systemfehler
Member
A VLIW architecture already depends that the compiler knows whats best by grouping tasks accordingly. I would rather have seen 18 CUs for GPGPU as I fear that the Jaguar cores might need all the help they can get.
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VGleaks: Orbis Unveiled! [Updated]
- Thread starter ekim
- Start date
A VLIW architecture already depends that the compiler knows whats best by grouping tasks accordingly. I would rather have seen 18 CUs for GPGPU as I fear that the Jaguar cores might need all the help they can get.
It's pretty much a quote heaven.
this.
moneyman232
Banned
Sounds like a nice balance of power without being excessively expensive. Now all I need is an open world Uncharted from ND
Horse Armour
Member
Clearly not, if you'd read it. It says they provide a minor boost in rendering. What the reason is for only providing a minor boost is up to speculation at the moment.
Yeah given the focus a lot of engines have on compute tasks, I think it's a smart decision.
Well if they're not part of the graphics rendering pipeline they would still work, but would be less efficient at doing this.
You would really want to use them for compute tasks unless you really can't come up with four compute tasks that are relevant to your game.
Same here, I remember the TV show "Rome" and I would be thrilled by a game taking place in ancient Rome. There was a game by Capcom called Rome (I think) but it sucked ass.
In terms of PS4, the picture has definitely gone from one of very simple 'cleanliness' to something more complicated.
Thinking of the 18 CUs as one entirely unified block, it was easy to see 'freebie wins' over Durango with relatively straightforward approaches.
But if 4 are taken out of the hardware-balanced regime, devs won't be able to just twiddle a few lines of code to get better AF or whatever out of purely having more grunt. It'll take more thinking, it adds programmer burden (for the benefit of, presumably, improved performance and control if you do want to go out of your way and use your GPU for things other than graphics).
Getting high utilisation out of PS4 will require less naive approaches now too. It makes me go 'ugh' wrt simple development while raising an interesting new prospect for devs that want to get every last ounce out of the machine...they'll now have to think about fairly substantial gpgpu work, and that'll be interesting to see.
I still think Durango's approach will be less forgiving of naive approaches though. If we consider the ex-compute GPUs and CPUs (more obviously) to be basically a wash now, it still has a more complex bandwidth and memory setup.
Thinking of the 18 CUs as one entirely unified block, it was easy to see 'freebie wins' over Durango with relatively straightforward approaches.
But if 4 are taken out of the hardware-balanced regime, devs won't be able to just twiddle a few lines of code to get better AF or whatever out of purely having more grunt. It'll take more thinking, it adds programmer burden (for the benefit of, presumably, improved performance and control if you do want to go out of your way and use your GPU for things other than graphics).
Getting high utilisation out of PS4 will require less naive approaches now too. It makes me go 'ugh' wrt simple development while raising an interesting new prospect for devs that want to get every last ounce out of the machine...they'll now have to think about fairly substantial gpgpu work, and that'll be interesting to see.
I still think Durango's approach will be less forgiving of naive approaches though. If we consider the ex-compute GPUs and CPUs (more obviously) to be basically a wash now, it still has a more complex bandwidth and memory setup.
Are those people really serious? O_O I can't believe...
High Prophet of Regret
Member
HYPE level increasing!
Finally someone brings it up. Been postulating it in my mind since reading the article. Problem is you're still 2 "SPU"s short...
bitoriginal
Member
I know this happened at the beginning of the thread, but I can't stop laughing.
(Just to clarify, I'm not anti Wii U in any way, but I do like DBZ.)
DreadPirateRoberts
Member
Heh, I see what you did there.
Horse Armour
Member
Lol. Both PS4 and Xbox 3 will easily come in at under $400, no doubt at all based on these specs.
LukasTaves
Member
In theory, but GCN tessellation unit is not that flexible, at least on PC. Here's hoping that in a closed box environment they can actually use it to efficiently crank the poly count up.
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
This could play into Sony's favor though, as it takes no effort of any kind of 'utilize' faster GPU and RAM (meaning you get better framerate in the game automatically) while it takes conscious effort to use extra ram.
You say this as if Xbox 3 will never use it's GPGPU for computing or PS4 will always use it's GPGPU for computing?
it's still 1.8TFLOPS vs 1.2TFLOPS it's just that 400 of the 1840 GFLOPS will be more balanced for computing.
they both have the same CPU so chances are that any game that will need the extra computing power of the PS4 GPGPU will also need it on Xbox 3 too so where will that extra computing power come from?
This needs to be reiterated one more time. Compute tasks are expensive, and a GPU can be crippled by them in terms of performance.
The odd number to me suggests this decision was made solely for the compute focus of many engines.
Gigantic portions of Unreal Engine 4 run on compute shaders for example, and any of those that aren't part of the rendering pipeline could run on these more efficiently.
Wait so they are indeed weaker then people are saying? Like 350 US dollars type of weak?
zomgbbqftw
Banned
So is it possible that these 4CUs run at full speed DP?
No. Tflops count is still the same "on paper".
GPU remains 1.8 tetraflaps, but 4 CU's [~0.4 Tflops] can be accessed directly by developers and be used for their specific needs.
I think 3.5GB will be adequate for a very long time. Games on Windows with fully decked out settings don't even use that much, unlike when the PS3 launched with 256mb. It will fare better than the PS3 at least.
SolidSnakex
Member
I think we're more likely to see something like Arkham City than a straight up GTA-style open world game. AC used an open world hub, but still had sections where you'd go into a more contained zone where they could have set pieces.
SnakeSlashRO
Banned
Anyone compare this to what you can get on PC gaming at all?
Noisepurge
Member
i NEED to see a picture of the console 
~~
~~Someone earlier in the thread seemed to suggest Durango also has 'a compute module' with flexible/programmable computing grunt, but I'm not sure where that came from.
These are specialized units.
i NEED to see a picture of the console
You won't for a while, at least not the final design. I bet the prototypes are very "rough" at this stage.
phosphor112
Banned
But you add them together bro.
I don't believe both of those. There might be something different but they sure don't know how to portray that information.
Can Crusher
Banned
Isn't this what we had already? Wasn't there some additional silicon?
gundamkyoukai
Member
Yep it's a very interesting way to help the GPU do stuff that would have taken more power to do otherwise .
I don't know AMD's GCN architecture well enough to say for sure. The raw flops are there, roughly double a Cell in half the cores from what it sounds like. But at the low clock speed the CUs run at, the only way it can get so many flops is through incredibly wide and complex instructions with even more aggressive SIMD than the Cell SPUs. I'd be really surprised if Sony and AMD manage to pull even close to universal PS3 BC out of that, no matter what method they use (software, microcode, something else...).
If these rumors are true, it'll be the PS2 on PS3 situation again. :/
Hold on a minute there console warrior. If you want things like destructible environments, heavy physics, better animation blending, less clipping, and better set pieces, than you better be good at Compute.
This was a conscious decision, and it is GOOD news. If Durango doesn't have this, you can damn well bet that a significant portion of the GPU will be crippled. GPGPU is the wave of the future, don't be daft.
Horse Armour
Member
350 dollars is a lot of money. The 7870 GPU with 2GB of GDDR5 is $250 retail and it is twice as fast as what's in these boxes. MS and Sony could easily get something like that for half the price once you factor out the retail cut, nvidia/AMD cut, AiB partner cut, memory and finally the other graphics cards components out that you don't need in a console. That would leave $225 out of a $350 BOM for the relatively slow CPU, 4GB of GDDR5 or 8GB of DDR3, a bog standard blu ray drive, motherboard and other miscellaneous items. $300 is more than achievable once you consider the weak GPUs in these machines.
moneyman232
Banned
Exactly what I meant, a fully explorable world with areas containing set pieces. It became kind of obvious they were headed in that direction with some of the sandbox scenarios in uncharted 3
i NEED to see a picture of the console
Late April to mid May imo will be when we get some stuff. Might get lucky seeing leaked prototype at GDC but thats pushing it.
SirIgbyCeaser
Banned
Extra CU's might be set aside for 3d rendering perhaps?
Taking care of depth and rendering things twice or something?
Taking care of depth and rendering things twice or something?
iamshadowlark
Banned
I'm gonna go with no one knows. Including the VGleaks guys. I don't feel they understand what they have.
Anyway, at worse it will probably be like farming rendering tasks out to the SPEs, which can provide a considerable boost.
Something should be noted, is that both these consoles have relatively weak CPUs, so there's no doubt that computationally expensive tasks like next-gen physics will have to be assisted by the GPU alus.
iceatcs
Junior Member
How about not really. Not every games need open world.
I won't mind for Uncharted graphics (animation mainly) in the non-Uncharted openworld.
I still don't understand why 7 GB DDR3 are considered better to 3,5GB of GDDR5. It's really weird even with ESRAM.
MikeE21286
Member
So, my current PC i:
I5 2500kGTX 570
12GB DDr3
Can Orbis do things that I can't with my PC?
I5 2500kGTX 570
12GB DDr3
Can Orbis do things that I can't with my PC?