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Recent PS4 SDK update unlocked 7th CPU core for gaming
- Thread starter DieH@rd
- Start date
You think wrong... CPU intensive games are gonna benefit from it. It might not be a lot, but just enough to let them hit a smooth 60/30fps. That's all we need honestly.
Even if some smaller tasks can be offloaded to a 7th core [audio, compression & simmilar stuff], the benefit will still be there.
Haha, I was talking about them doing some "secret sauce" stuff like this in the other thread earlier today about seeing substantial improvements in games as this gen goes on like last gen.
Next is probably more RAM being freed up for gaming or something along the same lines.
Or on the really unlikely, probably never gonna happen end of the list of possible scenarios, they could even up the CPU clock speed via firmware like they did for the PSP.
Next is probably more RAM being freed up for gaming or something along the same lines.
Or on the really unlikely, probably never gonna happen end of the list of possible scenarios, they could even up the CPU clock speed via firmware like they did for the PSP.
KojiKnight
Member
Probably not this, the PSP was designed to hit 333mhz from day one, but was scaled back to improve battery life and was only 'unlocked' when later models were released that could handle more than 4 hours on it.
Green Yoshi
Member
I hope this will help CD Projekt to reach stable 30 fps in The Witcher 3.
But then Apple went from a three to a two core CPU with iPad pro, so presumably there are limitations in chip size or thermals. They aren't going to be making an octocore twister anytime soon. So that comparison just seems odd.
Dictator93
Member
It will not necessarily help with those games in those situations where they are limited by sequential performance though.
lukeskymac
Member
The AppleTV uses an A8 AFAIK. The iPad Pro, on the other hand, uses an A9X. It's still 3 cores (I think?) vs 8, but I don't think it throttles. The iPhones themselves throttle less than the industry average.
Considering the amount of different stuff that's part of game logic, I think only less ambitious games wouldn't see any gain.
We might not see the benefits from this, but there definitely will be.
DeepEnigma
Gold Member
Improvements are always a good thing. And something is always better than nothing.
AgentP
Thinks mods influence posters politics. Promoted to QAnon Editor.
Your analysis is spot on. Do you contribute to a tech blog?
lukeskymac
Member
PS4's APU seems to keep the cooling system busing as it is. Do not expect any clock increases. XB1 did it because of its over-engineered cooling, which in turn was thanks to the rest of the box being really under-engineered.
Danlord
Member
They're not going to do an upclock. A PS4 isn't being gimped for battery length concerns.
They already did that.
NoHeDidn't
Member
People would have cried foul at a high price its always a compromise with power vs price not mention optimizationdue to it being a dedicated gaming system.Also lets be fair and compare cpu to two year old phones,theres a reason phone games dont look as great.
And that was before launch, so count it out after the specs are completely finalized and out in the wild like now.
TrAcEr_x90
Member
60fps singleplayer??!
Wouldn't be suprised if the ICE team at ND are the ones behind this.
Either way, ND are definitely the kind of devs that would take use of this kind of optimization.
You mean anything. And you are right, this isn't going to change anything for your Xbone.
Ricerocket
Member
Kinda crazy to be saying something like that when MS did it and now Sony. It's a freaking cpu core that is freed to assist in some way, of course it will do something.
Synless
Member
I thought they already did this with the last update? Analysis I watched showed the framerate was solid.
The only thing that wold make this better as if the spit take was pixelated
Aceofspades
Banned
Good addition but just like X1, I won't expect massive increase in power.
jellies_two
Member
You only have to look at the performance gap (graphics only) between battlefront/frostbite or MGSV vs Fallout 4 to see just how wide the spread of current ability out there is in optimisation. As the last slide in the OPs PDF says, "we've only scratched the surface".
There is definitely jumps in performance available when programmers get to live with a fixed configuration for five years vs constantly aiming at a moving target (the next GPU, the next API, the next next GPU, the next next API). In the first case, the stuff you did in year 1 could be re-engineered in year 5 to be much faster and/or look much better.
In the second case, the stuff you did in year 1 you no longer even think about - its all about learning the latest gpu card.
We're already seeing that effect: They could definite re-do and re-release battlefield 4 now, to look and perform as nicely as battlefront and yet so many assumed the performance of battlefield 4 was the product of the ps4/xbox one hardware, not the product of the knowledge at that particular point in time.
I've no doubt Fallout 4 in different hands, with a different engine, could be the same GAME, but look so much better and not have those old school loading transitions. It's just a matter of what studio will be first to bring the gameplay talent of bethesda to an engine that isn't so blandly generic and un-optimised/janky.
There is definitely jumps in performance available when programmers get to live with a fixed configuration for five years vs constantly aiming at a moving target (the next GPU, the next API, the next next GPU, the next next API). In the first case, the stuff you did in year 1 could be re-engineered in year 5 to be much faster and/or look much better.
In the second case, the stuff you did in year 1 you no longer even think about - its all about learning the latest gpu card.
We're already seeing that effect: They could definite re-do and re-release battlefield 4 now, to look and perform as nicely as battlefront and yet so many assumed the performance of battlefield 4 was the product of the ps4/xbox one hardware, not the product of the knowledge at that particular point in time.
I've no doubt Fallout 4 in different hands, with a different engine, could be the same GAME, but look so much better and not have those old school loading transitions. It's just a matter of what studio will be first to bring the gameplay talent of bethesda to an engine that isn't so blandly generic and un-optimised/janky.
You're confused because you assumed I was talking about it relative to the Xbox One.
What my point was it would help open world games keep a more consistent framerate at seven cores than at six, which is a nice thing because as far as I know, all open world games have some form of framerate issues here and there, and this SDK should help alleviate some of those issues.
lukeskymac
Member
I have a feeling E3 2015's demo was already running on 7 cores. ND surely must have known this was going to happen.
You mean anything. And you are right, this isn't going to change anything for your Xbone.
I thought about posting something like this, but it seemed... too easy.
Ps4 will literally explode on the 8th gate-I mean core. But the order 1887 will be the most beautiful game of all history.
I doubt it would "look" better but you should expect it to flow and move better. Think less framerate drops and smoother animations
Kralamoonard
Member
Just out of interest, what is sequential performance?
How fast the console can accomplish a particular task on a single thread/CPU core. A lot of the time, games run separate threads for things like sound, physics, AI, etc.
Adding another core for games is unlikely to make any of those individual tasks easier to perform, though it may give you better parallel performance where you're accounting for everything that can be done at once.
The X1 had more engineering complication to it than the ps4, because its initial design goals were different for hardware and software (and its memory subsystem was designed as such early on, due to the necessesity of its memory amount. They couldn't rely on sheer luck). There's a reason the chip is bigger, and yet it has less hardware grunt.
Goddamn period.
Kralamoonard
Member
Ok, I'm sorry to keep bombarding you with questions lol, but:
- What is parallel performance?
- And you mention that each thread/core can accomplish a particular task e.g. for things like sound, physics, AI, so then surely an extra core can, for example, add an extra physics task to that extra core, no?
- Or can it even help split a physics task from one core and add half of it to the extra core?
Or is that not how it works?
stan423321
Member
Here's a very simple, if a little flawed, analogy. Imagine that you have a simple game in which you control a team of miners that have to break down some rock blocks. The miners are nerds and work alone on one block. The blocks may lie on other blocks; this requires complete destruction of the block above before you start breaking down ones below. You have a sequential performance problem when a single, huge, long to break block happens to cover all the stuff. No count of nerd miners is going to speed up breaking it down.
I think overcomplicated is a great way to describe the X1 I think. Sony got a much better design at seemingly a better price. 8GB Or "luck" withstanding. And Sony even got them jump on them in the software stack mostly. Its to be expected that Sony would be more competent as a hardware company but its jarring how much tbe difference ended up being with them both outsourcing AMD.
MS had to do a lot of catching up to get to this point. Sony I think was much more prepared for this generation.
Microsoft couldn't rely on lucky 11th hour design changes with their set goals in mind for the original X1 plan. That is why the APU is what it is. The die is larger because of it (if they had similar luck 6 months prior in some alternate universe and put the extra die space into CUs it would have a better gpu, for example - but that's neither here nor there)
dragonbane
Member
Good stuff
Zomba13
Member
It's like getting another member added to the Ginyu Force.
Which cellphone cpu is stronger?