmare enough.

Also, a "weird bug" can brick your console. No thanks.

Or are you just being sarcastic? Hard to tell.

You're asking a tiny Q&A team to test hundreds of games (a Q&A team that would be considered too small to handle one average AAA game). Games that were designed to work on a very specific hardware configuration and so would need to be thoroughly tested to make sure nothing has broken. And if they find something broken, all they can do is disable Pro mode on the game - they can't fix anything.

What they're actually doing is far smarter - they made it easy to add PS4 Pro features to existing titles and they're strongly encouraging developers to go and add them themselves. Developers are better equipped to know how to test their own game and if they find issues, they can fix them.



I wasn't being sarcastic. Obviously I'm wrong and I appreciate your inputs.


That say, do you think an increase in performance in a title per title approach doable?
 

Avtomat

Member
Xbox One S and PS4 Pro are practically the same when you think about it

rather the One S is even better because it provides performance boosts without patches!

What I don't even.......what?

Give them 6 months? A year? Unlock the power on them gradually? Surely they can get the job done one day or another.
Bugs can be introduced for any number of reasons they may not even manifest immediately but later on corrupting save files etc. It is not practical to test every single game in every single scenario the patch has to come from the devs.
 

renzolama

Member
This

As a computer dev, some posts in here make me shake my head.

I'm surprised to hear that a software developer (I'm guessing that's what you mean by 'computer dev'?) supports locking software performance forever so that it can't take advantage of hardware improvements. Does that mean you agree with console ports being locked to 30fps on PC?
 
Top Bottom