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Digital Foundry: the complete Xbox One architects interview

Harrison was responsible but he framed Mattrick for that so MS would fire their best Xbox division president they ever had.

shyamalan4.jpg


Best agent. H004
 
They didn't ignore it. They said that GPU don't need low latency. That itself tells you everything.

If they planned ESRAM because of low latency and it would be serious thing for GPU they would say it from start after that question.

Right, exactly. They didn't even say 'GPUs aren't latency sensitive but the low latency of our eSRAM is actually quite beneficial because...'. They didn't mention the fabled low latency eSRAM at all when asked a direct question about it. The only sensible inference to make is that the low latency was not a priority and is not markedly beneficial.
 
Genuinely made me laugh. Thanks for that.

He's been on a comedy tour or some shit this past week.

This shit:

SenjutsuSage said:
And I'll leave it at that, because I'm already explicitly aware of what kind of crowd I'm dealing with. I swear speaking with a positive outlook on this system is almost like insulting people's mothers or something.

Is just golden. Yet more persecution complex over a company that implicitly deserves the skepticism, and a continued bizarre inability to understand why. In the next post he will say he understands why, but it's "over the top", to try to make it seem fair.

Yet more nonsense strawmen: the critiques and comments have nothing to do with kneejerking over anything that is perceived as positive. The reason people are naturally more skeptical over claims made by anyone from Microsoft is that the entire Xbox One debacle has been based on lies, misdirection, deceptions and PR nonsense. And, with articles like this, it CONTINUES to be the case that they couch their language to try to make it seem like they can ever get close to PS4. Senjutsu desperately wishes this is the case, even as he pretends he's above spec wars, and yet consistently initiates such conversation or inflames them with nonsense commentary, already debunked theories and bullshit appeals to authority ("I have a FRIEND who told me how low latency this is!" "Here's a Beyond3D link, I have no claim to be an expert but I post things I don't understand because they make my system of choice sound slightly better versus the PS4!" It's absurd).

The reason people have rejected these claims time and time again is because each time Microsoft comes out with some nonsense about the specs, it is proven wrong or exaggerated, many technically involved folk on here and elsewhere have to go through the arduous task of dissecting the bullshit so that the misinformation doesn't spread, and the end result is nobody fucking trusts anything they say about anything because they CONTINUE to bullshit. If they stopped the bullshit yesterday, we would only just be on the road to trusting them again. They still have not stopped the bullshit. Senjutsu trying to act like it's one big SonyGAF conspiracy against a system unfairly taunted is beyond tired at this points. It's willfully intellectually dishonest.

There is no way to close the gap between XBO and PS4 or even get close. He cannot get over it because it means accepting his system of choice as inherently inferior. That's the whole damned problem: they want to love the system, but can't do it comfortably if they're in a 'minority.' So they must find excuses as to why people act this way, they must find ways to explain their worldwide with strained and painful mental gymnastics and they must try to act like it's everyone else's fault that the level of discourse is decreasing. Never his own!

And yet the obvious responses are legion. "Well Sony and Nintendo don't care about you either!" No shit! After 2006, it took years for Sony to build up something of a shaky trust with gamers again, and that was almost entirely shattered by the hacking scandal again. These companies do not deserve the benefit-of-the-doubt. What they do deserve, however, is a fair reading of their decisions to date. To date, Sony has pretty much hit every right note with the PS4 and has rarely been found to be fudging anything with their PR or the news they've announced about the system. Small exaggerations here and there at worst, but a remarkably clean record for the PS4 unveiling. Ergo, behavior modified as such, gamers are naturally more positively inclined to accept Sony's info at face value than the competition, same as Nintendo. They have built up a relationship and it took years, and if they fuck up again in a way that offends consumers, they too will spend years rebuilding that trust.
 
Awesome read. Explains how Xbox One has overall a better architecture. It would make no sense to boost one area of the hardware, if something else can't keep up.
 
I'm mostly serious right now. I haven't finished reading all the former GAF threads yet but, I'm starting to develop a small fear of Sony getting wrapped up in corporate espionage or something court cases in a few years. A man that worked with Playstation since it's inception, leaving after handling the last hand-off for the PS4, going to Atari mostly to pick up a buddy, then going to Gaiki, serving on the board (Sony buys Gaiki relatively shortly afterwards), and then leaves for Microsoft. In the games division.

TL;DR : Starting to think Agent Harrison is seriously real.

All the other stuff I don't understand is interesting too.

Whoa... Holy shit. Yeah, I always found it weird how he kept the PS1 and PS2 afloat but semi-sank the PS3. Same with Xbox One.
 
For me, the face-off to watch come launch week is gonna to be Call of Duty: Ghosts. This is THE multiplatform franchise most closely linked to the Xbox. If any developer is going to have pressure on them to gimp the PS4 version, it's this one. It would be particularly embarrassing for Microsoft to have paid all that money for their DLC deal, and marketing plans, and then have the PS4 version acknowledged as the better version of the game.

That could come down to multiplayer. If the XBox One has dedicated servers and somehow manages to curb jerks online with it's revamped reputation system then that could benefit them. What was interesting is millions were willing to pay for XBox Live to play it but now both systems will require a membership. Sony has been rather quiet on what changes they have done with its network moving forward on the PS4. Lots of people, myself included, notice how content downloads slower on the PS3 and that is likely due to how many servers are out there. My understanding is Sony also leaves it up to 3rd party publishers to handle their own games online whereas Microsoft has been known to do it for them.

I'd love to know how well DLC does on the PS3 compared to the XBox 360 for Call of Duty. Microsoft pays money because it benefits them and Activision. Microsoft sold lots of Live memberships and Call of Duty is one key franchise that helped sell memberships. The PS4 looks to outsell the XBox One, at least early on. What we don't know is how many will be buying DLC packs or how the attach ratio of Playstation Plus memberships per system will be.

Activision is also known to having the same engine for years.
 
Awesome read. Explains how Xbox One has overall a better architecture. It would make no sense to boost one area of the hardware, if something else can't keep up.

Jesus, weren't you just in another thread this morning getting eviscerated by 1000 posters for your nonsense? You guys don't give up once you get your marching orders, christ.
 
He's been on a comedy tour or some shit this past week.

This shit:



Is just golden. Yet more persecution complex over a company that implicitly deserves the skepticism, and a continued bizarre inability to understand why. In the next post he will say he understands why, but it's "over the top", to try to make it seem fair.

Yet more nonsense strawmen: the critiques and comments have nothing to do with kneejerking over anything that is perceived as positive. The reason people are naturally more skeptical over claims made by anyone from Microsoft is that the entire Xbox One debacle has been based on lies, misdirection, deceptions and PR nonsense. And, with articles like this, it CONTINUES to be the case that they couch their language to try to make it seem like they can ever get close to PS4. Senjutsu desperately wishes this is the case, even as he pretends he's above spec wars, and yet consistently initiates such conversation or inflames them with nonsense commentary, already debunked theories and bullshit appeals to authority ("I have a FRIEND who told me how low latency this is!" "Here's a Beyond3D link, I have no claim to be an expert but I post things I don't understand because they make my system of choice sound slightly better versus the PS4!" It's absurd).

The reason people have rejected these claims time and time again is because each time Microsoft comes out with some nonsense about the specs, it is proven wrong or exaggerated, many technically involved folk on here and elsewhere have to go through the arduous task of dissecting the bullshit so that the misinformation doesn't spread, and the end result is nobody fucking trusts anything they say about anything because they CONTINUE to bullshit. If they stopped the bullshit yesterday, we would only just be on the road to trusting them again. They still have not stopped the bullshit. Senjutsu trying to act like it's one big SonyGAF conspiracy against a system unfairly taunted is beyond tired at this points. It's willfully intellectually dishonest.

There is no way to close the gap between XBO and PS4 or even get close. He cannot get over it because it means accepting his system of choice as inherently inferior. That's the whole damned problem: they want to love the system, but can't do it comfortably if they're in a 'minority.' So they must find excuses as to why people act this way, they must find ways to explain their worldwide with strained and painful mental gymnastics and they must try to act like it's everyone else's fault that the level of discourse is decreasing. Never his own!

And yet the obvious responses are legion. "Well Sony and Nintendo don't care about you either!" No shit! After 2006, it took years for Sony to build up something of a shaky trust with gamers again, and that was almost entirely shattered by the hacking scandal again. These companies do not deserve the benefit-of-the-doubt. What they do deserve, however, is a fair reading of their decisions to date. To date, Sony has pretty much hit every right note with the PS4 and has rarely been found to be fudging anything with their PR or the news they've announced about the system. Small exaggerations here and there at worst, but a remarkably clean record for the PS4 unveiling. Ergo, behavior modified as such, gamers are naturally more positively inclined to accept Sony's info at face value than the competition, same as Nintendo. They have built up a relationship and it took years, and if they fuck up again in a way that offends consumers, they too will spend years rebuilding that trust.

Damn.
 
Jesus, weren't you just in another thread this morning getting eviscerated by 1000 posters for your nonsense? You guys don't give up once you get your marching orders, christ.


**looks at his post history**


whoa.

Nice summary by the way, Amirox.
 
I've already said on here many times that I have a friend in first party development for the system, and I've heard what I would consider very good things about the implication of the ESRAM's latency on actual, real world performance.
Of course having eSRAM in One is better than just being stuck with the DDR3. Of course it has very good benefits to real-world performance. The problem comes when you amplify these statements yourself, and start pushing them to mean "eSRAM is better than main memory that's equivalently fast". That's when people start pointing out the latency has very little effect.

Take the sebbbi quote you posted, for example:

sebbbi said:
On Xbox 360, the EDRAM helps a lot with backbuffer bandwidth. ...Without EDRAM the external memory bandwidth requirement is 12+3.75 bytes = 15.75 bytes per pixel. With EDRAM it is only 3.75 bytes.

...Also a fast read/write on chip memory scratchpad (or a big cache) would help a lot with image post processing. ...With large enough on chip memory (or cache), most post processing algorithms become completely free of external memory bandwidth. ...Fast on chip memory scratchpad (or a big cache) would reduce bandwidth requirement a lot.

Do you see how many times he mentions "bandwidth" instead of "latency"? The 360 eDRAM reduces bandwidth on calls to main memory, which would be a lot slower. Presumably the One eSRAM will do the same, but that doesn't mean this approach is ideal for all architectures. Devs on Microsoft's machines have to be careful not to pull more memory than fits in the eDRAM/eSRAM, because access to main memory has far lower bandwidth. But on PS4, any memory call you require is the same speed--which is faster than even the eSRAM in One.

The only time sebbbi mentions latency is to say that screenspace reflections a la Shadow Fall would benefit. Okay, but even without eSRAM that game doesn't seem to have any problem pumping out those reflections alongside some of the best graphics in any title. It's clearly not a very limiting factor.
 
Awesome read. Explains how Xbox One has overall a better architecture. It would make no sense to boost one area of the hardware, if something else can't keep up.

Is this a troll? The word you are looking for is "balanced". Uniformly mediocre specs
 
So many suspicious juniors in this thread.


Congrats MS. Your astroturfing has gotten so over the top I automatically dont trust any positive opinion on your machine anymore.
 
Whoa... Holy shit. Yeah, I always found it weird how he kept the PS1 and PS2 afloat but semi-sank the PS3. Same with Xbox One.

How awesome would it be if he planned that too.

MS: "Phil, sabotage the PS3."
PH: " Already doing it."
Sony: " Phil, did you get their trust?"
PH: "Of course."
Sony: " We'll start with Don Mattrick."

Some double agent stuff right there.

Oh man. I need some sleep.
 
I wouldn't put it past them. (and there are several rumors going around alluding to it)

Microsoft required games to come out simultaneously because they knew coming late to the party hurts software sales. Nothing was ever shown they actually tell them each game must be the same frame rate or the same resolution or anything like that. Some games already performed slightly better on the PS3 that were multiplat compared to the XBox 360. If anything it would be the developer who chooses parity because it is easier for them or they don't want their own product to look inferior.

Microsoft deserves a lot of backlash from gamers but some people go beyond reason which is likely because they don't like the company and will look for anything to attack them. Or worse yet, they are console warriors who seem to have a vested interest in the success of the PS4.
 
It was funny seeing Leadbetter trying to pre-emptively massage the reader about this;

"The Leadbetter doth protest too much, methinks."

How awesome would it be if he planned that too.

MS: "Phil, sabotage the PS3"
PH: " Already doing it"
Sony: " Phil, did you get their trust?"
PH: "Of course"
Sony: " We start with Don Mattrick."

Some double agent stuff right there.

Oh man. I need some sleep.

If you really want to get Hollywood, now Ballmer is out as well lol.
 
It's my impression, people using the balance argument as if PS4 Sony choose components on the bazaar and simply put them together.

Guerrilla games dev was the first to mention PS4 had no bottlenecks way before the xbox people started saying balanced stuff.

Guerilla Games: PS4 doesn't really have any performance bottlenecks http://www.videogamer.com/ps4/killz...ce_bottlenecks_claims_killzone_developer.html

The PlayStation 4 has been so carefully designed that developers won't find a performance bottleneck, Michiel Van Der Leeuw, technical director at Guerrilla Games, has told Edge.

"The fact that the best pieces of hardware are also devised from, or optimized versions of, the stuff we find in PCs doesn't make it any less a console," Van Der Leeuw explained. "A PC is a number of parts that also [have] bridges in-between, where there are inefficiencies that may [come in if they're not] exactly the right match."

But with the PS4, Sony has - allegedly - been able to ensure these inefficiencies don't exist.

Van Der Leeuw continued: "We've got the right amount of memory, video card; everything's balanced out. It was a very conscious effort to make sure that – with the speed of the memory, the amount of compute units, the speed of the hard drive – there would not be any bottlenecks.

"I think it was for more than a year that we knew the main ingredients and there was just discussion after discussion trying to find a bottleneck. Take a look at this design; try to find the bottleneck."
 
Right, exactly. They didn't even say 'GPUs aren't latency sensitive but the low latency of our eSRAM is actually quite beneficial because...'. They didn't mention the fabled low latency eSRAM at all when asked a direct question about it. The only sensible inference to make is that the low latency was not a priority and is not markedly beneficial.


They also say that the CPU has pretty slow access to the ESRAM, which means its main benefit is for the GPU (makes sense). But any latency benefits would be more useful for the CPU.
 
I'm mostly serious right now. I haven't finished reading all the former GAF threads yet but, I'm starting to develop a small fear of Sony getting wrapped up in corporate espionage or something court cases in a few years. A man that worked with Playstation since it's inception, leaving after handling the last hand-off for the PS4, going to Atari mostly to pick up a buddy, then going to Gaiki, serving on the board (Sony buys Gaiki relatively shortly afterwards), and then leaves for Microsoft. In the games division.

TL;DR : Starting to think Agent Harrison is seriously real.

All the other stuff I don't understand is interesting too.

How awesome would it be if he planned that too.

MS: "Phil, sabotage the PS3"
PH: " Already doing it"
Sony: " Phil, did you get their trust?"
PH: "Of course"
Sony: " We start with Don Mattrick."

Some double agent stuff right there.

Oh man. I need some sleep.

057.jpg
 
Awesome read. Explains how Xbox One has overall a better architecture. It would make no sense to boost one area of the hardware, if something else can't keep up.
Yeah, great way of wasting 5 billions of transistors.Super great architecture.Hint: R2-290X has 6.Jaguar CPU is 0,5.
So with 6,5 you could build a 5 times better console.
 
Yeah, great way of wasting 5 billions of transistors.Super great architecture.Hint: R2-290X has 6.Jaguar CPU is 0,5.
So with 6,5 you could build a 5 times better console.

So your saying there's an extra GPU on there in addition to the 1.31Tflop one?

I'm Joking
 
Awesome read. Explains how Xbox One has overall a better architecture. It would make no sense to boost one area of the hardware, if something else can't keep up.

It doesn't, not really.

What it did was confirming the 2 ACEs with 8 queues each for a total of 16 queues, so no more need to speculate about the number of queues available, now they can try to explain away how 16 queues is somehow "more balanced" than their competitor's 64 queues.
 
And I'll leave it at that, because I'm already explicitly aware of what kind of crowd I'm dealing with. I swear speaking with a positive outlook on this system is almost like insulting people's mothers or something.

What is this now? I just went through this thread and it seems like the only person sounding obviously insulted is you. Some of us here do bother reading your posts and respond to you. Please don't create these strawmen and insinuate that GAF is some sort of a hive mind. You are more than welcome to present your opinions. I urge you to stop tilting at wind mills.
 
Found this comment to the article over at EG. I think it is an interesting reaction, so I will quote it here:

vizzini said:
Did you get the feeling from this unabridged rendition (of the same conference call Df have covered twice already) that the X1 hardware was designed backwards or forwards looking?

Me personally, I think it reads like their hardware design was completely backwards look and completely guided by running the (current) mediocre 360 game engines with a small boost in visuals. They even state the overclock was to alleviate performance bottlenecks of today's software.

How is that good engineering?

It was purely a matter of good timing of economics (for technology) that gave rise to a Psone(and PS4) design that was easy for developers. In the Ps2 and Ps3 era modest amounts of XDR/GDDR3 and HDD storage (for a console) was excessively expensive per MB compared to the cost of performance(GFLOP/s) to pair with it. So Ken was forced to pack as much performance/bandwidth in to Ps2 and Ps3 to leave the software engineers to dance around the memory size issues with software solutions. But what is very odd about the X1 design, is that they have taken a convoluted solution and still failed to pack even the same amount of performance into the system (and still charging nearly £100 more) to target yesterdays graphic's fidelity features(32bit colour frame buffer).
 
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