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[mrklaw]

Wow.. No I don't think it'll bump the system bandwidth to anything..

Well, here's the developer of trials HD on the 360's eDRAM and then a bit on a RAM scratch pad (as the ESRAM is).


Sauce

And there are some Sony employees also over there that have mentioned how eD/eSRAM can be beneficial in GPU utilisation in general..

Of course, feel free to offer up some credible insight from devs into why ESRAM is useless.. Even Cerny offered up a potential system breakdown using eDRAM in a split architecture like this but the main reason for not going down that road was developer friendliness..

Stop with the Ad hominem bullshit, that's the weakest form of argument known to man...

I also believe like most that PS4 is more powerful.. I just don't think taking a simplistic view is fair or accurate.. And yes, I was surprised that the games shown at E3 wheren't complete piles of crap graphically..

Isn't the esram on Xbox one actually slower than the 360 edram? Why did they chose esram over edram? (It doesn't sound smaller with all the talk of yield issues and huge APUs)


A fast scratchpad sounds great, but 102Gb/s isn't that much quicker than the external memory bandwidth (I realise you can still have benefits from keeping things off the external memory so you get higher aggregate bandwidth, but it just seems a little slow)

 

[Biker19]

Isn't this more or less what Reggie was saying during the interview with Geoff Keighley at E3 this year? It's funny when your weak hardware is under the withering glare of public scrutiny, it's suddenly all about the games and the great experiences that can only be found on your platform.

Nevermind the tech required to make those experiences possible. I don't think we'll be seeing Second Son's detailed open world and destructible environments on current gen consoles any time soon. Forget about The Division. Don't bother with FFXV, or Panta Rhei or the Dark Sorcerer engine. Specs don't matter. We'll just keep playing halo 4 and NSMB until our thumbs break off and our eyes fall out.

Precisely! Microsoft are being total hypocrites here. Back when their console was the powerhouse they couldn't toot their horn enough about how much more powerful the XBox was.

Exactly. You'd think if the Xbox One was more powerful instead of the PS4 (just like the original Xbox was more powerful than PS2), Microsoft will no doubt be bragging about it, but because it happens to be the other way around instead, all of a sudden, the specs doesn't matter.

Typical damage control if you ask me.

 

[Oblivion]

Any company who's actually proud of their hardware would never say such a thing.

 

[Success]

Could somebody please combine a jpg of a butt with a picture of hurt.

 

[KingRAW]

First let me say this thread is "meaningless" because PC will continue to look down on this petty console war and amuse itself from mount Olympus.

Specs don't mean anything if your competitor is making money and playing tug-a-war from month to month. However Sony has been known to make multiple console revisions *cough* PS3 *cough*, and nutter or gut the platform to save money.

We saw it with lack of back words compatibility, lack of USB port, and lack of card readers. I was very surprised at the DDR5 at a lower price point than MS. I wonder how cost sustainable this is going to be over time.

 

[Aizu_Itsuko]

"Diminishing returns" is not the same as "there is no room for improvement".

 

[SenjutsuSage]

Isn't the esram on Xbox one actually slower than the 360 edram? Why did they chose esram over edram? (It doesn't sound smaller with all the talk of yield issues and huge APUs)


A fast scratchpad sounds great, but 102Gb/s isn't that much quicker than the external memory bandwidth (I realise you can still have benefits from keeping things off the external memory so you get higher aggregate bandwidth, but it just seems a little slow)

The Xbox One's ESRAM is actually faster. The 360's EDRAM was 32GB/s, and only under specific conditions, I think involving 4XMSAA and a few other operations that were rarely used all at once in 360 titles, could it actually achieve that well publicized 256GB/s. So, the Xbox One's ESRAM at default memory performance, and at the value that the 360's EDRAM more commonly operated at in 360 titles, is close to 4 times faster without doing anything special. Combine that with its latency, superior memory size, and increased versatility over the 360's EDRAM, and it's even better:

Things ESRAM is capable of on Xbox One that EDRAM on Xbox 360 wasn't.

-- Texturing from ESRAM
-- Resolving into ESRAM

Besides being 32MB in size, ESRAM on Xbox One can do everything that the DRAM on the Xbox One can do, which wasn't the case for EDRAM on the Xbox 360.

 

[Melchiah]

The original Xbox had better looking games than the PS2, didn't seem to mean shit to most PS2 owners though.

It didn't mean shit back then, as due to the size of the userbase the PS2 got far more 3rd party support. Now both of the systems will likely have about the same support, sans moneyhats, and it's more than likely the PS4 versions of multiplatform titles will look and run better. So, in that regard your comparison isn't really valid.

 

[Wishmaster92]

Precisely! Microsoft are being total hypocrites here. Back when their console was the powerhouse they couldn't toot their horn enough about how much more powerful the XBox was.

So true. Question is, why aren't they doing it now? Unless....

 

[miDnIghtEr20C]

Wild times we live in. X1 is going to have the Game of E3 to play on it. Ya, it's coming to PC. But console wise, only 360 and X1 get the game of E3. Of course the 360 version is going to be like playing BF3 on 360 compared to BF3 on PC...

 

[RedNumberFive]

Guys, guys... They have transistors - in the cloud!

 

[Ecotic]

This reminds me of a political candidate whose behind in the polls, and the Sunday before election day is doing interviews saying how meaningless the polls are.

 

[Applecot]

They aren't lying.

It means nothing to MS... When their specs aren't ahead.

Just look at how much of a fuss they kicked up about the 'improved' ESRAM speeds.

 

[leadbelly]

The original Xbox had better looking games than the PS2, didn't seem to mean shit to most PS2 owners though. If i were truly a graphics whore, i would build a decent PC.

Why do people keep making this argument?

There are number of factors that may determine a console's success, the power of the console being one of them. If Microsoft actually had the most powerful console on the market, you could bet your bottom dollar they would use it as a selling point. Some people may not care so much, but there will be others that do.

It's interesting that the Dreamcast is never mentioned when people compare the power of the consoles from that generation. It also happened to be the weakest console of the three.

The truth is, power alone is not enough to guarantee success, as we all know, but it may well be a contributing factor.

 

[entremet]

I kinda agree with him. It's not a Wii versus 360/PS3 situation. The Wii was a full generation underpowered. Not the XB1. But the PS4 will have the best looking exclusives it seems.

 

[cartridge]

Games are important, yes. But so are the bottlenecks of the hardware they're running on.

I think the unified pool of GDDR5 in the PS4 will ultimately prove to be better for multitasking than the standard DDR3 in the X1.

As for the PS4's CPU and GPU, they are on the same APU die. Whether this yields any noticeable benefits over the X1's configuration remains to be seen. I estimate the PS4's CPU cores to clock in around 2GHz by time for launch.

On paper, these specs might seem low to the average PC gamer, but this is a lot of power for a machine designed only to play games at max 1080p resolution and without a Windows OS eating up it's resources.

I mean, really think about it. The PS4 is essentially a high-end custom gaming laptop in terms of raw hardware performance, then factor in the absence of a bloated Windows OS w/ all it's background processes/services. What we end up with is a blazing fast gaming console.

 

[CouldBeWorse]

But he's right.

Pure power is meaningless. The application of this power is all matters.

 

[Bornstellar]

Games are important, yes. But so are the bottlenecks of the hardware they're running on.

I think the unified pool of GDDR5 in the PS4 will ultimately prove to be better for multitasking than the standard DDR3 in the X1.

As for the PS4's CPU and GPU, they are on the same APU die. Whether this yields any noticeable benefits over the X1's configuration remains to be seen. I estimate the PS4's CPU cores to clock in around 2GHz by time for launch.

On paper, these specs might seem low to the average PC gamer, but this is a lot of power for a machine designed only to play games at max 1080p resolution and without a Windows OS eating up it's resources.

I mean, really think about it. The PS4 is essentially a high-end custom gaming laptop in terms of raw hardware performance, then factor in the absence of a bloated Windows OS w/ all it's background processes/services. What we end up with is a blazing fast gaming console.

You honestly think that the Windows that the Xbone will be running is what you and I run? Think again.

 

[cartridge]

You honestly think that the Windows that the Xbone will be running is what you and I run? Think again.

I never claimed the X1 was running a desktop Windows OS. I was making a comparison to PC. Read again.

 

[Liabe Brave]

Isn't the esram on Xbox one actually slower than the 360 edram? Why did they chose esram over edram? (It doesn't sound smaller with all the talk of yield issues and huge APUs)

As SenjutsuSage said, the eSRAM is capable of operations the eDRAM isn't. Also, it can be made by more foundries at more process nodes, adding flexibility to manufacturing.

The drawback is that it's much larger (as you correctly inferred from the rumors). Of the 5 billion transistors in the One, 1.6 billion are the eSRAM. So almost a third of the chip is taken up by a mere 32MB of memory--the remaining two-thirds houses the entire CPU and GPU.

 

[Kai Ozu]

WOW

 

[coldone]

I thought "Experience" is all what matters. Are we moving to Application now ?

But he's right.

Pure power is meaningless. The application of this power is all matters.

 

[abic]

But he's right.

Pure power is meaningless. The application of this power is all matters.

Between you Microsoft defending here and in the hardware thread don't you get tired?

If power doesn't matter let this discussion run for people who care about power.

 

[Codeblew]

I really don't get the console wars concerning tech. Why is the pc ignored so often? Why care that ps4 is more powerful than xb1 when the pc is, or will shortly be, more powerful than both?

If you care about tech specs this much then why not stay on the cutting edge instead of having to wait until new consoles release to see a meaningful upgrade.

You have to be wealthy or irresponsible with your finances to stay on the cutting edge of PC hardware.

 

[Radaway]

So interesting little tid bit from the latest interview with Sony reps.

Confirming that RIGHT after Microsoft announced the Xbox One Sony made the decision to eliminate a similar DRM policy.

“We had this idea for weeks, but waited until E3 to share the information…. We decided on this policy around when the Xbox One was announced in May.”

Good marketing strategy or duplicitous behavior? If the DRM reaction didn't blow up in Microsoft's face.....would have Sony announced the decision?

Food for thought

 

[benny_a]

You have to be wealthy or irresponsible with your finances to stay on the cutting edge of PC hardware.

Oh no. Now you did it. Everyone, brace for impact!

Food for thought

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=587131

 

[BlastProcessing]

You have to be wealthy or irresponsible with your finances to stay on the cutting edge of PC hardware.

 

[DGRE]

This is what you say when your specs are weaker.

Came here to say this. Though, I don't really care either.

 

[Sean*O]

It's like saying a bigger color palette doesn't matter to an artist or a bigger set of tools doesn't matter to a builder. Given equally talented artists and designers working on each set of hardware you can reasonably expect the better hardware to deliver more, it's certainly not going to hurt and MS certainly do not have an exclusive on talented developers.

These PR goofballs.. I was strongly irritated by them last launch when they spun a bunch of BS about the PS3 and am just as irritated now watching/reading/listening to team MS spinning on about the Xbone.

How about delivering something that's real like a price drop instead of spinning more fairytales about clouds and magically increased memory speeds. These PR people never seem to learn that they aren't going to BS a bunch of hardware savvy gamers on hardware spec and ability.

And if it was meaningless then they wouldn't even be releasing a new system they would stick with the 360 forever.

 

[Radaway]

Oh no. Now you did it. Everyone, brace for impact!



http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=587131

Interesting!

 

[Raticus79]

It's really going to come down to the power of marketing vs hardware I think.

I'm sitting here thinking "it's not going to work, there's no way people will buy into this stuff" and that's why I'm not in marketing. Sometimes reality defies those expectations.

MS is pushing "cloud power". Sony could too, and they aren't. They aren't because they think customers would naturally know "of course anyone can have this 'cloud power', it just means the games have servers..." - relying on logic. Meanwhile, MS is playing on the doubt.

 

[trickyhero]

Please Understand
-Microsoft

 

[Sean*O]

So interesting little tid bit from the latest interview with Sony reps.

Confirming that RIGHT after Microsoft announced the Xbox One Sony made the decision to eliminate a similar DRM policy.

“We had this idea for weeks, but waited until E3 to share the information…. We decided on this policy around when the Xbox One was announced in May.”

Good marketing strategy or duplicitous behavior? If the DRM reaction didn't blow up in Microsoft's face.....would have Sony announced the decision?

Food for thought

Of course, if people welcomed the Xbone with spread cheeks everyone would follow suit, but that wasn't the reaction from the crowd.

 

[Kinan]

This is like people with short dicks trying to convince everyone that lenght is irrelevant.

 

[Shayan]

Came here to say this. Though, I don't really care either.

If i am not wrong,ddr3 ram costs a dollar/g to produce as opposed of 15d/g for GDDR5. They could have easily built a powerful system . Now they are resorting to BS like "cloud power" "bumping clock speed will compensate for whole 16 rops and 50% lower computational units" and even worse "auxiliary ram's bandwidth can be combined with the system's " MS played this RAM BS card with x360 too when they combined the 256g/s bandwidth of eDRAM with that of the system's for PR talk

MS themselves know what the PS4 would do to Xbone in terms of global sales this fall and onwards. HW difference isnt meaningless since people usually prefer the better version of the multiplat games

 

[SenjutsuSage]

Games are important, yes. But so are the bottlenecks of the hardware they're running on.

I think the unified pool of GDDR5 in the PS4 will ultimately prove to be better for multitasking than the standard DDR3 in the X1.

As for the PS4's CPU and GPU, they are on the same APU die. Whether this yields any noticeable benefits over the X1's configuration remains to be seen. I estimate the PS4's CPU cores to clock in around 2GHz by time for launch, although I'd love to see it happen.

On paper, these specs might seem low to the average PC gamer, but this is a lot of power for a machine designed only to play games at max 1080p resolution and without a Windows OS eating up it's resources.

I mean, really think about it. The PS4 is essentially a high-end custom gaming laptop in terms of raw hardware performance, then factor in the absence of a bloated Windows OS w/ all it's background processes/services. What we end up with is a blazing fast gaming console.

All hardware has bottlenecks, even the PS4 hardware, as much as people might want to believe otherwise. Also not sure where you got this PS4 CPU being 2GHZ by time for launch business from... That's not going to happen.

The Xbox One also has a unified pool of DDR3, which is better than GDDR5 memory for the kinds of multi-tasking tasks you're probably referring to. You also have to keep in mind that Microsoft is apparently reserving upwards of 3GB for that OS, whereas right now Sony is apparently reserving 1GB, plus DDR3 has superior latency than GDDR5. People have been trying to suggest otherwise, but DDR3 simply has better latency than GDDR5 from what I know. Then when you factor in the Display planes on the Xbox One, which decouples OS rendering from game rendering, that makes it even less likely that the PS4 will somehow be a better multi-tasker than the XB1. Then again, we're just making assumptions here based on what we think we know, but I suppose we'll see.

 

[abadguy]

Precisely! Microsoft are being total hypocrites here. Back when their console was the powerhouse they couldn't toot their horn enough about how much more powerful the XBox was.

Back then the people in charge now weren't running the game division. If those people were running things now i imagine we would have a very different console.

It didn't mean shit back then, as due to the size of the userbase the PS2 got far more 3rd party support. Now both of the systems will likely have about the same support, sans moneyhats, and it's more than likely the PS4 versions of multiplatform titles will look and run better. So, in that regard your comparison isn't really valid.

And most people still won't give a shit, because the differences with the different versions of multiplat games likely won't be as big as you people are hoping. ( biggest differences will be seen in first party exclusives and even then talented devs will get the most out of the hardware as always) Most people outside of forums don't give a shit about on paper specs as much as you do.

Which was pretty much the point i was making in the first place and yes it is valid. I also have to roll my eyes at people calling the X1 "weak". Give me a fucking break. Looking at the graphics of Forza 5 and even Ryse at launch, doesn't exactly seem "weak" to me but what would a console vs console slap fight be without hyperbole?

 

[benny_a]

Give me a fucking break. Looking at the graphics of Forza 5 and even Ryse at launch, doesn't exactly seem "weak" to me but what would a console vs console slap fight be without hyperbole?

And yet it would still be better for everyone that plays Xbox One, PS4 or PC if the Xbox One was as strong as the PS4.

 

[abic]

You have to be wealthy or irresponsible with your finances to stay on the cutting edge of PC hardware.

Why talk about cars when there are planes and rockets?

Hey u so smart

 

[IceBreak]

The worst part about NeoGAF being so down on Xbox One is that we'll never get all the awesome highlander gifs we could have.

 

[TheD]

Back then the people in charge now weren't running the game division. If those people were running things now i imagine we would have a very different console.





And most people still won't give a shit, because the differences with the different versions of multiplat games likely won't be as big as you people are hoping. ( biggest differences will be seen in first party exclusives and even then talented devs will get the most out of the hardware as always) Most people outside of forums don't give a shit about on paper specs as much as you do.

Which was pretty much the point i was making in the first place and yes it is valid. I also have to roll my eyes at people calling the X1 "weak". Give me a fucking break. Looking at the graphics of Forza 5 and even Ryse at launch, doesn't exactly seem "weak" to me but what would a console vs console slap fight be without hyperbole?

It is substantially weaker than the PS4.
A GPU with 1.2 TFLOPS is not that much in this day and age (very much so for a system that is meant to be sold for many years).

Deal with it.

 

[Combichristoffersen]

If Other M was about THE BABY THE BABY THE BABY, MS these days are about THE CLOUD THE CLOUD THE CLOUD.

 

[amardilo]

I would much rather have better hardware than instant switching.

Seems like MS are trying to get the little stuff/nice to have stuff down but I would much rather have more power and better looking and performing games.

That interview sounds rather defensive and kind of makes me think MS know they have weaker hardware and can't do much about it (maybe because they customised everything and/or are not willing to lose and more money on the console).

 

[IHaveCandy]

I just realized my 2010 Nvidia GTX 570 has more flops than the Xbox One GPU. Not as much as the PS4 though

 

[Beelzebubs]

It is meaningless when your expensive system is weaker than the cheaper system your competition offers.

:|

It's iPhone vs Android.

 

[Odrion]

All hardware has bottlenecks, even the PS4 hardware, as much as people might want to believe otherwise. Also not sure where you got this PS4 CPU being 2GHZ by time for launch business from... That's not going to happen.

The Xbox One also has a unified pool of DDR3, which is better than GDDR5 memory for the kinds of multi-tasking tasks you're probably referring to. You also have to keep in mind that Microsoft is apparently reserving upwards of 3GB for that OS, whereas right now Sony is apparently reserving 1GB, plus DDR3 has superior latency than GDDR5. People have been trying to suggest otherwise, but DDR3 simply has better latency than GDDR5 from what I know. Then when you factor in the Display planes on the Xbox One, which decouples OS rendering from game rendering, that makes it even less likely that the PS4 will somehow be a better multi-tasker than the XB1. Then again, we're just making assumptions here based on what we think we know, but I suppose we'll see.

Durante went on and explained the GDDR5 latency in another thread, but I guess it's being put together in a way where the latency isn't an issue for the PS4.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Sure, but it's also hypocritical to say nobody cares about specs, they only care about games, then go on to infer that your system is better because of magic and the cloud. Isn't that kind of talking about things from your spec sheet that you feel your competition doesn't have?

Not only that, but if you do not want to talk about "meaningless" stuff you neither go on about 5 Billion Transistors nor you take a dig at the other competitor spreading FUD and misinformation about their product: the bit about "Sony talking proudly about how they simply took off the shelves parts while MS hand optimized every bit in the system" was particularly sleazy. Especially considering the interviews Cerny has given, see the Gamasutra one, detailing many of the customizations Sony did and their rationale.

 

[Mung]

Wild times we live in. X1 is going to have the Game of E3 to play on it. Ya, it's coming to PC. But console wise, only 360 and X1 get the game of E3. Of course the 360 version is going to be like playing BF3 on 360 compared to BF3 on PC...

All you needed to say was ' have you seen titanfall? Conversation over! '

 

[expletive]

Exactly. You'd think if the Xbox One was more powerful instead of the PS4 (just like the original Xbox was more powerful than PS2), Microsoft will no doubt be bragging about it, but because it happens to be the other way around instead, all of a sudden, the specs doesn't matter.

Typical damage control if you ask me.

I think there's a small chance that if the XBO is truly more powerful, or if MS has upped the specs, that there is no point in them making that public now or explaining it at all. They have nothing to gain by doing so, the console will sell out for months regardless. Once both are shipping and have reached the point of no return, that's when I would start bragging about a hardware advantage.

Sony has already shown a willingness to make last minute changes and spend more money to have the more powerful box, if MS spills the beans now Sony could react by upping clock speeds or activating dormant CUs for Redundancy which would negate the advantage.

If there really is something to the Penello's comment, its best to sit on that information as long as possible...

 

[CLEEK]

I think there's a small chance that if the XBO is truly more powerful, or if MS has upped the specs, that there is no point in them making that public now or explaining it at all. They have nothing to gain by doing so, the console will sell out for months regardless. Once both are shipping and have reached the point of no return, that's when I would start bragging about a hardware advantage.

Sony has already shown a willingness to make last minute changes and spend more money to have the more powerful box, if MS spills the beans now Sony could react by upping clock speeds or activating dormant CUs for Redundancy which would negate the advantage.

If there really is something to the Penello's comment, its best to sit on that information as long as possible...

Dude, we're already past that point. You don't just 'ship' a console the day before it is available to buy. Both MS and Sony have been churning out finished console for a while now. The only thing that either party can do is tweak the clocks, or disable cores if yields require it. So downgrade, not upgrade.

And you think that consoles have some inactive CUs in there for hardware redundancy? That's... well, I don't know what that it, but it's not based in reality.

The Xbox One is what it is. It's not getting a major hardware bump. Any fundamental hardware changes would have to have been set in stone at the end of last year to make a holiday 2013 launch a possibility.