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[Thunder Monkey]

Yes, i was talking high end PCs and no it´s not woefully underpowered compared to those, except you are talking about a NASA supercpomputer.

I'd consider a swing of 2-3x the flop count using similar architectures as woefully underpowered. I mean single GPU's have been launching for the past year with effective flop rates at 2x the entire PS4 system. By the end of this year we'll be looking at that on similar architectures.

By the end of the PS4's first year you'll have PC's (top end of course) running the same multiplatform games at higher resolutions with a whole battery of other improvements. And that will be the most powerful console on shelves for years at the minimum. The end of this coming generation should be in a worse position against PC's compared to the last. SVOGI might end up being a dream for consoles this coming generation, but I doubt it will be too long in the generation before PC's are doing it all at little to no cost.

The only thing PS4 and XOne will be able to say is that they increased the baseline. And even then PC GPU's will probably be running the same titles better at launch.

 

[raven777]

I assume this underclock will be changeable once they solve whatever problem the esram or heat was having?

 

[kevinski]

I'm hoping for a FFXIII-style reveal at Microsoft's E3 conference this year, but with Mark Cerny showing up in place of a trailer. C'mon, Microsoft...

 

[artist]

Isn't that a $400-500 graphics card? Essentially the price of the consoles themselves?

$649

 

[professor_t]

I hope this isn't true. The weaker the Xbone is the more it will gimp multiplatform games.

This. I can't believe there are people who actually seem giddy about this news. If true, it's just going to drag the market down even further, and I'm not even talking about multiplats on the PS4. PC gaming is going to suffer. It's depressing.

I suppose someone can hope that a weak Xbox will get dusted by the PS4, thereby "punishing" MS for their anti-consumer practices, but I don't think that will happen. They'll do just fine in the world's biggest market. We just won't see as much of an advancement in games.

 

[gofreak]

I'm no expert in silicon manufacturing but from what I understand there are always tiny errors in the chip. Running at a higher clock speed makes these flaws "break" and causes errors.

Basically all i7 intel chips are supposed to be 3.8GHz, but they have some way of testing them and the 'rejects' get sold as 3.4, 3.2, ect.

Oh I see. I didn't know clockspeed was a factor but I guess that makes sense. Thanks.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

Sounds like we're dealing with an expert here.

He's not an idiot so please don't treat him like one.

 

[Proelite]

I assume this underclock will be changeable once they solve whatever problem the esram or heat was having?

Clocks always go down, not up in console development.

 

[Militant17]

I assume this underclock will be changeable once they solve whatever problem the esram or heat was having?

how will they change this in the consoles already shipped or sold?

 

[BigDug13]

Hubris maybe? Or they grew content with resting on their laurels. Either way something has seemed off since the system's announcement. Nothing about this feels polished or thought out as much as it should be. I can't put my finger on it completely but something internally at Microsoft is responsible for this laziness. I wonder if they thought they had more time perhaps? Maybe they figured Sony wouldn't push a potential launch for another two or so years and they felt that gave them enough leeway to not really care.

Maybe they really underestimated Sony and thought they would release another powerful but very difficult console with "untappable" power again like PS3, or simply wouldn't try to be the most powerful like with PS2. Fact is Sony brought the heat so strong that it trumps the raw power of any previous console when compared to its peers in any generation.

 

[JAYSIMPLE]

poetic justice??

 

[XenoJim]

how will they change this in the consoles already shipped or sold?

What do you think that wonderful cloud is for?

 

[Bad_Boy]

Clocks always go down, not up in console development.

Except for psp iirc.

 

[BRocknRolla]

It just occurred to me that this is actually possible. They will probably have playable games but they will run running off dev kits or something equivalent.

This is entirely possible. I'd saying even more than likely. They certainly aren't in full production yet, so whatever is on the floor, if anything is on the floor, would be a dev kit at best. Performance there will be and indicator of very little. No one will be getting any answers to this rumor unless MS or a dev spills it.

The new Kinect contains it's own custom processor - unlike the original (was removed in the months leading up to launch and proccessing of Kinect 1.0 was moved to the 360 console itself)...this processor is pretty important apparently.

What are you even talking about? Are you posting in the right thread?

 

[fatgamecat]

Isn't that a $400-500 graphics card? Essentially the price of the consoles themselves?

Consoles have great price/performance ratio and performance/watt ratio.

The issue next gen consoles will have is that a GTX 670 will go for $100-150 in a couple years, greatly reducing the price/performance ratio. PS3/360 launched very close to GTX 8800 performance, PS4 will launch nowhere near GTX 780 performance.

 

[cchum]

Maybe they really underestimated Sony and thought they would release another powerful but very difficult console with "untappable" power again like PS3, or simply wouldn't try to be the most powerful like with PS2. Fact is Sony brought the heat so strong that it trumps the raw power of any previous console when compared to its peers in any generation.

I think sony bluffed with Cell 2 and Larrabee. Sony essentially used MS R&D against them like MS used IBM

 

[BigDug13]

This. I can't believe there are people who actually seem giddy about this news. If true, it's just going to drag the market down even further, and I'm not even talking about multiplats on the PS4. PC gaming is going to suffer. It's depressing.

I suppose someone can hope that a weak Xbox will get dusted by the PS4, thereby "punishing" MS for their anti-consumer practices, but I don't think that will happen. They'll do just fine in the world's biggest market. We just won't see as much of an advancement in games.

People are giddy because MS should not be rewarded for their anti-consumer practices. I personally want them to struggle hard with this new business direction. Publishers need to adapt, not consumers.

 

[kasane]

Except for psp iirc.

Yes CFW psp can run on higher clock speeds

 

[Militant17]

What do you think that wonderful cloud is for?

Its a place where MS executives currently have their heads.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Except for psp iirc.

IIRC Sony down-clocked the PSP in software to improve battery life. The CPU itself was always manufactured to work at the higher speed. This is a whole different situation with Xbone.

 

[ThisWreckage]

Its a place where MS executives currently have their heads.

I laughed.

 

[AstroZombie]

MS would rather take a further reduction in power, lower the resolution to 900p, forgo any dreams of tesselation or expensive effects that make no real difference to the average user- and launch at the same as Sony.

Why stop there, why not just take the guts of an Xbox 360 and put them in the shiny new XBone housing at that rate?

Seriously, WTF is the point of releasing a new console if you're going to make a damn near lateral movement in graphical power?

 

[mrklaw]

Sorry if already answered but how would dropping clockspeed improve yields?

Cutting the number of compute units would seem more obvious ala the redundant 8th SPE in PS3 cell.

if the yield issues are due to the esram, then chopping CUs won't help. Perhaps a heat issue affecting the esram so they have to downclock the GPU

 

[syko de4d]

What do you think that wonderful cloud is for?

for marketing and DRM?

 

[Bad_Boy]

IIRC Sony down-clocked the PSP in software to improve battery life. The CPU itself was always manufactured to work at the higher speed. This is a whole different situation with Xbone.

True, point taken. Didn't psp firmware later raise those clocks back to normal though?

 

[SenjutsuSage]

So, are people already preparing to come up with an excuse for why Xbox One titles look better than people expect them to look at E3? How cute.

Running off significantly stronger dev kits, running on pcs (some, sure), but enough of the games shown at E3, particularly major launch titles, will absolutely have to be legit examples of what's possible on the retail machine.

 

[raven777]

how will they change this in the consoles already shipped or sold?

oh I thought it was just a system thing like psp where the actual clock is 333mhz but they initially made it 222mhz. Later you could unlock 333mhz for some games.

 

[CLEEK]

True, point taken. Didn't psp firmware later raise those clocks back to normal though?

The SDK change let devs use the high clock speed for new games, but it didn't effect games already released.

If you had custom firmware, you could just set the PSP to run at 333MHz for everything, which helped smooth out games with frame rate issues.

 

[kitch9]

At this rate Xbone is going to be the 720p machine and PS3 the 1080p one.

 

[hackdog]

So after all the Wii U bashing do you think Xbox biggest fans will be able to accept that the PS4 GPU could have a bigger advantage over the Xbox One as the Xbox One has over the Wii U?

Fans will never accept anything they don't like.
Cognitive dissonance wins over all reason. Goalposts will just have to be moved.

 

[Soler]

Sony fans rejoicing in this are doing so at their own peril. A less powerful Xbox One potentially means less powerful PS4 games for developers who start on the lowest common denominator and port up.

Better frames per second is a great trade off

 

[goomba]

At this rate Xbone is going to be the 720p machine and PS3 the 1080p one.

then they should have called it xbox 720

 

[Replicant]

This is what happens when you try to make all-in-one device with complicated DRM methods instead of just a machine that can play great-looking games.

Well deserved MS! I have no pity for you.

 

[xn0]

What do you think that wonderful cloud is for?

Its a place where MS executives currently have their heads.

 

[stryke]

True, point taken. Didn't psp firmware later raise those clocks back to normal though?

Not on default I don't think. It was just unlocked for whatever games that came out afterwards.

 

[zomgbbqftw]

FWIW the model we're working on at the bank assumes poor yields leading to a higher cost, our semi-conductors market analysts all say that poor yields are a side-effect of what MS have done by integrating RAM onto the die. These guys are rarely wrong.

I could definitely see downclocks to raise yields and lower costs. I think vs a delay it is the wiser choice. There is no way MS could delay Xbone in Europe and leave the market wide open for PS4 this year. They might as well not bother releasing at all in Europe if they don't get out around the same time as Sony.

 

[Ryoku]

Clocks always go down, not up in console development.

Except for Wii U.

400MHz --> 550MHz (GPU)

1GHz --> 1.24GHz (CPU)

 

[crazy_about_denise]

3 to 4x weaker than a 780 is weak.

Remember this is before the console has even come out usually it takes a year or 2 for pc tech to leapfrog new console power.

This time however right off the bat pcs melt consoles somehow. Disappointing all the way around especially as a pc gamer. It will hold pc gaming down in a fear years because developers always develop for the lowest common denominator.

In the case of the PS4 you're missing the unified Memory bus, speed, bandwidth and the huge amount thereof. On top of that both CPU/GPU caches that can be bypassed and written back and forth to main RAM, the hardware doesn't change and doesn't "waste" resources unlike on PC were you have to account for different combos and data.

The PS4 is a heavily optimized gaming platform with mediocre component parts except for the RAM architecture.
Simply put, you're comparing apples and oranges. Saying the consoles are, what was the word, massively weaker overall compared to a PC is a hyperbole.

 

[Bluekaveli]

Things just aren't going in favour of MS.

 

[Mandoric]

True, point taken. Didn't psp firmware later raise those clocks back to normal though?

Yes, but PSP batteries are user-serviceable and Xbone heatsinks aren't.

 

[FranXico]

Even if the rumors are true, the performance difference between the PS4 and the XBone won't be too big. Forza 5 will still look every bit as good as it did at the reveal.

Please, do not compare either of the next-gen consoles to the current gen WiiU.

 

[stryke]

FWIW the model we're working on at the bank assumes poor yields leading to a higher cost, our semi-conductors market analysts all say that poor yields are a side-effect of what MS have done by integrating RAM onto the die. These guys are rarely wrong.

I could definitely see downclocks to raise yields and lower costs. I think vs a delay it is the wiser choice. There is no way MS could delay Xbone in Europe and leave the market wide open for PS4 this year. They might as well not bother releasing at all in Europe if they don't get out around the same time as Sony.

What do your analysts say regarding yields for PS4?

 

[ironcreed]

FWIW the model we're working on at the bank assumes poor yields leading to a higher cost, our semi-conductors market analysts all say that poor yields are a side-effect of what MS have done by integrating RAM onto the die. These guys are rarely wrong.

I could definitely see downclocks to raise yields and lower costs. I think vs a delay it is the wiser choice. There is no way MS could delay Xbone in Europe and leave the market wide open for PS4 this year. They might as well not bother releasing at all in Europe if they don't get out around the same time as Sony.

Sounds like they just miscalculated and screwed the pooch big time with their design philosophy and now it's too late in the game to delay.

 

[XenoJim]

There is no way MS could delay Xbone in Europe and leave the market wide open for PS4 this year. They might as well not bother releasing at all in Europe if they don't get out around the same time as Sony.

What European market? The built a box dedicated to television that only works in America. I'm more interested to see what their marketing approach to that issue on its own is going to be rather than a potential downgrade to stats they promised.

 

[Brad Grenz]

It's been suggested on Beyond3D that the SRAM array may literally be too large for signals to travel the physical distance in time to be considered valid in a single clock cycle. No one has ever made a pool of SRAM this large before. IBM uses EDRAM for their large CPU caches. Maybe that's in part because they were not sure SRAM could scale effectively do to such issues. If correct, that means the normal measures you'd take to improve yields (additional cooling, deactivating defective regions, even increasing production runs) would not be effective. But lowering the clock would give a signal more time to travel through a wire.

 

[Maximilian Kolbe]

So, are people already preparing to come up with an excuse for why Xbox One titles look better than people expect them to look at E3? How cute.

Running off significantly stronger dev kits, running on pcs (some, sure), but enough of the games shown at E3, particularly major launch titles, will absolutely have to be legit examples of what's possible on the retail machine.

It's bad rumor so most gaf will trust

 

[Dilly]

http://i.minus.com/iVDLTVN5PX7AX.gif[IMG][/QUOTE]

Dear lord, it's my twin.

 

[Spongebob]

Even if the rumors are true, the performance difference between the PS4 and the XBone won't be too big. Forza 5 will still look every bit as good as it did at the reveal.

Please, do not compare either of the next-gen consoles to the current gen WiiU.

A 2x difference is huge.

 

[gofreak]

It may be coincidental, but that the only metric they gave for gpu performance was clockspeed independent ( number of ops per clock ) doesn't exactly dismiss the idea that clockspeeds aren't locked down yet. I didn't give a second thought to that at the time but in hindsight that draws a bit of suspicion.

 

[SenjutsuSage]

A part of me is wondering if this "rumor" has anything to do with confusion over the different power states of the Xbox One.

It would make sense that there are different power states, some that would even lower clock rates or entirely disable specific parts of the system when the system isn't busy playing full games, or is occupied with less intensive tasks. Are we sure that the sources informing people of this stuff aren't confusing what are the lower, base clocks to the fact that there is likely a higher boost clock when the system demands it for games?