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[i-Lo]

Basically what I expected. The GPGPU will be a main part of the machine. And not the BS Wii U GPGPU people were screaming about.

1.4TF is pretty damn good. Good enough for 1080p 30Fps with extreme detail or 1080p 60fps with details at the level of "ultra" on PC today with some optimizations.

400GFLOP for computer is a lot. Might be used for BC but would be relatively hard to emulate the cell still. This is about as many GLOPs inside the entire Wii U. And GCN is much more efficient than the r700 shaders in the Wii U.

4GB at 176GB/s is respectable and more than enough. A more reasonable number compared to 192GB/s.

Texture units inside the 4CU are probably not usable for rendering in general. Im not sure how it would even work if CUs are dedicated to GPGPU and somehow be able to help texturize. We are probably looking at 14*4 texture units.

32ROPs will be amazing. Finally get good AA in consoles.

Glad you are pleased.

 

[Jack_AG]

These consoles will NOT be releasing at $350.

I dont think 350 but close. Also - comparing to WiiU is a bit out there considering the price of the tablet controller alone. Apples/Oranges comparison. Shame on you.

 

[Horse Armour]

For comparison-

GTX 470- 1.0886 TFs
GTX 480- 1.345
GTX 580- 1.5811
GTX 670- 2.4595
GTX 680- 3.0904

Terrible comparsion. 1 AMD GCN FLOP is worth around 0.6 nvidia Fermi FLOPs. Even then it's still a bad comparison. You should only compare these machines to the 7000 and the eventual 8000 AMD series. The closest comparison to both GPUs is the HD 7770.

 

[metalslimer]

The price of the Wii U will have nothing to do with these consoles unless one of them is coming with an expensive controller.

 

[Durante]

I don't understand this "14+4" idea yet. Unless there are some hardware customizations for those 4 CUs, I don't see the point in fixing the distribution to some specific scheme, since it would be more efficient to let each game make its own decisions.

So I'd assume that there are in fact some hardware customizations for those 4 CUs. Then the question centers on whether they are "upgrades", "downgrades" or simply "sidegrades" compared to normal, graphics-focused CUs.

 

[gundamkyoukai]

Well, relative to the PS3 and especially the 360, they're a lot less impressive so it's difficult to say how long they'll stay graphically relevant. Even if they're left behind faster than the last gen consoles hardware wise, there might still not be any games that take advantage of the much faster PC hardware just like this gen.

I feel next gen will be shorter than this one.
So even if they get left behind a new console will come out sooner .
It just makes more sense to bring out consoles faster if your making profit or a small lost from day 1 like how they doing now.

 

[Spongebob]

NOTE!

About 14 + 4 balance:

- 4 additional CUs (410 Gflops) “extra” ALU as resource for compute

- Minor boost if used for rendering

This means that even if you use these 4 CUs for rendering you won't achieve the same perfomrance as having a GPU with 18CU. This combined with prolelite's statements(Durango having better triangle and vertice rate) seem to suggest that the difference in graphics rendering performance between Durango and Orbis will be much smaller than the 50% some had once thought.

 

[googleplex]

This needs to be reiterated one more time. Compute tasks are expensive, and a GPU can be crippled by them in terms of performance.

Seriously, people need to read thuway's post.

 

[Mxrz]

These consoles will NOT be releasing at $350.

That's with Nintendo Tax on top of a $100-$150 controller.

 

[Durante]

Terrible comparsion. 1 nvidia FLOP is worth around 0.6 AMD GCN FLOPs.

What? If anything, it's the other way around!

 

[whitehawk]

Also, $499 is not expensive at all. This is a system that will last you 6 years minimum, most likely more than that. There aren't many tech products out there that can guarantee you that. The iPhone is 6 years old now, but no one uses the 1st gen model because it's too slow.

It's why I'll be buying a next-gen system regardless of price. I'd rather buy it now than wait 2 years and save what, $100? That's nothing.

 

[gofreak]

what i dont understand is this, how would vgleaks know that using these 4 CUs would produce only minor boost?

smells like wild speculation on their part.

Assuming it's all legit in the first place, and I believe it probably is, that's probably just the characterisation straight out of Sony's docs.

So what does this mean for multiplat... will the devs even take advantage of the extra 4 CU's? Or is this more so a Sony first party advantage?

They will, but it'll take some distinct handling if they didn't have fairly substantial GPU-compute planes before, so 'good' usage of this setup is likely something that will ramp up over time. First party will probably ultimately make the best use but that's really true of any setup.

So is there any consensus on whether it is better to include the 4CU in the main graphical pipeline or to keep it seperate?

We don't know if there is, but I doubt there is any today Devs who don't want to do any GPU-compute will look on it as a waste. Devs who have plans for GPU-compute will probably see it as more reasonable I guess. We'll see where the consensus lands over the course of the generation, in terms of devs using gpu processing for other things vs not.

 

[Zuhzuhzombie!!]

AMD bets the company on their new philosophy and products and neither Durango nor the PS4 end up with anything "new" like unified shaders have been.

HSA? GPGPU? HSA? Kaveri? Steamroller?

If reserving 4 CUs + downclocked GPU + Jaguar is the best AMD can do I really wonder if firing their designers have been such a good idea. They are far not ready for anything it seems.

It's highly specialized hardware to do all that + have a small form factor + not require 700 watts of power + be priced at something both the consumer and (especially in Sony's case) manufacturer can tolerate.

 

[kittoo]

Terrible comparsion. 1 nvidia Fermi FLOP is worth around 0.6 AMD GCN FLOPs. Even then it's still a bad comparison. You should only compare these machines to the 7000 and the eventual 8000 AMD series. The closest comparison to both GPUs is the HD 7770.

Damn. Didnt know that! I thought these were standard units.

 

[metalslimer]

That's with Nintendo Tax on top of a $100-$150 controller.

They are losing money on it.

Also, $499 is not expensive at all. This is a system that will last you 6 years minimum, most likely more than that. There aren't many tech products out there that can guarantee you that. The iPhone is 6 years old now, but no one uses the 1st gen model because it's too slow.

It's why I'll be buying a next-gen system regardless of price. I'd rather buy it now than wait 2 years and save what, $100? That's nothing.

Sorry some of us don't want to drop 500 dollars on a launch console with no clue of the future.

 

[Razgreez]

about how much compute power did the SPE's have all together?


because I been saying that the GPGPU could be used to run the SPE tasks for a long time. & it look like these 4 CU's will be taking the place of the SPE's like all the things that devs used to use the SPE's for can now be done with the 4 CU's in the PS4 set up.

The PS3 had 8 SPE/SPUs. One locked and one used for the OS. Each SPE could only run a single SIMD computation (very quickly) at a time - to my limited knowledge. AMD CU's consist of 4 SIMD compute blocks (usually) meaning they should be able to run 16 SIMD computations at a time in total. The likelihood of the 4 CUs being seperate is probably due to the nature of AMD CUs since 4 of them usually share 48KB (16KB + 32KB) of cache

 

[Can Crusher]

All is left is Durango specific info then.

Those 4 CUs sound like they could make stuff like procedural physics based animation, and shit like particles and destructible environments, cloth, actually doable next gen.

 

[Baconsammy]

I doubt the Wii U will still be 350 by the time these consoles release.

 

[thuway]

NOTE!



This means that even if you use these 4 CUs for rendering you won't achieve the same perfomrance as having a GPU with 18CU. This combined with prolelites statements(Durango having better trinagle and vertice rate) seem to suggest that the difference in graphics rendering performance between Durango and Orbis will be much smaller than the 50% some had once thought.

We've said this over and over and over again. Orbis and Durango will be good at different thing. Don't be foolish to think one is better than the other in all frames of work. However, this news about CU is something that makes Orbis EVEN better. People are morons. You lot are trying to spin something positive into a negative.

This is akin to Cell processor, that actually is worth hyping. Fuck is wrong with you GAf.

 

[Horse Armour]

What? If anything, it's the other way around!

That's what I meant! Changing it.

 

[SneakyStephan]

It is disappointing yet i'm pretty sure both these companies are focussing on much shorter console life-cycles. The wii u, psnext and nextbox are all far more focussed on efficiency than ever before - the global economy dictates as much

This is the silver lining and the glimmer of hope that I have.
A 3-4 year life cycle (like xbox 1 lifecycle) would make sense if you go with such modest low end hardware.

If they want to suck 8 years of life out of these things again then that means some serious stagnation of what can be done gameplay wise.

 

[Takuya]

I know numbers don't matter but the most expensive hardware in WiiU is the tablet. Nintendo sold it to someone for $280 without any power supply, if I remember correctly. Adding and subtracting directly won't make sense but it'ls a good estimate of what the pricing is.

Well, Krillin has quite the fancy tablet. That's probably the reason for the increased price.

I imagine it's safe to assume that Orbis/Durango will be launching at around $400. It's not unreasonable, I don't think. As some people predicted long ago, this looks to be a repeat of PS3/360/Wii again. Both Orbis and Durango will be quite similar.

I dont think 350 but close. Also - comparing to WiiU is a bit out there considering the price of the tablet controller alone. Apples/Oranges comparison. Shame on you.

The tablet isn't even all that great, no multi-touch, built-in battery, etc. Considering also that there are rumors of touch capability in the PS4 controller, and having "dual cameras" as well, I'm sure that the Nintendo Gamepad is a non-factor. I see Orbis and Durango releasing at $449 - $599.

 

[Reiko]

We've said this over and over and over again. Orbis and Durango will be good at different thing. Don't be foolish to think one is better than the other in all frames of work. However, this news about CU is something that makes Orbis EVEN better. People are morons. You lot are trying to spin something positive into a negative.

What is important is that the latest news brings an end to the PS2-Xbox type power gap hyperbole.

 

[oversitting]

I expect the BOM to be about $500.

Expect a $399 or a $449 launch.

 

[ionicbluebird]

I truly hope they haven't artificially gimped 4 CU's and force fed developers a mini GPGPU. It should be up to the developers how CU's are used!

I mean, unless they know that on average 4 CU's would be used for compute tasks for most games.. that sounds like a bit much though.


Well, if this is all true then Durango's disadvantage has shifted from rendering to compute... so basically Ha.. it's PS3 with cell all over again.

 

[Elios83]

$400 is the golden ring that Sony has to grab here. I have a very hard time picturing the least expensive Durango SKU being any more than that, so if Sony goes any higher it's at their own peril.

Both systems are clearly designed to be cheap to manufacture.
They would be sold at less than 400$ if there didn't include more expensive peripherals as controllers. But considering that there will be extra stuff, 400$ entry price should be a lock.

 

[metalslimer]

These consoles aren't going to be around for 3-4 years are you kidding me? That would barely give everyone time to recoup money and actually be able to coast through the generation with a good userbase

 

[phosphor112]

How has nobody photoshoped the flying saucer pic with the Orbis "mockup" yet?

If it sounds good, then count on MS and new Sony not to do it, it seems. Unless the list is BS or incomplete or Sony is hiding/tinkering with it still.

I want to berieve.

I mean, PS4 will be at least OKAY anyway, but I want greatness, not waiting for first party games to really outgun current games.

If they can get BC through those 4 CU's then sure.. but I'm not sure if they can or not. The SPE's are pretty fucking intense when it comes to compute processing...

 

[thuway]

What is important is that the latest news brings an end to the PS2-Xbox type power gap hyperbole.

You can't compare these machines on paper. Durango better have something to assist with compute, or else it just got much weaker in comparison.

 

[joeblow]

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.

Question: if this level of programming versatility for the CUs is a good thing when compared to a 18+0 arrangement, what would have been the negative of going with 0+18 instead of the rumored 14+4?

 

[Valnen]

What is important is that the latest news brings an end to the PS2-Xbox type power gap hyperbole.

But will we see a return of Skyrim and Bayonetta levels of bad port jobs?

 

[BruceLeeRoy]

So I read the first couple of pages, people were saying this is a beast.

Now it isnt? Can someone clarify this for me? Is the Orbis gonna be powerful or not, and is there a difference in power between it and Durango?

They are both going to be absolute beasts don't worry man

 

[nib95]

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.

Shots fired.

 

[Reiko]

You can't compare these machines on paper. Durango better have something to assist with GPU, or else it just got much weaker in comparison.

True. But I'm pretty sure the hardware engineers picked that up before putting things together. For the games they want to make it would put them at a huge disadvantage.

But will we see a return of Skyrim and Bayonetta levels of bad port jobs?

Spoiler

On Wii U unfortunately.

 

[Durante]

I expect the BOM to be about $500.

I really don't see any way that the BOM of this system could reach anything even close to $500. How are you arriving at that number?

 

[Spongebob]

We've said this over and over and over again. Orbis and Durango will be good at different thing. Don't be foolish to think one is better than the other in all frames of work. However, this news about CU is something that makes Orbis EVEN better. People are morons. You lot are trying to spin something positive into a negative.

This is akin to Cell processor, that actually is worth hyping. Fuck is wrong with you GAf.

Dude.

It says that when the 4CUs are used for rendering there is only a MINOR boost. This seems to suggest that these 4CUs aren't as capable as the other 14CUs in graphics rendering.

I'm not talking about the other benefits of the 4CUs, just rendering performance.

 

[iceatcs]

These consoles aren't going to be around for 3-4 years are you kidding me?

I hope for that, allowing game will get upper standard shorter everytime.

 

[grimshawish]

I doubt the Wii U will still be 350 by the time these consoles release.

Basic will disappear and next holiday Mario Kart will come installed at the Basics price.

We've said this over and over and over again. Orbis and Durango will be good at different thing. Don't be foolish to think one is better than the other in all frames of work. However, this news about CU is something that makes Orbis EVEN better. People are morons. You lot are trying to spin something positive into a negative.

Good. Its sounding like a really good system no matter what is going on with others or PC

 

[SniperHunter]

All is left is Durango specific info then.

Those 4 CUs sound like they could make stuff like procedural physics based animation, and shit like particles and destructible environments, cloth, actually doable next gen.

Red Faction Guerrilla says hi

 

[AranhaHunter]

No it won't.

Both systems are bound by optical media and magnetic storage as primary data input. Faster ram does not truly make up for the shrink in pool. It does allow for some interesting things between memory and GPU and CPU, particularly post processing. Orbis will likely have better AA too and likely better use of tessellation. for cross platform, it depends entirely on how efficient Durango GPU truly is - if its as rumored, cross-platform games will look identical. Both systems could achieve fantastic things with different strengths in mind, too.

But if you have a game on Durango utilizing 7 GB of ram (assuming 3GB is potentially incorrect) and a game on Orbis utilizing 3.5 GB of ram... That's a massive disadvantage that the speed of GDDR5 cannot make up. There's no technically feasible way it can. Procedurally generated textures couldn't do it either. Even 1.5 GB is a large hill to climb. Porting down from Durango could be a problem if they're using 7 GB for a scene (which I have my doubts either GPU could even handle that much texture/geometric data)

If the source of input was much faster, then there would be no question. This is all assuming specs are as rumored. If Durango efficiency isn't as rumored, then Orbis would be by far the most powerful platform but still be handicapped by ram pool.

Either way, I am truly curious where and how everything falls. I am so excite.

This is precisely why I think more RAM is needed for the PS4.

 

[gofreak]

I don't understand this "14+4" idea yet. Unless there are some hardware customizations for those 4 CUs, I don't see the point in fixing the distribution to some specific scheme, since it would be more efficient to let each game make its own decisions.

So I'd assume that there are in fact some hardware customizations for those 4 CUs. Then the question centers on whether they are "upgrades", "downgrades" or simply "sidegrades" compared to normal, graphics-focused CUs.

There was a suggestion earlier in the thread that context and thread switching between compute and graphics tasks on GCN isn't as optimal as it could be, or eventually will be in GPUs down the line.

So having a slice of CUs work outside of hardware thread control might make sense if that's true.

Jeffrigby mentioned that AMD currently recommends for some systems, an APU + discrete GPU, so the APU can be used for compute, and the GPU for graphics...that it's best to have the two work on distinct schedulers. Apparently post-2013/2014 GPUs will have better context switching.

They may well tweak them further for compute vs graphics also, but the above, if true, may be motivation enough for the split.

 

[WolfForager]

Let me know if this is a suitable analogy for the RAM situation guys:

Durago: A well/lake of X size with an inlet/outlet of diameter Y

Orbis: A well/lake of 0.5X size with an inlet/outlet of diameter 2Y.

 

[Jack_AG]

All is left is Durango specific info then.

I was already told what the special sauce is... it's called "Microsoft PR".

No amount of BITS or BLAST PROCESSING can compensate for "JUMP IN" at then end of every video game commercial.

PR > Specs

 

[Orayn]

But will we see a return of Skyrim and Bayonetta levels of bad port jobs?

The opposite. These things are so damn similar in terms of architecture that botched multiplats should be nothing but an unpleasant last-gen memory. I hope.

 

[ghst]

i've got a theory that the original steamroller spec made full use of all 18 CUs (leading to the original 1.8TFLOP number). sony's entire philosophy seems to be "durango + a tiny bit more" and even if it did arrive in time, on finding out that MS was going with jaguar cores and a cape verde GPU, steamroller seemed an unnecessary expense; given that they could just prop up a low power jaguar CPU with a few CUs from pitcairn and still run rings around durango's GPU.

 

[paradise_circus]

isn't the biggest flaw of the nextbox the huge amount of ram?
even if 2 gb of that is reserved for the os, it would take minutes to fill the 6 gb of ram with a conventional 6x bluray drive.
i don't think that ms wants a 12x drive again ....

 

[iceatcs]

Dude.

It says that when the 4CUs are used for rendering there is only a MINOR boost. This seems to suggest that these 4CUs aren't as capable as the other 14CUs in graphics rendering.

I'm not talking about the other benefits of the 4CUs, just rendering performance.

because 400 is minor

 

[deanos]

We've said this over and over and over again. Orbis and Durango will be good at different thing. Don't be foolish to think one is better than the other in all frames of work. However, this news about CU is something that makes Orbis EVEN better. People are morons. You lot are trying to spin something positive into a negative.

i think so too.
it would be much easier and probably cheaper to just leave it at 18 CUs.
if sony decided to customize 4 CUs they probably had good reason.
people seem to forger that sony designed orbis with their first party developers.

 

[Agent Ironside]

All is left is Durango specific info then.

Those 4 CUs sound like they could make stuff like procedural physics based animation, and shit like particles and destructible environments, cloth, actually doable next gen.

And that's exactly what I'm most interested in next gen. Looks Sony will produce what I want.

 

[SneakyStephan]

I expect the BOM to be about $500.

Expect a $399 or a $449 launch.

Based on what? Tarot cards?

Try a BoM of 200, maybe 250 with the controllers and the camera and move shit.