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[Dr. Kitty Muffins]

Some day, I would like to a read an article that lists in extreme detail how the PS4 and Xbox One CUP's differ from AMD's retail cores. I've alreaady read one article listed a few tiny differences between the PS4 and retail Jaguar cores.

 

[Chrisness]

Share the insider knowledge

My insider knowledge is physics.

 

[famousmortimer]

fuck you eduardo

I understand that reference!

 

[Fox Mulder]

I'm more amazed at how big the xbone is, and it has an external power supply. It's larger than an original ps3, which was massive.

 

[Oppo]

Some day, I would like to a read an article that lists in extreme detail how the PS4 and Xbox One CUP's differ from AMD's retail cores. I've alreaady read one article listed a few tiny differences between the PS4 and retail Jaguar cores.

This might help.

"A typical PC GPU has two buses," said Cerny. "There’s a bus the GPU uses to access VRAM, and there is a second bus that goes over the PCI Express that the GPU uses to access system memory. But whichever bus is used, the internal caches of the GPU become a significant barrier to CPU/GPU communication -- any time the GPU wants to read information the CPU wrote, or the GPU wants to write information so that the CPU can see it, time-consuming flushes of the GPU internal caches are required."

The three "major modifications" Sony did to the architecture to support this vision are as follows, in Cerny's words:

"First, we added another bus to the GPU that allows it to read directly from system memory or write directly to system memory, bypassing its own L1 and L2 caches. As a result, if the data that's being passed back and forth between CPU and GPU is small, you don't have issues with synchronization between them anymore. And by small, I just mean small in next-gen terms. We can pass almost 20 gigabytes a second down that bus. That's not very small in today’s terms -- it’s larger than the PCIe on most PCs!

"Next, to support the case where you want to use the GPU L2 cache simultaneously for both graphics processing and asynchronous compute, we have added a bit in the tags of the cache lines, we call it the 'volatile' bit. You can then selectively mark all accesses by compute as 'volatile,' and when it's time for compute to read from system memory, it can invalidate, selectively, the lines it uses in the L2. When it comes time to write back the results, it can write back selectively the lines that it uses. This innovation allows compute to use the GPU L2 cache and perform the required operations without significantly impacting the graphics operations going on at the same time -- in other words, it radically reduces the overhead of running compute and graphics together on the GPU."

Thirdly, said Cerny, "The original AMD GCN architecture allowed for one source of graphics commands, and two sources of compute commands. For PS4, we’ve worked with AMD to increase the limit to 64 sources of compute commands -- the idea is if you have some asynchronous compute you want to perform, you put commands in one of these 64 queues, and then there are multiple levels of arbitration in the hardware to determine what runs, how it runs, and when it runs, alongside the graphics that's in the system."

"The reason so many sources of compute work are needed is that it isn’t just game systems that will be using compute -- middleware will have a need for compute as well. And the middleware requests for work on the GPU will need to be properly blended with game requests, and then finally properly prioritized relative to the graphics on a moment-by-moment basis."

 

[codhand]

Full Tower PC = Xbox One > Mid Tower PC = PS4

quoted for shaming

 

[Spinluck]

It's a great design, and I think it may be my favorite console design of all time.

I'm a lite PC gamer, but play primarily on consoles. So all this back and forth PC vs Console shit usually bounces off me.

But I will say that I will never stop being impressed by the shit devs can do with limited to very limited console hardware at times. That alone will keep me on consoles as long as they're around.

Games like The Last of Us do show that this gen is already capped off. Thank goodness next gens just around the corner though. And we're already getting games that look much more technically impressive at launch. I'm hype.

 

[Dr. Kitty Muffins]

This might help.

I've read that one but thanks.

 

[jblank83]

A mid range 2012 GPU and a netbook CPU is an engineering marvel? Must be nice to be so easily impressed.

This

The reason it's so small is because it uses mobile parts which are designed to be low heat output. This isn't Ps3-360. These consoles aren't anywhere near cutting edge, as 360's GPU was for its time.

The reason X1 is so big is because MS went overboard on their heating solution, with a gigantic fan. They made a point of showing it off, as if to say "NO OVERHEATING THIS TIME".

 

[~~Hasan~~]

Full Tower PC = Xbox One > Mid Tower PC = PS4

ahahahahah.

the bitter tears. so funny and tasty

 

[sonic moob]

A mid range 2012 GPU and a netbook CPU is an engineering marvel? Must be nice to be so easily impressed.

How do the CPU in the PS4/XBox one compare to the Cell and 360 CPU? I find it hard to believe that a netbook CPU could be that much more powerful than the Cell.

It's generally said that the PS4 will be considerably more powerful than the average consumer PC, for games. But again, I don't see how if the specs of the PS4 CPU are so far behind any i3 CPU.

And the GPU being a 2012 mid range... Please explain how so many experts are wrong and you are right.

 

[Jaruru]

Yet to see if there is any overheat issue. I certainly hope not

 

[Caayn]

How do the CPU in the PS4/XBox one compare to the Cell and 360 CPU? I find it hard to believe that a netbook CPU could be that much more powerful than the Cell.

It's generally said that the PS4 will be considerably more powerful than the average consumer PC, but again, I don't see how if the specs of the PS4 CPU are so far behind any i3 CPU.

And the GPU being a 2012 mid range... Please explain how so many experts are wrong and you are right.

Not that hard, if you take into account that the "cell" is a design and technology that's atleast 7 years old.

You can't 1 on 1 compare the CPU from the Xbox 360+PS3 with the CPUs from the Xbox One and PS4. As both are from a completely different architecture. Xbox 360 and the PS3 were both running on the "Power" architecture from IBM. While the Xbox One and PS4 are running on the "X86-64" architecture from Intel + AMD.

The power from consoles is because the hardware used in them is custom tailored to fit perfectly with all the components. Making it stronger than a pc with similar specs. Also the fact that software is specifically written for that hardware combination, thus code can be written directly onto the "metal", making it run more efficient. Resulting in better output.

As for the GPU it's based on the 78XX and 77XX series videocards from AMD, which are both using the GCN architecture. These are GPUs from early- and mid-2012

 

[sono]

The price performance is a marvel, yes.

http://www.gamelab.es/2013/en/conference/highlights/

That conference sounds incredible with the people they have

 

[JonathanPower]

..this 100Gflops rating for the Jaguar CPU is not the same metric as a desktop CPU, someone on Beyond3D did the math, it's roughly equivalent to 40Gflops in PC desktop terms, or roughly the same as an AMD Quad Core Phenom II @3.2Ghz.

..still plenty of power with that GPU & GDDR5 bandwidth though, but 100Gflops is a little bit misleading TBH.

(obviously the same goes for the Xbone).

The 102.4 GFlops rating is real and is for single precision performance. Obviously, double precision numbers are lower, but they don't matter in games and thus on consoles you usually rate the CPU using single precision performance.

 

[sonic moob]

Not that hard, if you take into account that the "cell" is a design and technology that's atleast 7 years old.

You can't 1 on 1 compare the CPU from the Xbox 360+PS3 with the CPUs from the Xbox One and PS4. As both are from a completely different architecture. Xbox 360 and the PS3 were both running on the "Power" architecture from IBM. While the Xbox One and PS4 are running on the "X86-64" architecture from Intel + AMD.

The power from consoles is because the hardware used in them is custom tailored to fit perfectly with all the components. Making it stronger than a pc with similar specs. Also the fact that software is specifically written for that hardware combination, thus code can be written directly onto the "metal", making it run more efficient. Resulting in better output.

As for the GPU it's based on the 78XX and 77XX series videocards from AMD, which are both using the GCN architecture. These are GPUs from early- and mid-2012

I follow you. Isn't it true that AMD's current top-end APU only delivers around 700 GFLOPs of compute power from its CPU and GPU combined? The PS4's is well over 2TFLOPS with the CPU+GPU combined, so it is not right to say that it's just a notebook CPU and mid range GPU, is it? Clearly their is much more to the PS4, power wise, than a straight comparison to PC does justice?

 

[Caayn]

I follow you. Isn't it true that AMD's current top-end APU only delivers around 700 GFLOPs of compute power from its CPU and GPU combined? The PS4's is well over 2TFLOPS with the CPU+GPU combined, so it is not right to say that it's just a notebook CPU and mid range GPU, is it? Clearly their is much more to the PS4, power wise, than a straight comparison to PC does justice?

Not entirely. Jaguar cores are designed for portable devices like notebooks and tablets. But the ones used in the PS4 and Xbox One are customized. For example a normal Jaguar based APU only has a maximum of 4 CPU cores, 2 GCN CU units and 128 shaders. Were as the APU in the PS4 is going to have 8 CPU cores, 18 GCN CU units and 1100~1200 shaders.

As you can see the APU in the PS4 has been heavily upgraded. explaining the difference in single precision FLOPS performance. Despite the impresive boost in power, it is still mobile technologie. But that's were code optimization comes into play, which gives another great boost in performance output.

(Please note that this is just an example and other things are needed to be taken into account for a full overview/comparison. And I didn't use the Xbox One for comparison because we still don't have an official spec sheet of the Xbox One.)

 

[sonic moob]

Not entirely. Jaguar cores are designed for portable devices like notebooks and tablets. But the ones used in the PS4 and Xbox One are customized. For example a normal Jaguar based APU only has a maximum of 4 CPU cores, 2 GCN CU units and 128 shaders. Were as the APU in the PS4 is going to have 8 CPU cores, 18 GCN CU units and 1100~1200 shaders.

As you can see the APU in the PS4 has been heavily upgraded. explaining the difference in single precision FLOPS performance. Despite the impresive boost in power, it is still mobile technologie. But that's were code optimization comes into play, which gives another great boost in performance output.

(Please note that this is just an example and other things are needed to be taken into account for a full overview/comparison. And I didn't use the Xbox One for comparison because we still don't have an official spec sheet of the Xbox One.)

Thanks for explaining. It really is a massive, massive difference between the PS4 and the original mobile tech. If you did the opposite and stripped down a desktop i7 to fit in a mobile it wouldn't still be a desktop i7.

 

[eival]

Do we think that the paranoia from Sony about photographing the back of the console has to do with the cooling solution they have?

Maybe it's some kind of new tech they want to talk about on a separate occasion, rather than have people speculate from photos.

i see the 1 pic Sorral posted which ties back to just this thread and some foreign website according to google image search which is wierd, even just standard searches of the topic are still week old press just showing the non-back of the unit pics, i also didnt see anything in search results specifically related to back of the unit either so ill post some screencaps of Giantbomb's twitch show which i only just got around to watching yesterday (but aired 7 days ago)
EviLore was there too!

one of the guys from Sony came in near the end with the actual floor unit and let them hold and look at it along with the vertical stand which according to brad made it seem like its significantly heavier than the console itself, thus sturdy

same goes for the DS4 which he also got to hold and said it isnt a plastic piece of crap like the previous DS's were which is good to know, i certainly remember bending and breaking quite a few DS2s when the PS2 was my main console, havent really had a chance to put the DS3's to test since ive only used it for exclusives.(which are few and far between)

that foreign site has pics from all angles but from a realistic standpoint on the front:

you can clearly see 2 USB ports on the front in-between the top and bottom piece in the front, which gives great indication that wired DS's or at the very least plugged in wireless will be allowed it also looks like theres some ports on the side but its hard to see even pausing frame by frame cause of the lighting

and on the back:

theres your usual HDMI, ethernet, power supply, optical out for audio and im assuming that far right jack will be for the camera or just another USB port that looks funky, it looks like it says "Aux" on the foreign site's press pic when i zoomed in on it


if the disc drive is truly going to be where the foreign press release pics show i hope its not another feeder design like PS3, especially that deep between the 2 main top and bottom sections, its gonna be near impossible to handle the disc without touching the surface, just give me a flimsy manual laptop tray for all i care, 1 less motorised part that has potential to fail.

 

[hateradio]

I don't really like how it has the USB ports in the front like that, they look odd.

 

[injurai]

I don't really like how it has the USB ports in the front like that, they look odd.

you need to charge controllers

 

[~~Hasan~~]

i see the 1 pic Sorral posted which ties back to just this thread and some foreign website according to google image search which is wierd, even just standard searches of the topic are still week old press just showing the non-back of the unit pics, i also didnt see anything in search results specifically related to back of the unit either so ill post some screencaps of Giantbomb's twitch show which i only just got around to watching yesterday (but aired 7 days ago)
EviLore was there too!

one of the guys from Sony came in near the end with the actual floor unit and let them hold and look at it along with the vertical stand which according to brad made it seem like its significantly heavier than the console itself, thus sturdy

same goes for the DS4 which he also got to hold and said it isnt a plastic piece of crap like the previous DS's were which is good to know, i certainly remember bending and breaking quite a few DS2s when the PS2 was my main console, havent really had a chance to put the DS3's to test since ive only used it for exclusives.(which are few and far between)

that foreign site has pics from all angles but from a realistic standpoint on the front:

you can clearly see 2 USB ports on the front in-between the top and bottom piece in the front, which gives great indication that wired DS's or at the very least plugged in wireless will be allowed it also looks like theres some ports on the side but its hard to see even pausing frame by frame cause of the lighting

and on the back:

theres your usual HDMI, ethernet, power supply, optical out for audio and im assuming that far right jack will be for the camera or just another USB port that looks funky, it looks like it says "Aux" on the foreign site's press pic when i zoomed in on it


if the disc drive is truly going to be where the foreign press release pics show i hope its not another feeder design like PS3, especially that deep between the 2 main top and bottom sections, its gonna be near impossible to handle the disc without touching the surface, just give me a flimsy manual laptop tray for all i care, 1 less motorised part that has potential to fail.

no offense or anything. but did they use a VGA camera ? why so shitty quality lol. its like one of those pics from 50$ nokia phones.

 

[Iacobellis]

no offense or anything. but did they use a VGA camera ? why so shitty quality lol. its like one of those pics from 50$ nokia phones.

These look more like stills from a video.

 

[syko de4d]

This thread is about the tech stuff in the PS4?
I have one question. Can i use the 500GB HDD from the PS4 for my old 60gb PS3 and put a 1-2tb HDD into the ps4?

 

[~~Hasan~~]

This thread is about the tech stuff in the PS4?
I have one question. Can i use the 500GB HDD from the PS4 for my old 60gb PS3 and put a 1-2tb HDD into the ps4?

the HDD in the PS4 is replaceable. we just don't know what is the highest limit.

i think for PS3 is 1 Tera. for PS4... no one knows but i assume the same thing ?

 

[Iacobellis]

the HDD in the PS4 is replaceable. we just don't know what is the highest limit.

i think for PS3 is 1 Tera. for PS4... no one knows but i assume the same thing ?

I'm guessing 2TB at launch. Games are closer than ever to maxing out a dual layer BD disc.

 

[qa_engineer]

A mid range 2012 GPU and a netbook CPU is an engineering marvel? Must be nice to be so easily impressed.

Yes, because engineering = processor and GPU specs. #facepalm

 

[synce]

I'm dying to see the guts of this thing

 

[PhilipDoesMatter]

I'm impressed by the size of both boxes. New-gen old-fashioned.

 

[José Mourinho]

it also looks like theres some ports on the side but its hard to see even pausing frame by frame cause of the lighting

I believe those are just the holes for the stand inserts.

 

[Lima]

i think for PS3 is 1 Tera. for PS4... no one knows but i assume the same thing ?

PS3 supports up to 3TB. To my knowledge there still isn't a 2TB 2.5" drive that fits though. They are all too thick.

 

[qa_engineer]

Show me a PC (same specs, of course) that fits into the case and is priced at 400€/$, please.

The phrase"engineering marvel" in the the op is less about the CPU and GPU specs, and more so the engineers ability to package a 500gb HDD, Blu ray drive, power supply, apu, and cooling solution into a tiny and sleek package. The first response/ post is full of fail and everyone who says "show me a PC blah blah blah"doesn't get it either.

 

[MercuryLS]

PS3 supports up to 3TB. To my knowledge there still isn't a 2TB 2.5" drive that fits though. They are all too thick.

So what's the biggest HDD you could conceivably put in a PS4? 1.5Tb?

 

[syko de4d]

the HDD in the PS4 is replaceable. we just don't know what is the highest limit.

i think for PS3 is 1 Tera. for PS4... no one knows but i assume the same thing ?

so i can use the PS4 hdd in my PS3 after i replaced the PS4 HDD? That would be great. I would get two new HDDs for both consoles with only one i buy

 

[Captain Tuttle]

Man the original PS3 was a big sucker huh?

 

[Dunlop]

I am more impressed that I can buy "Android on a stick" for my TV for under $30 that is small and quite powerful than I am by the PS4

It is a weirdly angled box that I will go "wow" when I take it out of the packaging and then stick it on my AV shelf with the other "boxes" where it will not be noticed again

 

[Lima]

So what's the biggest HDD you could conceivably put in a PS4? 1.5Tb?

Well that depends on how much space there is for the drive. Judging by the size of the whole console though I'm guessing it will have the same limitation as the PS3 so the drive can't be thick. Seeing how they don't make any 1,5TB drives in 2,5" format, 1TB would be the max still.

so i can use the PS4 hdd in my PS3 after i replaced the PS4 HDD? That would be great. I would get two new HDDs for both consoles with only one i buy

Yes.

 

[cobragt4001]

Isn't too early to make claims like this, I mean what if the ps4 is a disaster as far as heat is concerned? I think it's best to stay neutral until it's out because we all know that the first hardware release is like paid beta testing. And even if the ps4 has no problems then there is nothing really impressive about it when you have laptops that have sli setups in them. I mean the ps4's cpu and gpu clocks are very low for one thing, so that's not so impressive that it comes in a small box. Lets hope sony uses decent thermal paste this time around.

Edit:
Now if the ps4 had a liquid cooled cpu then I'd be impressed

 

[Lima]

Isn't too early to make claims like this, I mean what if the ps4 is a disaster as far as heat is concerned? I think it's best to stay neutral until it's out because we all know that the first hardware release is like paid beta testing. And even if the ps4 has no problems then there is nothing really impressive about it when you have laptops that have sli setups in them. I mean the ps4's cpu and gpu clocks are very low for one thing, so that's not so impressive that it comes in a small box. Lets hope sony uses decent thermal paste this time around.

Edit:
Now if the ps4 had a liquid cooled cpu then I'd be impressed

I would bet much money on the fact that the Xbox One will be quieter than the PS4. The 360 S/E are pretty quiet already and the One has an even bigger fan, coupled with lower RPM makes for pretty much a silent system.

From the looks of it the PS4 uses the same fan system as the PS3 and the old fatty PS3's were loud as shit.

 

[Jburton]

I would bet much money on the fact that the Xbox One will be quieter than the PS4. The 360 S/E are pretty quiet already and the One has an even bigger fan, coupled with lower RPM makes for pretty much a silent system.

From the looks of it the PS4 uses the same fan system as the PS3 and the old fatty PS3's were loud as shit.

That's not entirely true, the original batch of PS3's where super quiet ..... it was the later batches that had the problems, something about a change in the type of fan .... they where the same size but I think they reduced the amount of blades in the fans.


Either way their was a major noise difference between original launch day PS3's and later revsions of the phat.


Launch day PS3 was fucking stunning in terms of build quality and noise.