Support NeoGAF

[Zen]

And really if CUs don't scale linearly you could be encountering greater issues with complexity diminishing returns with 16 v 24 than 12 against 18.

 

[stryke]

This is absolutely amazing.

There's a lot of misinformation out there and a lot of people who don't get it

next minute

Sony was actually agreeing with us. They said that their system was balanced for 14 CUs.

 

[Bundy]

This is absolutely amazing.
next minute

Yep! And the CU bit is actually wrong

 

[andromeduck]

And really if CUs don't scale linearly you could be encountering greater issues with complexity diminishing returns with 16 v 24 than 12 against 18.

forget that!

someone needs to tell AMD before they embarrass themselves with a 32 CU card

 

[skdoo]

I love "balance"... it's the new "power of the cloud". Next we will be hearing about "billions of transistors" again... Anyone see a pattern with these articles yet?

 

[Monty Mole]

Graphics lead to better framerate which lead to better gameplay. What a cop out statement.

We had 60fps games on the NES, so he has a point. But a point which contributes nothing to this thread.

 

[hardvibes]

Everytime they say the word "balance" I think about The Matrix and Batman Begins...

 

[andromeduck]

Everytime they say the word "balance" I think about The Matrix and Batman Begins...

lol I always think of lenoardo's "overbalanced" wheel

 

[SenjutsuSage]

This is absolutely amazing.



next minute

Not to derail the thread, but the PS4 GPU balanced at 14 CUs thing is actually quite true. It's not something that was misinterpreted or made up. This doesn't mean that 14 CUs are somehow different from the other 4, no. The 18 CUs are identical, but there is specific information about the PS4 that needs to be understood. This was actual information presented by Sony at a devcon, so don't shoot the messenger.

It was something along the lines of given the rest of the PS4 design as a whole, the PS4 is heavily slanted towards ALUs, and so there is a performance curve after 14 Compute Units on the GPU. The exact information was that given the rest of the design there is a huge knee in the performance curve, and anything beyond that point there is a significant drop off in the apparent value that you get from additional ALU resources for graphics, and the PS4 is said to be well to the right of that knee. And so that's where the recommendation comes from that developers should be looking to use compute rather than graphics rendering to utilize those extra ALU resources, with 14 for graphics and 4 for compute being the recommended balance. This is also exactly where the VGleaks rumor comes from, when they initially said that the GPU was balanced at 14CUs. That was the meaning.

So, there you have it. That's actual real information. So you can't exactly say that Microsoft in that case is spreading misinformation, because Sony themselves actually said that to developers. To clarify, this doesn't mean that all 18 can't be utilized for graphics. They can. It's just been said that the value of doing so after 14 CUs apparently isn't rather high.

Yep! And the CU bit is actually wrong

Not quite.

 

[stryke]

words

Oh and it just so happens that you have this information on this devcon which I haven't seen mentioned absolutely anywhere until now.

And whereas we have people like Matt who say otherwise.

I'll gladly shoot the messenger thanks very much.

 

[SenjutsuSage]

Oh and it just so happens that you have this information on this devcon which I haven't seen mentioned absolutely anywhere until now.

And whereas we have people like Matt who say otherwise.

I'll gladly shoot the messenger thanks very much.

Take it however you want, but it's actually true, Sony communicated this to developers, and I have no issue filling a mod in on how I came by the information, if necessary. I've known this for probably a few months now, but I didn't want to ruffle any feathers by mentioning it, but in this particular case, I thought it made sense to clarify.

 

[Nozem]

So any arbitrary number of compute units is 'balanced', since you can use the extra ones for compute instead of graphics.

 

[shinra-bansho]

Hmm, someone should tell AMD before they do something silly like releasing a graphics card with 20 compute units or something.

 

[KidBeta]

Not to derail the thread, but the PS4 GPU balanced at 14 CUs thing is actually quite true. It's not something that was misinterpreted or made up. This doesn't mean that 14 CUs are somehow different from the other 4, no. The 18 CUs are identical, but there is specific information about the PS4 that needs to be understood. This was actual information presented by Sony at a devcon, so don't shoot the messenger.

It was something along the lines of given the rest of the PS4 design as a whole, the PS4 is heavily slanted towards ALUs, and so there is a performance curve after 14 Compute Units on the GPU. The exact information was that given the rest of the design there is a huge knee in the performance curve, and anything beyond that point there is a significant drop off in the apparent value that you get from additional ALU resources for graphics, and the PS4 is said to be well to the right of that knee. And so that's where the recommendation comes from that developers should be looking to use compute rather than graphics rendering to utilize those extra ALU resources, with 14 for graphics and 4 for compute being the recommended balance. This is also exactly where the VGleaks rumor comes from, when they initially said that the GPU was balanced at 14CUs. That was the meaning.

So, there you have it. That's actual real information. So you can't exactly say that Microsoft in that case is spreading misinformation, because Sony themselves actually said that to developers. To clarify, this doesn't mean that all 18 can't be utilized for graphics. They can. It's just been said that the value of doing so after 14 CUs apparently isn't rather high.



Not quite.

Uh what, theres diminishing returns when you add even 1 CU (starting from 1) I see no reason to believe that there is a significant fall off from using over 14CU's, a lot of algorithms should be able to be spread over a arbitrary number of CU's rather easily and thats before we get into concurrently doing jobs.

I would like to know your source of this information, because I don't think Sony would say anything like this at all its all highly dependent on the particular scenario at hand.

 

[Skeff]

Not to derail the thread, but the PS4 GPU balanced at 14 CUs thing is actually quite true. It's not something that was misinterpreted or made up. This doesn't mean that 14 CUs are somehow different from the other 4, no. The 18 CUs are identical, but there is specific information about the PS4 that needs to be understood. This was actual information presented by Sony at a devcon, so don't shoot the messenger.

It was something along the lines of given the rest of the PS4 design as a whole, the PS4 is heavily slanted towards ALUs, and so there is a performance curve after 14 Compute Units on the GPU. The exact information was that given the rest of the design there is a huge knee in the performance curve, and anything beyond that point there is a significant drop off in the apparent value that you get from additional ALU resources for graphics, and the PS4 is said to be well to the right of that knee. And so that's where the recommendation comes from that developers should be looking to use compute rather than graphics rendering to utilize those extra ALU resources, with 14 for graphics and 4 for compute being the recommended balance. This is also exactly where the VGleaks rumor comes from, when they initially said that the GPU was balanced at 14CUs. That was the meaning.

So, there you have it. That's actual real information. So you can't exactly say that Microsoft in that case is spreading misinformation, because Sony themselves actually said that to developers. To clarify, this doesn't mean that all 18 can't be utilized for graphics. They can. It's just been said that the value of doing so after 14 CUs apparently isn't rather high.



Not quite.

Sony once said that you could use it in a 14+4 configuration if you wanted and now this means using more than 14 gives no bonus, seriously, your completely off the mark here.

 

[mrklaw]

that's fascinating if true - do you have a link?

But considering the relative simplicity of the rest of the architecture, wouldn't that suggest that discrete GPUs are also hitting significant diminishing returns, depending on their memory bandwidth? Eg that suggests 176GB/s is balanced for 14CUs for graphics, so something like the 7970 with 32CUs but only 264GB/s memory bandwidth would be unbalanced?

 

[KidBeta]

that's fascinating if true - do you have a link?

But considering the relative simplicity of the rest of the architecture, wouldn't that suggest that discrete GPUs are also hitting significant diminishing returns, depending on their memory bandwidth? Eg that suggests 176GB/s is balanced for 14CUs for graphics, so something like the 7970 with 32CUs but only 264GB/s memory bandwidth would be unbalanced?

Exactly, the PS4 has more memory and fill per CU then pretty much any desktop GPU, some of which come in 32 CU configs.

 

[SenjutsuSage]

So any arbitrary number of compute units is 'balanced', since you can use the extra ones for compute instead of graphics.

I don't think that's the intended meaning, this is purely down to the consoles themselves, and how the benefit per additional compute unit for graphics rendering scales. I don't know if it works this way on desktop GPU (doubt it), or if it's due to the CPUs in these systems, but this was information that was communicated to developers, and I found it really interesting that Microsoft is now themselves mentioning that they had tested 14 CUs -- something I heard and mentioned to another poster earlier this month -- and it was somehow determined that their GPU clock speed increase was more useful.

This is why I thought when I first read the article that section was probably the most eyebrow raising, because it suddenly, at least to me, provided me with a bit more context to information I knew. The meaning in this case is that apparently on the PS4 14 CUs for graphics is the perfect balance as it pertains to individual benefit per CU, and then beyond that point, I suppose the CUs don't contribute quite as much to graphics rendering as the initial 14 would. This isn't to say they contribute nothing, but apparently what they do contribute is a bit less significant than what you would get out of those first 14. Not because they are any different fundamentally, but supposedly because 14 for graphics is simply the best balanced and most efficient use of the GPU for graphics tasks, but you aren't somehow prevented from using all 18 if you wish.

Uh what, theres diminishing returns when you add even 1 CU (starting from 1) I see no reason to believe that there is a significant fall off from using over 14CU's, a lot of algorithms should be able to be spread over a arbitrary number of CU's rather easily and thats before we get into concurrently doing jobs.

I would like to know your source of this information, because I don't think Sony would say anything like this at all its all highly dependent on the particular scenario at hand.

Sony said it. And it's wrong to compare it to desktop parts, as some might be tempted to do, I think. This is down to the two consoles, or how they're built. I don't imagine desktop parts are affected in this way. I don't know the specific cause of it, but I do know for a fact this was actually communicated to developers. Maybe it has something to do with the CPU of each console, not sure, but there's a point of diminishing returns it seems for the additional ALU resources.

 

[jcm]

Not to derail the thread, but the PS4 GPU balanced at 14 CUs thing is actually quite true. It's not something that was misinterpreted or made up. This doesn't mean that 14 CUs are somehow different from the other 4, no. The 18 CUs are identical, but there is specific information about the PS4 that needs to be understood. This was actual information presented by Sony at a devcon, so don't shoot the messenger.

It was something along the lines of given the rest of the PS4 design as a whole, the PS4 is heavily slanted towards ALUs, and so there is a performance curve after 14 Compute Units on the GPU. The exact information was that given the rest of the design there is a huge knee in the performance curve, and anything beyond that point there is a significant drop off in the apparent value that you get from additional ALU resources for graphics, and the PS4 is said to be well to the right of that knee. And so that's where the recommendation comes from that developers should be looking to use compute rather than graphics rendering to utilize those extra ALU resources, with 14 for graphics and 4 for compute being the recommended balance. This is also exactly where the VGleaks rumor comes from, when they initially said that the GPU was balanced at 14CUs. That was the meaning.

So, there you have it. That's actual real information. So you can't exactly say that Microsoft in that case is spreading misinformation, because Sony themselves actually said that to developers. To clarify, this doesn't mean that all 18 can't be utilized for graphics. They can. It's just been said that the value of doing so after 14 CUs apparently isn't rather high.

Sony should include a button on the front of the machine that disables the 4 troublesome CUs. It would be like those old turbo buttons on PCs, except this would be a Balance Button.

 

[Chobel]

Not to derail the thread, but the PS4 GPU balanced at 14 CUs thing is actually quite true. It's not something that was misinterpreted or made up. This doesn't mean that 14 CUs are somehow different from the other 4, no. The 18 CUs are identical, but there is specific information about the PS4 that needs to be understood. This was actual information presented by Sony at a devcon, so don't shoot the messenger.

It was something along the lines of given the rest of the PS4 design as a whole, the PS4 is heavily slanted towards ALUs, and so there is a performance curve after 14 Compute Units on the GPU. The exact information was that given the rest of the design there is a huge knee in the performance curve, and anything beyond that point there is a significant drop off in the apparent value that you get from additional ALU resources for graphics, and the PS4 is said to be well to the right of that knee. And so that's where the recommendation comes from that developers should be looking to use compute rather than graphics rendering to utilize those extra ALU resources, with 14 for graphics and 4 for compute being the recommended balance. This is also exactly where the VGleaks rumor comes from, when they initially said that the GPU was balanced at 14CUs. That was the meaning.

So, there you have it. That's actual real information. So you can't exactly say that Microsoft in that case is spreading misinformation, because Sony themselves actually said that to developers. To clarify, this doesn't mean that all 18 can't be utilized for graphics. They can. It's just been said that the value of doing so after 14 CUs apparently isn't rather high.



Not quite.

This is interesting, do you have source?

 

[KidBeta]

I don't think that's the intended meaning, this is purely down to the consoles themselves, and how the benefit per additional compute unit for graphics rendering scales. I don't know if it works this way on desktop GPU (doubt it), or if it's due to the CPUs in these systems, but this was information that was communicated to developers, and I found it really interesting that Microsoft is now themselves mentioning that they had tested 14 CUs -- something I heard and mentioned to another poster earlier this month -- and it was somehow determined that their GPU clock speed increase was more useful.

This is why I thought when I first read the article that section was probably the most eyebrow raising, because it suddenly, at least to me, provided me with a bit more context to information I knew. The meaning in this case is that apparently on the PS4 14 CUs for graphics is the perfect balance as it pertains to individual benefit per CU, and then beyond that point, I suppose the CUs don't contribute quite as much to graphics rendering as the initial 14 would. This isn't to say they contribute nothing, but apparently what they do contribute is a bit less significant than what you would get out of those first 14. Not because they are any different fundamentally, but supposedly because 14 for graphics is simply the best balanced and most efficient use of the GPU for graphics tasks, but you aren't somehow prevented from using all 18 if you wish.

You cannot generalise like this, it doesn't work. Its completely scenario specific theres times where its going to be hard to utilise all CU's on both consoles and theres times where its going to be trivial.

The main reason MS went with the upclock is most likely more centred around that it was significantly cheaper then the 2 extra CU's (which probably demolished there yields).

 

[gofreak]

Not to derail the thread, but the PS4 GPU balanced at 14 CUs thing is actually quite true. It's not something that was misinterpreted or made up. This doesn't mean that 14 CUs are somehow different from the other 4, no. The 18 CUs are identical, but there is specific information about the PS4 that needs to be understood. This was actual information presented by Sony at a devcon, so don't shoot the messenger.

It was something along the lines of given the rest of the PS4 design as a whole, the PS4 is heavily slanted towards ALUs, and so there is a performance curve after 14 Compute Units on the GPU. The exact information was that given the rest of the design there is a huge knee in the performance curve, and anything beyond that point there is a significant drop off in the apparent value that you get from additional ALU resources for graphics, and the PS4 is said to be well to the right of that knee. And so that's where the recommendation comes from that developers should be looking to use compute rather than graphics rendering to utilize those extra ALU resources, with 14 for graphics and 4 for compute being the recommended balance. This is also exactly where the VGleaks rumor comes from, when they initially said that the GPU was balanced at 14CUs. That was the meaning.

So, there you have it. That's actual real information. So you can't exactly say that Microsoft in that case is spreading misinformation, because Sony themselves actually said that to developers. To clarify, this doesn't mean that all 18 can't be utilized for graphics. They can. It's just been said that the value of doing so after 14 CUs apparently isn't rather high.

They're talking about 'in a typical game' at a typical res. Probably based on tests on games in development today.

There's nothing hard about how performance will scale with a given ratio of CUs to ROPs or bandwidth or whatever though - it depends on the game.

If a game also 'bulged' around the shading part of the pipeline vs the average, performance could continue to scale well beyond the 14.

If you like, yes, it's a certain amount of future proofing for shading and compute beyond what might be typically required today. Many GPUs do this, go heavy on ALU vs other resources in the expectation of software requiring a higher ALU:memory ratio in the future as GPGPU and more intense shaders become the norm.

 

[shinra-bansho]

Huh? Could someone elaborate on why the CPUs in these systems could cause a sudden massive drop off in CU benefit to graphics beyond 14 CUs... compared to AMD's vanilla desktop cards?

Why exactly does this happen on the PS4 beyond 14 CUs and not in the, for instance, the 7850?

 

[SenjutsuSage]

This is interesting, do you have source?

PMing you.

 

[KidBeta]

Sony said it. And it's wrong to compare it to desktop parts, as some might be tempted to do, I think. This is down to the two consoles, or how they're built. I don't imagine desktop parts are affected in this way. I don't know the specific cause of it, but I do know for a fact this was actually communicated to developers. Maybe it has something to do with the CPU of each console, not sure, but there's a point of diminishing returns it seems for the additional ALU resources.

Going to need more then 'Sony said it' before I believe what you are saying, the information you have received verbatim will suffice.

Your right were wrong to compare it to desktop parts, because its actually more advanced then desktop parts, therefore if it happens to the PS4 it probably happens to all AMD cards, unless you think that Sony specifically gimped it on purpose.

As I said, you need to give more information.

 

[Bossofman]

I remember hearing something similar with14 Cu being mentioned, I somehow got the idea that the other four are 'different' maybe optimized for GPGPU work?

 

[CadetMahoney]

PS4 games will run above the Xbone ones if the devs didn't target the low spec system.

With PS4 going in as industry leader with a huge pre-order lead, devs will soon target PS4 as lead platform, maybe even drop xbone altogether as PS4 may be leading 2:1 in software leads so downporting to xbone would be a waste.

 

[Nozem]

Random thought: suppose you could turn on one of the disabled CUs in the Xbone, would you get a performance increase? Or are console games programmed to specifically use a fixed number of CUs?

 

[IT Slave]

Sony should include a button on the front of the machine that disables the 4 troublesome CUs. It would be like those old turbo buttons on PCs, except this would be a Balance Button.

They aren't "troublesome". It's just that you get performance penalties when using them on graphics after a certain point.

 

[KidBeta]

They aren't "troublesome". It's just that you get performance penalties when using them on graphics after a certain point.

Which doesn't really make any sense.

 

[gofreak]

Huh? Could someone elaborate on why the CPUs in these systems could cause a sudden massive drop off in CU benefit to graphics beyond 14 CUs...?

It has zilch to do with the CPU.

If we're talking about 'balance' this is actually a function of two things, the hardware and the software. (Talking about hardware being balanced independent of a specific piece or pieces of software is nonsense really)

Your hardware will present resources in a certain ratio. A certain amount of instruction throughput to a certain amount of memory throughput.

An algorithm will have a ratio of demands on instruction throughput and memory throughput.

If these ratios align, the hardware is well 'balanced' for the software or vice versa.

If they're not well aligned, you could have demand on one resource holding back the potential of the other resource to reach its peak on this algorithm.

The whole '14 CUs' thing is a Sony suggestion that a 'typical game', today, its graphics-only pipe will align well to a ratio of 14 CUs to 32 ROPs to 176GB/s of bandwidth etc. etc. Thus the heavy encouragement to mix in GPGPU tasks because you'll probably be able to do that without impacting your render pipeline much or at all.

But this is not something prescriptive. A game's graphics-only tasks may well scale linearly against a higher number of CUs vs these other resources. It's up to the game's pipe entirely.

And it's not that render perf won't improve at all with more CUs in this 'typical case' (whatever that is). If you want to look at DF's benchmarks of some current games aimed at isolating the impact of greater CU performance, you still got an average 25% gain or whatever out of 50% more ALU.

Throwing a higher ratio of ALU than software today might typically align with isn't done for kicks, it's a future proofing thing that has some benefit today, and more tomorrow if software shapes itself against higher ratios of ALU to other resources. And the beauty of a console is that software does tend to shape itself against the hardware.

 

[Crimson_Gold]

They aren't "troublesome". It's just that you get performance penalties when using them on graphics after a certain point.

And where is this magical point? I swear some people are being so disingenuous with this argument. Developers are not complaining about the number of CUs. Why are there people in here suggesting that 18 is somehow more of s problem than an advantage now?

 

[JaggedSac]

PMing you.

Me too please.

 

[mrklaw]

I remember hearing something similar with14 Cu being mentioned, I somehow got the idea that the other four are 'different' maybe optimized for GPGPU work?

the 14+4 was only ever a rumour I think. The only thing I've ever heard Sony say publically was Mark Cerny saying that they have 'a little more ALU' in them than you would normally have.

Now, is he suggesting that each CU has more ALU power than a standard AMD CU to get more benefit from GPGPU? Or is he suggesting that the *overall architecture* has more ALU than it needs for graphics (which may possibly back up what senjutsusage is saying in that the 18 is useful for GPGPU, but can't be fully utilised for graphics)?

I lean towards the former but I'm open to arguments for the latter

 

[KidBeta]

Me too please.

You can add me to that too.

 

[Bossofman]

And where is this magical point? I swear some people are being so disingenuous with this argument. Developers are not complaining about the number of CUs. Why are there people in here suggesting that 18 is somehow more of s problem than an advantage now?

I don't think more of anything in this case is a 'problem', it's a question of how to use those extra resources for most bang for the buck.

 

[SenjutsuSage]

Going to need more then 'Sony said it' before I believe what you are saying, the information you have received verbatim will suffice.

Your right were wrong to compare it to desktop parts, because its actually more advanced then desktop parts, therefore if it happens to the PS4 it probably happens to all AMD cards, unless you think that Sony specifically gimped it on purpose.

As I said, you need to give more information.

This has nothing to do with how advanced the GPUs are, I think. This probably has more to do with basic balance (I know, that word ) and how the entirety of the two consoles have been built. I suspect it's a CPU related matter, not sure. I've heard criticism just in general about the CPUs, and how, while efficient, they may not be all that powerful, and I'm wondering if they're somehow a limiting factor for these consoles to a certain extent.

Keep in mind what we're more than likely packing on our desktops. We most likely have much more capable mid and high end Intel I series quad core cpus, which more than likely would never lead to us running into such a situation with our own computers and graphics chips. I'm flat out guessing right now when I talk about the CPUs possibly being a cause. Because with the latest info presented in that article, about how the games were CPU limited and with their having testing for 14 CUs, I've begun wondering if there's a lot more to this than we think. That's all.

 

[Sho_Nuff82]

With PS4 going in as industry leader with a huge pre-order lead, devs will soon target PS4 as lead platform, maybe even drop xbone altogether as PS4 may be leading 2:1 in software leads so downporting to xbone would be a waste.

Unless the Xbox is a GameCube-level failure and the PS4 a PS2-level success, multiplatform development is a necessity to spread out dev costs. While the one is certainly trailing the PS4, it's actually looking to launch stronger than the 360.

 

[mrklaw]

unearthed the Sony Devcon CU optimisation graph. I think Sony must be the blue one

 

[KidBeta]

This has nothing to do with how advanced the GPUs are, I think. This probably has more to do with basic balance (I know, that word ) and how the entirety of the two consoles have been built. I suspect it's a CPU related matter, not sure. I've heard criticism just in general about the CPUs, and how, while efficient, they may not be all that powerful, and I'm wondering if they're somehow a limiting factor for these consoles to a certain extent.

Keep in mind what we're more than likely packing on our desktops. We most likely have much more capable mid and high end Intel I series quad core cpus, which more than likely would never lead to us running into such a situation with our own computers and graphics chips. I'm flat out guessing right now when I talk about the CPUs possibly being a cause. Because with the latest info presented in that article, about how the games were CPU limited and with their having testing for 14 CUs, I've begun wondering if there's a lot more to this than we think. That's all.

The CPU has 0 to do with how efficiently the CU's are utilised by a specific draw call, not to mention it would require _more_ CPU to do GPGPU and FF GFX at the same time. So there goes that idea.

 

[DenogginizerOS]

unearthed the Sony Devcon CU optimisation graph. I think Sony must be the red one

Oh, the memories that graph brings....

 

[onQ123]

Not to derail the thread, but the PS4 GPU balanced at 14 CUs thing is actually quite true. It's not something that was misinterpreted or made up. This doesn't mean that 14 CUs are somehow different from the other 4, no. The 18 CUs are identical, but there is specific information about the PS4 that needs to be understood. This was actual information presented by Sony at a devcon, so don't shoot the messenger.

It was something along the lines of given the rest of the PS4 design as a whole, the PS4 is heavily slanted towards ALUs, and so there is a performance curve after 14 Compute Units on the GPU. The exact information was that given the rest of the design there is a huge knee in the performance curve, and anything beyond that point there is a significant drop off in the apparent value that you get from additional ALU resources for graphics, and the PS4 is said to be well to the right of that knee. And so that's where the recommendation comes from that developers should be looking to use compute rather than graphics rendering to utilize those extra ALU resources, with 14 for graphics and 4 for compute being the recommended balance. This is also exactly where the VGleaks rumor comes from, when they initially said that the GPU was balanced at 14CUs. That was the meaning.

So, there you have it. That's actual real information. So you can't exactly say that Microsoft in that case is spreading misinformation, because Sony themselves actually said that to developers. To clarify, this doesn't mean that all 18 can't be utilized for graphics. They can. It's just been said that the value of doing so after 14 CUs apparently isn't rather high.

Not quite.

Even if you stop at 14 CU's for Graphical tasks & only use the other 4 CU's for compute that's still 400GFLOPS of extra compute power that you are trying to ignore.

that 400GFLOPS of compute could make every game on the PS4 better than the same game on the Xbox One.

 

[Bossofman]

Isn't the whole idea of GpGpu work to have the graphics chip do some things normally done in a CPU? To take up some of the load, if not, I have no idea what the term means. Like a reverse Cell/RSX situation?

 

[gofreak]

the 14+4 was only ever a rumour I think. The only thing I've ever heard Sony say publically was Mark Cerny saying that they have 'a little more ALU' in them than you would normally have.

Now, is he suggesting that each CU has more ALU power than a standard AMD CU to get more benefit from GPGPU? Or is he suggesting that the *overall architecture* has more ALU than it needs for graphics (which may possibly back up what senjutsusage is saying in that the 18 is useful for GPGPU, but can't be fully utilised for graphics)?

I lean towards the former but I'm open to arguments for the latter

I thought the former at the time of the comments, but leaning on the latter more recently.

And, again, this isn't about the hardware in general terms...you have to put it in a software context. It's not that the hardware 'has more ALU than it needs for graphics' - that depends on the game. There isn't a general rule soldered into the hardware here. But based on their benches of games today they're saying 'hey, there basically could be a spare 4 CUs a-begging here if your software shape matches our 'typical case', use them for basically free GPGPU for optimum impact'. But it's very much a ymmv thing...

 

[NTIETS13A_Superiority]

This has nothing to do with how advanced the GPUs are, I think. This probably has more to do with basic balance (I know, that word ) and how the entirety of the two consoles have been built. I suspect it's a CPU related matter, not sure. I've heard criticism just in general about the CPUs, and how, while efficient, they may not be all that powerful, and I'm wondering if they're somehow a limiting factor for these consoles to a certain extent.

Keep in mind what we're more than likely packing on our desktops. We most likely have much more capable mid and high end Intel I series quad core cpus, which more than likely would never lead to us running into such a situation with our own computers and graphics chips. I'm flat out guessing right now when I talk about the CPUs possibly being a cause. Because with the latest info presented in that article, about how the games were CPU limited and with their having testing for 14 CUs, I've begun wondering if there's a lot more to this than we think. That's all.

You have no idea what you are talking about. It is rather hilarious. GPU and CPU utilization depends totally on what you want to doo with them... Common engines may not be best suited for utilizing all the CUs effectively in given memory bandwith (I do not know this for fact) now but does not mean they can not be utilized well. Still GPGPU makes this point rather mood.

I have to say only impressive nextgen game i have seen is driveclub. I think engines/developers put resources to wrong places when making games. But i am more qualified to talk in four years.

 

[SwiftDeath]

PMing you.

I'm having trouble imagining why you would PM someone a link to the information from Sony that the extra 4 CU's are less significant then originally suspected

Why can't you just post a link like a normal person?

I'm not trying to be aggressive/offensive. I just can't think of any logical reason why you couldn't post a link short of it being from a banned site

 

[Nightbringer]

Amdahl law?

 

[phosphor112]

Even if true, why does this "anything over 14 isn't unbalanced" thing even matter? Jobs are done in parallel and not across all cores. Maybe if you have 1 job spanning across all 18 CU's it might cause an issue, but there are 1152 cores in that thing in which you can split jobs up at any given moment.

 

[CadetMahoney]

MS moneyhatting devs so they dont make multiplat titles superior in the PS4 version.

I doubt that very much if they have to do it for every single multiplat.

So the Xbone is more balanced.

Ummm PS4 is more balanced.

There is no balance in xbone, only concessions.

pretty much.

60fps in MP in KZ:SF must be proven, because for now its 30-40 most of the time. And latest footage of singleplayer had drops to 20s in some heavier scenes.

really, something to keep an eye on then. Not buying till confirmations.

 

[mrklaw]

I thought the former at the time of the comments, but leaning on the latter more recently.

And, again, this isn't about the hardware in general terms...you have to put it in a software context. It's not that the hardware 'has more ALU than it needs for graphics' - that depends on the game. There isn't a general rule soldered into the hardware here. But based on their benches of games today they're saying 'hey, there basically could be a spare 4 CUs a-begging here if your software shape matches our 'typical case', use them for basically free GPGPU for optimum impact'. But it's very much a ymmv thing...

we're dangerously close to agreeing with Senjutsusage. I might have to sit down for a minute