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EuroGamer: More details on the BALANCE of XB1

ethomaz

Banned
I'm not sure what about the guys here are complain about my comments because I didn't say nothing new.

Sorry if I disrespected someone with my comments (not joke or sarcarms... I really sorry for that)... I think the games will run better on PS4... that's it.
 

KKRT00

Member

c0de

Member
Poor c0de ;(
Meltdown incoming
:p

Y6ehbDO.gif
 

Bundy

Banned
Asking questions is not an attack dude.
You are missing the joke ;)
The whole article is made up by Leadbetter and MS. They're buddies for quite some time.
Just look at it. There are no real questions.
A lot of BS in it, too (from MS). Leadbetter could have embarrass him (MS) but he didn't. Just look at the CU's (VG Leaks) comment, etc.

Maaaan.... I love him ;D
 

Vizzeh

Banned
Why should he attack his buddies?

Wouldn't be surprised if it was more of a Microsoft published story, it didnt seem like a 2 way conversation. No technical retorts or curiosities, Surely balance also should translate to ease of programming.

I personally think we are all naturally comparing the 2 consoles assuming MS knew what Sony was doing, going with GDDR5, when infact MS probably thinking choosing esram (as an evolution on edram) was an upgrade when working alongside DDR3 over the Xbox 360... But compared to PS4, it looks an inferior choice (MS believe theirs is an improvement, without looking at the competition, not only their own console)

Their also talking about power saving on the RAM, forgive me if im wrong but isnt ram extremely low powered, low heat anyway, surely power consumption wouldnt be a design choice.. according to 'The net' on a quick search

•DDR3 runs at a higher voltage that GDDR5 (typically 1.25-1.65V versus ~1V)
 

KKRT00

Member
You are missing the joke ;)
The whole article is made up by Leadbetter and MS. They're buddies for quite some time.
Just look at it. There are no real questions.
A lot of BS in it, too (from MS). Leadbetter could have embarrass him (MS) but he didn't. Just look at the CU's (VG Leaks) comment, etc.


Maaaan.... I love him ;D

Oh god ... They've asked about bandwidth, they've asked about CU difference, they've asked about CPU boost relevance, they've asked about additional modules, they've asked about GPGPU solutions, they've asked about memory layout. What other question did You want?
Seriously, sometimes i dont know if people are seriously so awful and hateful or just live to troll.
 

Dragon

Banned
Meanwhile you've have 4 posts in this thread, none of which discuss the article, whose sole purpose seems to be to insult or deride other posters.

The article was interesting and I like reading about that stuff but considering I don't have the technical knowledge to understand much of it my opinion is similar to his, I'll just wait to play the games. As it happens the XB1 has more launch games I'm interested in so I'm picking that up first and I'll grab a PS4 next year when it has some games I want to play.

I'll continue to point out the confusion I have with people coming into the thread and saying I'm getting an Xbone because it has more interesting games. Thanks though for the lesson StudioTan.

So the MGS 5 video on the X1 looks no different than what was shown on the PS4.

MGS V is a cross gen game is it not? Anecdotal evidence aside, I don't think it's the game we should use to see the differences between the two systems.
 

StuBurns

Banned
I think it's more about the whole least common denominator angle, where developers will supposedly intentionally target their games for the weakest hardware as a baseline and either not bother optimizing for stronger systems or at least not put as much effort into it. Dunno how much to buy into that line of thinking, though I wouldn't be surprised if some games were designed along something like this principle.

And it's a fair point to remember that a lot of 3rd party multiplats are still being designed with current-gen constraints in mind anyway, heh.
Yeah, I don't see that happening at all. Because someone will, and no one wants to look bad. Is Battlefield 4 going to look as good as Killzone at launch? Who knows, but certainly DICE would like it to, and they're not going to skimp on a PS4 version because of that.
 

bobbytkc

ADD New Gen Gamer
I think we can expect both versions to look the same actually. Isn't the next gen version just the current gen game uprezzed with updated lighting?
 
GDDR5 is so good it's a little too good. it's uncontrollable like a runaway big rig on the highway. XBOX ONE is balanced and won't have this problem. consider us the sensible sedan of next gen
 
A true successor to the Xbox 360 is all I want, and the X1 is looking like a gorgeous system with a top drawer software line up and some very intriguing tech with custom silicon that's been worked over in every way to make it efficient and powerful. Hopefully the potential of Kinect 2.0 will be realised too.

So long as it's a next-gen step up on 360 (which it is) then that's all I care about, if PS4 is slightly more powerful in some ways then so what? So was the PS3.
 

StuBurns

Banned
Kojima demos his games on PC.
Stew, you're a technical sort of folk, if GTA5 is ported to PS4/XBO, could we expect flawless 1080p/60fps?

I ask, because despite all the 'twenty times more powerful' or whatever we heard last-gen, performance on HD Remasters is generally inline with normal games, despite the massively lower assets and things, so I'm not sure exactly how games scale in that sense.
 

Racer1977

Member
Balanced, is that another way of saying less powerful, once its been through the PR spin machine.

So much disingenuous rubbish coming from MS, through out so many figures and walls of text, in the hope of muddying the waters.
 
Oh god ... They've asked about bandwidth, they've asked about CU difference, they've asked about CPU boost relevance, they've asked about additional modules, they've asked about GPGPU solutions, they've asked about memory layout. What other question did You want?
Seriously, sometimes i dont know if people are seriously so awful and hateful or just live to troll.
They essentially asked exactly what Microsoft wanted to talk about.

I posted the list of Penello's claims that lead to this earlier in the thread:
  1. 18 CU's vs. 12 CU's =/= 50% more performance. Multi-core processors have inherent inefficiency with more CU's, so it's simply incorrect to say 50% more GPU.
  2. Adding to that, each of our CU's is running 6% faster. It's not simply a 6% clock speed increase overall.
  3. We have more memory bandwidth. 176gb/sec is peak on paper for GDDR5. Our peak on paper is 272gb/sec. (68gb/sec DDR3 + 204gb/sec on ESRAM). ESRAM can do read/write cycles simultaneously so I see this number mis-quoted.
  4. We have at least 10% more CPU. Not only a faster processor, but a better audio chip also offloading CPU cycles.
  5. We understand GPGPU and its importance very well. Microsoft invented Direct Compute, and have been using GPGPU in a shipping product since 2010 - it's called Kinect.
  6. Speaking of GPGPU - we have 3X the coherent bandwidth for GPGPU at 30gb/sec which significantly improves our ability for the CPU to efficiently read data generated by the GPU.
This Digital Foundry article is for all intents and purposes a platform for them to try and elaborate on, clarify and/or espouse these above claims in more depth. It essentially follows the same pattern of these claims. It's not some spur of the moment, coincidental interview; it's a reactive PR event.

Does it have information, sure. Is it ultimately still something of a puff piece, most assuredly. It really doesn't help that in the prior article, Leadbetter, essentially parroted the same line about the XB1 being balanced and wrote something to the effect of the PS4 being unbalanced.
 
LOL. That's what I don't get though. What's wrong with saying that you've balanced your hardware's design just right? It only seems like this is a problem because they're not beating or matching Sony on raw performance numbers, which kinda seems silly, don't you think? Cerny also thinks balance is important, he isn't mocked for saying it.

I mean, it isn't that unreasonable that they really do believe they've got a nice balanced design, is it? Hell, even I thought the design was a nice balance, and I was saying precisely this on here before E3! :p What else do these guys have if not balance? They sure as heck didn't go for raw performance muscle. Balance, if anything, seems like the right word for what they tried to go for with the system. Some disagree on that balance, others think it isn't as bad as people say it is.


1) xbone is weaker and costs $100 more. xbone peeps will never admit to this, hence what they tried (through albert) is make it seem like the ps4 is not that far ahead in terms of power. it is silly because of context. there is nothing wrong with xbone if a person looks at it and does not look at any other system, but in reality there is another system.

2) cerny is not mocked because he sets the record straight, he makes it easier to understand why ps4 has the more powerful hardware, and he relates those hardware numbers into applications in games.

3) "Hell, even I thought the design was a nice balance" senjutsu's opinions are not a barometer of what's balanced or not.

4) there is no balance in xbone, only concessions.
 

skdoo

Banned
Leadbetter is a MS shill... Never seen anyone so one-sided in his arguments. Maybe he is trying to get a job or something
 
There's no other way to interpret jumping from "The Power Of The Cloud" which gives you 300 Xbones of power, to "we didn't intentionally target the highest spec anyway, who cares lol" to "there wont even be a [notable] difference anyway! You guys underestimate our engineers; they made DirectX after all!" to now, where apparently balance is being peddled as the new keyword.

So what you're really saying is Microsoft has to be full of it, because they're actually defending the capability of their hardware design? People are acting as if this is a surprise that they would be doing this. They were always going to defend the quality and capability of the hardware inside the box. Are people really so insane as to think otherwise? They were never going to just shut up about it.

Marketing the cloud or saying they purposely didn't target the super high end doesn't automatically negate and render meaningless anything positive that they may have to say about how good they believe their design is. It's like people expect them to come out and say, "Yea our box is complete shit," or "Yes, we're way weaker than the competition," and unless they say do that, they couldn't possibly be saying anything remotely honest. None of these companies, no matter what is inside these boxes, are ever going to give any ground. You would think, however, that when architects appear to be giving out real information on details of the hardware, and how things work, or why they believe it was the right way to go, people would at least try to somewhat respect that these people maybe, just maybe, actually know their shit, and aren't just spouting material they were handed. It honestly can't be the case that you're only trustworthy if the specs tilt clearly in your favor, is it?

I would certainly hope that the issue at hand isn't that Microsoft has too much confidence in the system they've built, because, well, I don't know what to say if you expected them not to be. Oh, and they've actually been talking about the importance of balance and efficiency since day one, but people are choosing to view this through a lens of drama, since it's much more exciting that way. In fact, they've also been saying that they're achieving over 200GB/s across the memory sub-system since day one also, but people thought they were guilty of shenanigans, adding their 30GB/s coherent pathway to arrive at that number, when in reality there were just details about ESRAM not entirely explained or revealed yet. Hell, even I at one point honestly thought that's what was going on. And right now I just don't think these guys would up and put their credibility on the line if everything that they were saying was a complete and total lie. Are they trying to cover up for some areas that may not be quite so flattering for their system, or that shows an ounce of weakness? I bet, but people are crazy if they think the same hasn't already been done a few times for the PS4 already, but that fact still doesn't invalidate every piece of information that might be conveyed about the systems these people literally helped to build, on both sides. We are perfectly capable of reading between the lines, and seeing where they are trying to put their best foot forward on an unflattering metric, but it doesn't mean that the essence of what they're saying has no grounds at al, or the entirety of what they're saying should be tossed out as invalidl. This article had quite a few real details and information that was genuinely unknown prior to this article.

I said it already, but I'm eager to see what the various tech sites out there say about these details that have been shared..

Leadbetter is a MS shill... Never seen anyone so one-sided in his arguments. Maybe he is trying to get a job or something

Ahh, yes, there it is. That word. The new favorite word these days. Plenty of times in that article he outright states the clear edge that Sony holds in some areas, and directly questions them on that specific topic, and they gave their response. Was he suppose to interrupt and call them liars? And what about all the awesome PS4 articles that were also written by this same individual? How do you guys explain that? While people are busy questioning the guys motives for no good reason, I think people need to start questioning their own motives for why they're so selectively shitting on the guy based on which console he's writing good news about. If he writes something mildly positive about the Xbox One, he's a shill. If he does the same for the PS4, and you guys love or enjoy the article, you guys act like you don't even know who wrote the article, in many cases avoiding any mention of his name altogether for fear of actually giving the guy a tiny bit of credit lol.
 

StuBurns

Banned
They should shut up. They should say that not once has the most powerful console won the generation, clearly it doesn't matter, and they're perfectly satisfied with the performance of their box. Done.
 

AlphaDump

Gold Member
So 140MB-150GB is a realistic target and DDR3 bandwidth can really be added on top?
"Yes. That's been measured."

ugh...

I have 1 of 2 methods to use for moving out of my apartment:

1) I have a 8 GB truck that goes 171 mph.

2) i have a 8 GB truck that goes 60mph, and a bike with a 32 MB basket that goes 140-150mph.

I have to haul 9 GBs in the fastest way possible.
 
They should shut up. They should say that not once has the most powerful console won the generation, clearly it doesn't matter, and they're perfectly satisfied with the performance of their box. Done.

I think their attempts to prove that the performance is a wash means they are not happy with their boxes performance actually.

I mean... people have to run through so many "what if" hoops to get to the conclusion the x1 is not blown out of the water. The games will show what is up soon enough. I excitedly await the craziness that occurs when bf3 comes out... multiplatform comparisons will be completely glorious.
 
They should shut up. They should say that not once has the most powerful console won the generation, clearly it doesn't matter, and they're perfectly satisfied with the performance of their box. Done.

Winning the generation doesn't mean much when they're addressing technophiles. I think their voice is just amplified on this forum because people are constantly looking for something to complain about. Otherwise it's a fairly decent article that expands on some of the queries people have had about the hardware.

Plus price wins a generation. Not the hardware.
 

Norml

Member
Yeah, that's ridiculous. The difference between 900p and 1080p is obvious, just like the difference between 1080p and 1440p. It gets harder when you have perfect AA (like 8xSSAA), but none of these games will have that.

The Crysis screens in the article show a clear difference.

8lXVoUn.png

0sNNxWR.png
 

StuBurns

Banned
Winning the generation doesn't mean much when they're addressing technophiles. I think their voice is just amplified on this forum because people are constantly looking for something to complain about. Otherwise it's a fairly decent article that expands on some of the queries people have had about the hardware.

Plus price wins a generation. Not the hardware.
Price is important, but it's a bunch of things I guess, and some of that is probably performance, but it's really not key.

If BF4 is 1080p on PS4 and 900p on XBO (and I'm not saying it will be, or anything like that), how many people will actually care? The twenty five million who gobble up CoD's 600p every year? They clearly don't care at all. There are the people who care greatly about IQ, but they're core PC gamers, because that's where you go for the pristine image.

This debate is kind of irrelevant, because even if the consoles were reversed, I still think Sony would be favored, MS still went hard anti-consumer than flip flopped, they're still way more expensive, and they're still forcing Kinect. I think MS should be confident in the performance not being a serious deciding factor in this race, because it's really not.
 
I think their attempts to prove that the performance is a wash means they are not happy with their boxes performance actually.

I mean... people have to run through so many "what if" hoops to get to the conclusion the x1 is not blown out of the water. The games will show what is up soon enough. I excitedly await the craziness that occurs when bf3 comes out... multiplatform comparisons will be completely glorious.

A twist. Defending their box means it's weak. Not many hoops need to be jumped through at all. It's actually quite easy to see how the xbox one is the weaker system, but not nearly as weak as people try to make it seem, and the games shown so far make it a whole lot easier to do.

The Crysis screens in the article show a clear difference.

8lXVoUn.png

0sNNxWR.png

If these are the kinds of differences you guys talking about seeing this gen, you're in for a long ride. Keep those numbers handy, you might need them to remind yourselves of what you think you should be seeing at that rate. Seriously, we know the PS4 is stronger. The problem, I think, is people not agreeing that the Xbox One is significantly weaker in comparison. That's a fair argument to make, but I've really said enough on this matter.
 
Yours aren't either.

EmptySpace never said his did. senjutsu's comment read as if "hell, even he thinks the design is balanced" which amounts to nothing. comment came off as if even senjutsu thinks it is balanced, therefore the system is totally balanced. problem with that is senjutsu's opinions are not a standard to anything. either that, or poor wording.
 

c0de

Member
EmptySpace never said his did. senjutsu's comment read as if "hell, even he thinks the design is balanced" which amounts to nothing. comment came off as if even senjutsu thinks it is balanced, therefore the system is totally balanced. problem with that is senjutsu's opinions are not a standard to anything. either that, or poor wording.

yeah, that's what opinions are for. they are totally and only yours. and there are forums where people discuss their opinions. like, perhaps, neogaf.com.
 

frizby

Member
I'm bothered by the understandable instinct to attack the messenger rather than the message.

Leadbetter may be biased, and MS is obviously doing some PR spin, but that doesn't really matter. What matters is the facts as they were presented.


  1. Were they not giving us what we asked for? ("technical fellow" explanation of AP posts)
  2. Were they not accurate?
  3. Were they smart to do it, or should they have stuck with "just wait for the games"?
Please note that I agree that PS4 is obviously more powerful. I just think the "shill" accusations are kind of boring.
 

vpance

Member
ugh...

I have 1 of 2 methods to use for moving out of my apartment:

1) I have a 8 GB truck that goes 171 mph.

2) i have a 8 GB truck that goes 60mph, and a bike with a 32 MB basket that goes 140-150mph.

I have to haul 9 GBs in the fastest way possible.

What if the bike can exist in two different places at the same time using low latency? Also, PRT turns the basket into a black hole.
 
A twist. Defending their box means it's weak. Not many hoops need to be jumped through at all. It's actually quite easy to see how the xbox one is the weaker system, but not nearly as weak as people try to make it seem, and the games shown so far make it a whole lot easier to do.

if anything, the games shown so far actually show how good the ps4 is taking into account they are launch games.
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
Microsoft's approach to asynchronous GPU compute is somewhat different to Sony's - something we'll track back on at a later date. But essentially, rather than concentrate extensively on raw compute power, their philosophy is that both CPU and GPU need lower latency access to the same memory.

Doesn't this suggest that MS's approach to fine grained compute...is to not have fine grained compute?

Seems like Sony have two clear benefits here. First, they have double the number of ROPs, which should mean less bottlenecking of the CUs. Secondly, even if the CUs can't be completely utilised for graphics, PS4 is in a good position to utilise the untapped capacity with GPGPU. And we've seen examples in PS3 where the SPEs were used to help out the GPU, so similar things could be done to improve the graphics output via GPGPU
 

DBT85

Member
I think had some technical questions been asked while they were giving the answers people would be a bit more satisfied. Rather than just letting them wheel things out without questioning the myriad of bits that are being questioned in this thread.
 
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