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[Locuza]

Explain to me why you think this is a big deal. We've just had several pages of back and forth from what I'm hoping are intelligent people where the conclusion is that it isn't. From what I can tell anyway.

It's a nice feature to have but not a big deal, for me it's more like an indicator about what base tech MS used and if we could expect anything significant from Vegas IP pool.
Now I'm more certain that there won't be the DSBR, the new Pixel Engine and other major features on board.

Why it has such limited use not worth the die space for them. It would be the least desirable Vega feature imo. What shocked me there is 0 major Vega features in Scorpio. Looking like the extra year was spent working on making the development environment Great. It could of easily launched against the pro hardware wise.

GCN Gen 3 brought native FP16 OPs, now how costly is the jump to double-rate FP16?
Sony considered it worthwhile and it seems to be a standard feature of Vega where AMD might not use different ALU-Designs like Nvidia with Maxwell and Pascal.

I agree about the major Vega features.

[...]
Unless magically Nvidia (which also means MS working with Nvidia again and that means not having nearly as much control of GPU fabrication as they do now) gets the x86 license (they won't) and can make a CPU as powerful as Zen/Intel that uses little power (they can't). And Intel's GPU solutions are lol

Nvidia has a very strong if not the best GPU infrastructure.
They also have a lot of financial ressources.
The desire to have a strong CPU IP should be quite natural for Nvidia and Denver could evolve into a much stronger CPU solution with more cores.
It would be of course ARM and if AMD isn't falling too much behind I wouldn't expect Sony/MS to switch like the Switch.

 

[Liabe Brave]

I was talking about the Pro's memory bandwidth which is only 218GB/s compared to Scorpio's 326GB/s which is basically 50% more. This difference will mean much more for Scorpio than its flops advantage as this difference specifically is what makes native 4K possible for example.

Makes 4K easier, sure, but bandwidth does not need to be greater than 218 GB/s for naive 4K to be possible. There are native 4K games on Pro.

Usage of packed FP16 registers will help on all GCN3+ h/w but it's not about bandwidth, it's about the ability to perform FP32 math on FP16 data with much less latency which results in a speed up. The bandwidth remains the same.

Thanks for the info! If I understand, this means that packed math allows quicker computation, but the same bandwidth usage, right? So would this mean that rather than make space for higher resolution buffers, it might instead make time for higher quality shaders operating on a smaller buffer?

So we should start seeing native 4K games from PS4 Pro right?

What do you mean "start"? A little less than a third of all games with official support on Pro are native 4K already.

For Scorpio, Microsoft added more hardware baked shortcuts after identifying common instructions in current engines.

If so, they haven't told anyone about it. None of the Digital Foundry articles have mentioned any specific hardware support unique to Scorpio. What they've explained as customization has instead been instances of matching resource pool sizes and process speeds to the game profiles.

The precision gap between FP16 and FP32 is not just twice, it is an order of maginute. A shader that looks good in FP32 would look pixelated or perform much slower in FP16. Shaders have to be designed to fit FP16.

It's even more than an order of magnitude. But while some shaders can't be moved to FP16 without degrading as you say, others can be.

Yes, we are satirizing some of the insanity in this thread, although all of those terms are part of the GCN architecture and make some relative level of sense. (Semi-related-fun-abuse-the rasterization-hardware-for-other-means: the RSX used to do fragment program patching using draws.)

Thanks for also posting real thoughts. It seems that FP16 packed math won't be useful in a truly widespread manner, at least for the near future. Can you speak to general levels of usage in real-world workloads currently? Presumably if you've consulted on this with IHV(s) that means it's worth doing at least some of the time.

 

[Crayon]

Don't forget that these "customizations" we don't know about etc also fall in the same sauce category.

Yes. Enigmatic hardware features often follow this same saucy pattern.

 

[Colbert]

Don't forget that these "customizations" we don't know about etc also fall in the same sauce category.

That's right. But by the specs the Scorpio doesn't have to close a gap at the moment.

 

[tuxfool]

Nvidia has a very strong if not the best GPU infrastructure.
They also have a lot of financial ressources.
The desire to have a strong CPU IP should be quite natural for Nvidia and Denver could evolve into a much stronger CPU solution with more cores.
It would be of course ARM and if AMD isn't falling too much behind I wouldn't expect Sony/MS to switch like the Switch.

If it is Denver, console makers wouldn't target ARM, they'd target Denver instructions (and all that VLIW "goodness") instead of suffering dynamic recompilation.

 

[Fredrik]

Hm, so MS has made an oversight on hardware again.

I guess this is a PS3 vs Xbox360 scenario, where games coded by Sony could possibly be heavily optimized to use FP16 and in the end make Pro seem more powerful but with multiplats engines where FP32 is more common Scorpio will always turn out on top. No?

Anyhow, I can't wait for E3 and the first DF FaceOff

 

[Colbert]

Hm, so MS has made an oversight on hardware again.

I guess this is a PS3 vs Xbox360 scenario, where games coded by Sony could possibly be heavily optimized to use FP16 and in the end make Pro seem more powerful but with multiplats engines where FP32 is more common Scorpio will always turn out on top. No?

Anyhow, I can't wait for E3 and the first DF FaceOff

Yes those face offs will be interesting. No doubt about that.

 

[Aceofspades]

Hm, so MS has made an oversight on hardware again.

I guess this is a PS3 vs Xbox360 scenario, where games coded by Sony could possibly be heavily optimized to use FP16 and in the end make Pro seem more powerful but with multiplats engines where FP32 is more common Scorpio will always turn out on top. No?

Anyhow, I can't wait for E3 and the first DF FaceOff

No Scorpio is more powerful than PRO full stop. the difference is similar to PS4 to X1.

In case of PS3 and 360, PS3 was more powerful once optimized properly, it just was a nightmare to code for.

 

[Liabe Brave]

I guess this is a PS3 vs Xbox360 scenario, where games coded by Sony could possibly be heavily optimized to use FP16 and in the end make Pro seem more powerful but with multiplats engines where FP32 is more common Scorpio will always turn out on top. No?

No, absolutely not. Nothing we know indicates that Pro could ever match the Scorpio in power, no matter how much devs utilize the special hardware it has. There's just too large a gap to overcome.

Individual people may find the overall look of some Pro games better than some Scorpio games, but this will be down to art direction and personal preference. Just as when some Xbox One games are lauded over PS4 games, this won't indicate that the weaker hardware has somehow "caught up".

 

[wachie]

That's right. But by the specs the Scorpio doesn't have to close a gap at the moment.

It does .. and it's already closed the gap on the 1070 and close to overtaking the 1080.

Yes. Enigmatic hardware features often follow this same saucy pattern.

True. Tasty times ahead.

 

[Mindlog]

So which one is can run Truform is the real question.

 

[Fredrik]

No, absolutely not. Nothing we know indicates that Pro could ever match the Scorpio in power, no matter how much devs utilize the special hardware it has. There's just too large a gap to overcome.

Individual people may find the overall look of some Pro games better than some Scorpio games, but this will be down to art direction and personal preference. Just as when some Xbox One games are lauded over PS4 games, this won't indicate that the weaker hardware has somehow "caught up".

What about the whole 8.4TF vs 6.0TF scenario? Couldn't Sony go nuts and see that FP16 is used everywhere. Is FP32 absolutely neccessary? Isn't it just 16 vs 32 bits in math calculations and 16 bits should be plenty enough?

 

[timlot]

I edited my post, you may want look into it again. Besides that of course the Scorpio is more powerful than the PS4 Pro and nothing will close this gap as nothing was close the gap the PS4 had over the Xbox One. It is very interesting to see the type of discussion have turned 180 degrees with kind the same arguments about "secret sauce".

Happy Easter!

I got your secret sauce right here...

Thread has been entertainment for me.

 

[Colbert]

It does .. and it's already closed the gap on the 1070 and close to overtaking the 1080.

You may see it that way but I don't. Makes absolutely no sense to me to compare console components to PC components. I was never a fan of those comparisons as it is apples to oranges. But yeah, go for it and waste your time.

 

[Liabe Brave]

What about the whole 8.4TF vs 6.0TF scenario? Couldn't Sony go nuts and see that FP16 is used everywhere. Is FP32 absolutely neccessary? Isn't it just 16 vs 32 bits in math calculations and 16 bits should be plenty enough?

I do not know enough to answer this question with any authority. But from what I've picked up listening to people who do know, FP32 is absolutely necessary for some graphical work...indeed, most graphical work. FP16 packed math will provide some improvements in places where it's okay to use. No informed estimates think that it can eliminate the gap in power to Scorpio.

 

[Colbert]

I got your secret sauce right here...

Thread has been entertainment for me.

Thats a lot of sauce, if it were less we could see the sausage (the actual hardware) LOL

 

[Lady Gaia]

Their understanding has always been shallow just more in depth than IGN and the like. The main difference is the tables turned against the biggest fan base and people who already made a purchase, therefore, their technical credibility is coming into question.

Eh. There's nothing wrong with DF so long as you realize that they're not experts in the field. They're not game developers, nor do they pretend to be. They're fairly well informed enthusiasts who devote a lot of time and energy to measuring the performance and behavior of games running on a variety of systems. That's it.

I look forward to seeing exactly how cross-platform titles run on Scorpio and a dozen other details about the hardware that are still unknown. I don't think DF or anyone else is in a position to state categorically how they'll behave based on what has been disclosed so far. It looks extremely promising, but that's about the extent of it right now.

 

[dogen]

Btw thats my last response to you. Will not waste more time on that.

Spoiler

IgnoreList->Add(L"blu");

I guess it makes sense to block the more technically knowledgeable on this board if you want to go around making dumb posts like this.

Technically he is correct and practically the usage of it limited if you already have the spec to do 4K without it.

lmao

 

[ethomaz]

What about the whole 8.4TF vs 6.0TF scenario? Couldn't Sony go nuts and see that FP16 is used everywhere. Is FP32 absolutely neccessary? Isn't it just 16 vs 32 bits in math calculations and 16 bits should be plenty enough?

FP32 give better graphics than FP16... it affect quality... some simple examples:

In simple terms more precision = more accurate graphics with less artifacts.

But these cases are using fully FP16 or FP32... there are part of the code you don't need FP32 then you can use FP16 without lost quality... you can have a scenario where 80% of your code uses FP32 while the others 20% uses FP16 giving a image exactly like if you used fully FP32.

 

[Samurai G0SU]

Don't forget that these "customizations" we don't know about etc also fall in the same sauce category.

Does that really matter when it has 4 additional gb of ram and over 100 more gbs of bandwidth? Arent you exhausted? Feels bad man.

 

[justsomeguy]

Has anyone done an "if you think we're giving up a 40% gap... We INVENTED fp16" spoof yet?

Edit: Also anyone know how to ignore from mobile?

 

[Liabe Brave]

Does that really matter when it has 4 additional gb of ram and over 100 more gbs of bandwidth? Arent you exhausted? Feels bad man.

It's a minor point, but Scorpio actually only has 3 GB more RAM than Pro (12 vs. 9).

 

[Night.Ninja]

Did anyone remember that website were the guy in the comments section made some supposably ridiculous comment about the Scorpio power, I want to read what he said again

 

[Bsigg12]

Did anyone remember that website were the guy in the comments section made some supposably ridiculous comment about the Scorpio power, I want to read what he said again

You're already on GAF...

 

[Matt]

Look, if anyone here is actually saying that the Pro is greater than or equal to the Scorpio in graphical capabilities, obviously that person is wrong, full stop.

But discussing the Scorpio's hardware in a thread dedicated to that topic is in no way out of line, and the consent attacks against anyone saying anything remotely critical or analytical is, frankly, ridiculous.

The Scorpio is stronger than the Pro. That doesn't need to be the end of all discussion.

 

[onQ123]

Did anyone remember that website were the guy in the comments section made some supposably ridiculous comment about the Scorpio power, I want to read what he said again

This?

https://www.bungie.net/en/Forums/Post/224325344?sort=0&page=0&path=1

 

[Samurai G0SU]

Look, if anyone here is actually saying that the Pro is greater than or equal to the Scorpio in graphical capabilities, obviously that person is wrong, full stop.

But discussing the Scorpio's hardware in a thread dedicated to that topic is in no way out of line, and the consent attacks against anyone saying anything remotely critical or analytical is, frankly, ridiculous.

The Scorpio is stronger than the Pro. That doesn't need to be the end of all discussion.

So youre saying that 16fp is good to talk about because another console has it and scorpio doesnt.

HAS 16 FP DONE ANYTHING FOR GAMES OUT TODAY? I WANNA SEE RECEIPTS WHERE A CONSOLE GAME BENEFITS WITH 16FP.

Otherwise when i hear its half precision.. i stop....

 

[Fredrik]

FP32 give better graphics than FP16... it affect quality... some simple examples:



In simple terms more precision = more accurate graphics with less artifacts.

But these cases are using fully FP16 or FP32... there are part of the code you don't need FP32 then you can use FP16 without lost quality... you can have a scenario where 80% of your code uses FP32 while the others 20% uses FP16 giving a image exactly like if you used fully FP32.

Okay, so as an example, FP32 could be used close up and FP16 everywhere else? If so then it would seem like the gap could close or even more. But I really know nothing about this stuff, I just listen to the discussions. Nonetheless, could we agree that this is a dumb oversight from Microsoft? I mean, if it's there and nothing new, why not include FP16 if it can be twice as fast in certain scenarios? If I was them I'd be 100% sure that it did everything PS4 Pro could do before even thinking about improving stuff.

Either way, now we'll have these discussions for the rest of the generation. And some people will convince themselves that PS4 Pro is more powerful no matter what evidence is layed out and shout from the hills to make Scorpio seem like old news not worth the money.
I guess proof will be in the pudding, or rather DF FaceOffs. Can't wait!

 

[Matt]

So youre saying that 16fp is good to talk about because another console has it and scorpio doesnt.

HAS 16 FP DONE ANYTHING FOR GAMES OUT TODAY? I WANNA SEE RECEIPTS WHERE A CONSOLE GAME BENEFITS WITH 16FP.

Otherwise when i hear its half precision.. i stop....

...how did you get any of this from what I just said?

 

[Night.Ninja]

This?

https://www.bungie.net/en/Forums/Post/224325344?sort=0&page=0&path=1

Yeah , I guess he was kinda close but not that close

 

[Matt]

Yeah , I guess he was kinda close but not that close

Umm, no. That nonsense wasn't anywhere close.

 

[Dynomutt]

Where did this sauce talk come from? I heard it vaguely but not to the point it is being preached about here.

 

[Fredrik]

The Scorpio is stronger than the Pro. That doesn't need to be the end of all discussion.

Lol don't worry the discussions won't end, we'll be debating the power of these consoles the rest of this generation and possibly the next generation too

 

[Liabe Brave]

HAS 16 FP DONE ANYTHING FOR GAMES OUT TODAY? I WANNA SEE RECEIPTS WHERE A CONSOLE GAME BENEFITS WITH 16FP.

Earlier in the thread, people have posted presentations from developers talking about FP16 being used in Frostbite (Battlefield: Bad Company 2 on PS3, Mass Effect: Andromeda on PS4), in Decima (Killzone: Shadow Fall), and in Ubisoft tech generally. Another dev who works on Call of Duty has posted that there's some use of FP16 in undisclosed titles by his studio.

Okay, so as an example, FP32 could be used close up and FP16 everywhere else? If so then it would seem like the gap could close or even more. But I really know nothing about this stuff, I just listen to the discussions. Nonetheless, could we agree that this is a dumb oversight from Microsoft? I mean, if it's there and nothing new, why not include FP16 if it can be twice as fast in certain scenarios?

I wouldn't say it's dumb, but it's a little odd that Microsoft didn't go ahead and include it, just to have the option. But maybe there were silicon usage drawbacks, and in any case they basically don't actually need it. The packed math should improve results on Pro, but it won't close the power gap with Scorpio.

 

[Sad Affleck]

Why are we milking the FP16 thing so hard? Is it a game changer?

The single reason for that is because OnQ123 has an agenda to push. If FP16 was measured in any type of unit other than teraflops it would be just another bullet point in a list of tech specs. But saying "PS4 Pro is 8.4 Teraflops FP16" makes the uninformed public think that PS4 Pro has a secret sauce because 8.4 is bigger than 6. Although it has been explained to him many times that the importance of that spec is nowhere near the importance of the FP32 Teraflop count, by developers no less, he keeps banging on the FP16 drum because he wants to emphasize the 8.4 Teraflop number. This is from a poster who believed that the 6TF number that Microsoft gave for Scorpio was FP16 and that Microsoft would release a 3 TF console one year after Sony's 4.2 TF PS4 Pro.

 

[Bitch Pudding]

Marketing. What do you think.

Jaguar has become a bad word in some gaming communities (like GAF).

Yup, it's a Jaguar, but with some nice evolved PR attached to it.

It will however still get the job done, and part of that job is getting to that $399.

 

[Renekton]

Nvidia has a very strong if not the best GPU infrastructure.
They also have a lot of financial ressources.
The desire to have a strong CPU IP should be quite natural for Nvidia and Denver could evolve into a much stronger CPU solution with more cores.
It would be of course ARM and if AMD isn't falling too much behind I wouldn't expect Sony/MS to switch like the Switch.

Ever since the revelation that Switch CPU is plain old Tegra X1 (to clear foundry obligations allegedly), I doubt Nvidia wants to do new semi-customs at console margins.

 

[pixelbox]

Earlier in the thread, people have posted presentations from developers talking about FP16 being used in Frostbite (Battlefield: Bad Company 2 on PS3, Mass Effect: Andromeda on PS4), in Decima (Killzone: Shadow Fall), and in Ubisoft tech generally. Another dev who works on Call of Duty has posted that there's some use of FP16 in undisclosed titles by his studio.


I wouldn't say it's dumb, but it's a little odd that Microsoft didn't go ahead and include it, just to have the option. But maybe there were silicon usage drawbacks, and in any case they basically don't actually need it. The packed math should improve results on Pro, but it won't close the power gap with Scorpio.

Link to post please.

 

[Fredrik]

It will however still get the job done, and part of that job is getting to that $399.

Unfortunately I'm not so sure it'll hit that price point anymore. Feels like they're really trying to hype it up as something worthy of a higher price. :/
I'll still buy it though, even at $499 I guess. They won me over with Freesync, other things already started swaying me over but I'm a big gsync fan so freesync coming to consoles is huge, it's a vote with your wallet situation where I'm buying it day 1 to support the movement to get this awesome tech more widespread.

 

[Fredrik]

I wouldn't say it's dumb, but it's a little odd that Microsoft didn't go ahead and include it, just to have the option. But maybe there were silicon usage drawbacks, and in any case they basically don't actually need it. The packed math should improve results on Pro, but it won't close the power gap with Scorpio.

Oh okay, well we'll see what happens I guess, seems like an unfortunate omission from my uneducated point of view anyway.

 

[ThatFrenchGuy]

Grown men arguing about whose daddy... euh... console is the strongest. Looks like N4G all over again.


I don't understand any of this technical jargon, but I can't wait to see how Xbox One games perform on Scorpio!

 

[Space_nut]

Don't forget that these "customizations" we don't know about etc also fall in the same sauce category.

Read the article. They said they've done things to gpu parts like the queue caches sizes and speed. They've improved all parts where they saw engines being bottleneck at using PIX.

There's no need to list every change in a consumer article. You may be mad but doesn't the fact there are custom work done

6 TF vs. 4.2 TF
2.3 GHz vs. 2.1 GHz
326 GB/s vs. 218 GB/s
12 GB vs. 8+1 GB
HDMI 2.1 VRR vs. HDMI 2.0
And 60 customization in the hardware silicon to reduce bottlenecks that they profiled from actual games
And streamline their development toolkits

 

[Space_nut]

Link to post please.

Beyond3d

30% on a specific process...and using FP16 not specifically Double-Rate FP16 so this would apply To Scorpio to..

http://www.frostbite.com/2017/03/4k-checkerboard-in-battlefield-1-and-mass-effect-andromeda/

Another optimization was the usage of FP16 GCN instructions in our checkerboard resolve shader. PS4™Pro has support for FP16, and we used it throughout the checkerboard resolve shader. The largest benefit was the ability to greatly lower our LDS memory usage. This resulted in a 30% performance improvement in the resolve shader.

In the grand scheme of things...this isn't much at all...and would apply to Scorpio.

 

[Putty]

That reminds me, Mastermind is on at 9 and the Gymnastics highlights are on at 10...

 

[mrklaw]

Scorpio will still be a decent amount more powerful in raw specs than ps pro, but perceived improvements will depend how MS uses that extra power vs how Sony uses it.

On pro, a good reference implementation of checkerboard rendering plus offloading some appropriate elements to FP16 could yield good enough results to give a small perceived gap vs Scorpio. Especially if MS goes more for native 4k via dynamic resolution which will use more GPU power for the same resolution.


Question - does ps pro have Vega DSBR included, and does that bring any potential performance improvement, or mitigation for slightly lower bandwidth?

 

[Liabe Brave]

Link to post please.

Is it really that hard to read just 5 pages? But since you were polite, here are the post links.

Post 1 (early Frostbite; I was incorrect, it's actually Battlefield 2, 3, and Bad Company, not Bad Company 2)
Post 2 (links to another thread, where the Shadow Fall presentation is linked, as well as the recent Frostbite presentation on Mass Effect)
Post 3 (where I link to discussion on Beyond3D about FP16 use in games including by Ubisoft)
Post 4 (BriareosGAF link to another of his posts, where he talks of FP16 in games by his studio)
Post 5 (AMD tech demo example)

And as bonuses, here's an indie dev talking packed math on PS4 Pro in their shipped game. And here's a Timothy Lottes presentation on packed math opportunities (among other things) in GCN.

Beyond3d

Also Beyond3D:

For int math (ALU), 16 bit is enough for surprisingly many cases (int is lossless, so range is all that matters). Fp16 is also often enough for general purpose math (unlike 10/12 bit fixed point types which are highly situational). Range is rarely an issue for fp16 (+-65504), and precision is good enough when working with 8 bit inputs/outputs. Of course you need fp32 ALU for position math (transforms, etc) and modern lighting math, but fp16 is perfect for post processing, LDR math before lighting (colorize, etc) and for normal vector related math, etc, etc.

 

[Samurai G0SU]

Such a sad time when people can get around to talk about potential of what a system has, yet it derails into a discussion about warz.

 

[Raide]

Such a sad time when people can get around to talk about potential of what a system has, yet it derails into a discussion about warz.

As soon as the FP16 flop war begins, who will be left to pick up the pieces?

 

[Leyasu]

We already know that Scorpio will pretty much run everything in 4K other than some 720p titles which will be checkerboard 4K, as stated in this article.

That's proof in the pudding that this thing is more powerful than the Pro...

But, but, Vega features will help achieve parity.

 

[Space_nut]

But, but, Vega features will help achieve parity.

I'm sure the Vega features MS used were all they needed for the gpu to get the most power. FP16 as shown in the dice presentation shows it helped with checkerboard 1800p but didn't make the gpu run faster then a 4.2tf gpu can