platina
Member
Sad but I totally believe it. It's so obvious Sony is releasing the ps4k this holiday to create noise for Nintendo. Good on sony
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Kotaku: Sony is working on a PS4.5; briefing devs on plans for a more powerful PS4
- Thread starter shinobi602
- Start date
Sounds pricey.
Probably not something Nintendo will release unless they're cool with losing money on hardware.
Either way, I'm looking forward to owning one.
Graphics Horse
Member
Okami HD uses 4xMSAA according to hexadrive. This technically involves a 4k buffer but that is normal for 4xMSAA @ 1080p. Was misunderstood/misreported as native 4k rendering.
mejin
Member
get2sammyb
Member
Not believing any leaks at the moment, but if that one's true, it also sounds very pricey.
LostDonkey
Member
It's not. A console isn't meant to run max settings at any resolution, barely any games do that at 1080p, Settings will have to be toned down and it will probably be 4k/30fps anyway. That is a lot more manageable.
My i5 970 rig can play 90% of games at 4k 30fps no problems as long as I realistically manage the settings to high or medium in some cases.
Nobody is expecting a PS4k to run max settings 4k at 60fps, come on.
Settings on low-medium or custom tailored to PS4k hardware, I can't see any problem with 30fps at 4k.
Though its understandable given the power needed to do games at 4k. So either Sony takes a bath on selling the hardware or its not really going to do 4k gaming except for limited cases unless you count upscaling.
And going from barely managing 1080p to 4k is not some moderate mid-generation update, that's generational change.
And speaking of 4k...just how would the PS4 manage with its 8GB of combined RAM. Just what is VRAM usage like on PC games at 4k?
Ridge Racer 8 can just be RR7 in 4K with some extra tracks, lol.
COD4 was 1024x600, Uncharted was 960x1080, Halo 3 was 1152x640, etc. There were certainly native resolution games but a lot of the standard bearers were natively sub-HD, and that's the second console generation that supported HD resolutions! PS2 had a tiny collection of 1080p titles that were touted, and the original Xbox promoted its support for HD resolutions as well.
The first time Sony or Microsoft ship a console capable of running any game at 4K they'll promote it as such.
Glorified G
Member
You said most titles were sub-720p last gen which is factually incorrect. Majority of titles last gen were 720p.
VRAM usage at 4K is up to 50% higher. A mid-gen upgrade of the PS4 running actual native 4K games would need more memory.
AMD was on 28nm since 2012 right? & it's been 4 years long enough for a generational leap in consoles if they could get everything together & launch with the new GPUs but it take time for console launches & they have to get devkits out develop games, test the hardware everything so a new console wouldn't launch on track with AMD move to 14nm gpus right? but doing what's being done now allows them to basically keep the same console but use the new generation benefits of going to 14nm to push the PS4 games to a resolution 4X higher.
PS4 GPU isn't that high powered to begin with & people don't believe that technology from a new generation of 14nm parts can push 4X the resolution of PS4 level games?
lukeskymac
Member
All three PS3 Uncharteds were 720p
Milly Osworth
Member
Damn, a thread spanning 6 years. That's crazy.
You're quite right. I double-checked some of the figures from the original source but didn't follow through with Uncharted. The point stands that sub-native resolution was common enough in generations that were touted as HD. Thank goodness sub-1080p native resolutions are comparatively rare on the PS4.
You think Sony will take the risk of launching a new PS4 because of a new Nintendo console? Really?...
PS4k with enough horse power for ps3 back compat?
It won't happen just like that. You see, there is a good reason why the PS4 doesn't even allow you to use your old PS1 discs despite the fact that even a outdated smartphone can run them in a emulator. The PS4 places a heavy emphasis on being able to share your gaming to the point where the controller even has a "Share" button on it. Because of this every game is screened for content so that there will be no legal issues with people streaming it and changes are made accordingly which is why the music is muted during streams of Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree's Woe and the Blight Below.
So, what does all that have to do with the lack of backwards compatibility? If Sony were to open the floodgates to full backwards compatibility the whole idea of the PS4 being a console where people can feel free to share whatever of their gameplay they want would be compromised. People would be streaming games that have not yet been screened and then some of those players would be punished for breaking either Twitch's TOS or PSN's TOS or both.
All that is why I believe anything Sony might tell us about so called technical reasons for no backwards compatibility is a smokescreen. Sony must maintain a environment where every single game is screened if this system where people may share their gameplay without fear is to work.
There were a lot of native 720p games on 7th gen consoles with high-end graphics for the time, moreso than sub-720p games. There were even several titles that went above 720p. It would be incorrect to say the 7th gen console cycle was not really the HD generation because some games were not 720p, most games absolutely were.
https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/list-of-rendering-resolutions.41152/
jhmtehgamr20xx
Banned
I am definitely liking the sound of that controller. That's the only way I can picture the embedded screen idea working, and the technology makes it feasible. There would be lots of neat possibilities w/ that type of controller surface and screen display.
I also guess the scrollable shoulder buttons would be pretty good, particularly for FPS games. If they're aligned to scroll vertically and not horizontally, that could provide good Z-space movement and vertical control. If they can scroll both ways, that could open up for some great possibilities, but I don't think the tech or any construction methods make that feasible atm.
EDIT: I would be kind of surprised w/ them going w/ GDDR5 though. DDR4 is out there now and pretty cheap, and offers some great bandwidth. But I could see them doing that to ensure better compatibility w/ ports from the PS4 and to facilitate devs accustomed to that memory solution on the platform, given it is the sales leader.
I lol too.
Off-topic but I loved 'bluray sized Nintendo optical discs'. Never stop with the proprietary storage, Ninty.
Including dynamic resolution titles that didn't stick reliably to native resolutions the list in question is pretty close to 50% sub-720p, which is actually better than I remembered but still not exactly stellar. A lot of high-profile titles, especially cross-platform ones, wound up scaling from lower resolutions.
The points stands that native HD was being touted in generation 6, and was still not a given in generation 7. Expecting a sudden leap to 4K native half-way through generation 8 is absurdly optimistic. Not that I wouldn't be happy to see the breakthrough happen, but you can count me as deeply skeptical. I'm expecting upscaling to play a dominant role in 4K console gaming for years to come.
freeofgreed
Member
Has there been any consensus on what this thing will actually be yet? If it's just a PS4 that can output media at 4k or if it's actually going to be an incremental upgrade that affects games? If it's the former I don't see the issue, but if it's the latter I don't see this going over well at all....
And the Wii U was slightly more powerful than the PS3. It was also one generation too late.
TetraGenesis
Member
It reads like a 10th grader padding out their essay to reach word count. Hahahaha.
hooijdonk17
Member
Trine 2 was capable of 4K output on a PS4 devkit and it's stereoscopic 3D mode ran internally at 1080p120, so I mean, the original PS4 is capable. Source.
Obviously, a PS4k would only need to be capable of running PS4 games at 4K. Saying that any gaming console isn't capable of running a game a 4K is alittle bit silly, since it entirely depends of what the game looks like (unless the device doesn't have the memory/bandwidth/ROPs to allow it).
Edit:
I mean, you can figure out if it's possible to create a 4K version of the PS4. Fillrate needs to be improved so you need more ROP units or a higher clockspeed (or a combination), you need more graphics memory bandwidth, the larger framebuffer would require slightly more graphics ram, etc. The fillrate of the PS4 is 32ROPs x 800MHz = 25.6GB/s, you need 4x the fillrate for 4K and there is no current GPU with a fillrate that high (unless mid end Polaris ends up slightly more powerful than a 980ti), so it's unlikely that Sony will be able to just create a bruteforce PS4K. Maybe whatever that uprendering thing is will come into play, maybe Sony will allow 60fps games to run at 2160p30, maybe Sony are trying to get devs to release 4K patches with lower graphics demands.
Because that's what 4K owners want, downgraded graphics...
That the chip can produce 4K under circumstances doesn't mean a thing. Heck even current Intel Graphics can fill 3 displays with 4K resolution but it's clear it's not for gaming. There is no console style hardware in existence (meaning not even prototypes) that could render PS4 AAA quality graphics in native 4K. How many times does this have to be rediscussed?
That the chip can produce 4K under circumstances doesn't mean a thing. Heck even current Intel Graphics can fill 3 displays with 4K resolution but it's clear it's not for gaming. There is no console style hardware in existence (meaning not even prototypes) that could render PS4 AAA quality graphics in native 4K. How many times does this have to be rediscussed?
You could absolutely create a device to run a 1080p60 game at 2160p30, that's inarguable, and would actually be an easy feat for Sony to pull off. And I'm not completely sure about writing off Polaris, the 980ti is almost at the fillrate necessary to run PS4 games at 4K. And next gen cards will be specifically focusing on 4K, so maybe mid range cards will be capable by the end of 2016. Maybe games will need a small downgrade (4K looks a ton better than 1080p even when lowering other effects anyway), but I don't think it's absolutely impossible and I'm one of the people who said that 8GB of GDDR5 was a dumb thing to expect.
boredandlazy
Member
2160p is 4x the resolution. Not 2x.
So even though resolution and framerate aren't really equivalent anyway, the ratio is out.
That's why I said 1080p60 games at 2160p30.
1920*1080*60 = 124416000
124416000 * 2 = 248832000
3840*2160*30 = 248832000
That would be easy and only need a fillrate of 51.2GB/s (double the ROPs), since you'd need to double the capabilities of the PS4.
Resolution and framerate are equivalent in the areas where it would be an engineering challenge to create an exact 4K PS4. Which is fillrate. 32 Rops with a clockspeed of 800MHz gives 25.6GB/s. Looking at next gen hardware, 64 ROPs (980ti has 96 I believe) and at least a 1000MHz clock could be expected, which would work out to 64GB/s (short of the 102.4 GB/s to bruteforce 4x res for PS4 games). Though I'm not willing to rule out higher with next gen hardware presumably targeting 4K.
If you want 4x fillrate, you'd probably need 96 ROPs (980ti level) at ~1066MHz base clock. Possible, but super high end.
Sort of like original XBox?c0de said:
There's the caveat of GPUs having to maintain ISA/binary compatibility as well, which hasn't really been common for PCs since mid 80s (and even then, compatibility would apply loosely). I assume they would make sure AMD does provide the compatibility layer in any incremental upgrades, but I really wouldn't make assumptions that x86 is where the compatibility comes from.
No, naive upsize of framebuffer would not work for 99% of PS2 library.Orayn said:
When emulating devices with UMA (or hybrid UMA, as the case was with PS2), any element in GPU write-address range is a valid computational part of final image, so hacking around by resizing main render target practically guarantees that you will render the game incorrectly. To what degree, depends on a number of other things, but with PS2 it was quite common to directly manipulate render-targets via their address-mapping (ie. eDRam was basically a giant register stack to play with) so the problems can range from visual glitches to unplayable mess. You pretty much have two options:
a) Up-size the entire addressable space of the GPU(meaning everything that gets stored, including all textures and render targets will be "higher" resolution), and then make sure the address-math is corrected for higher precision everywhere in your virtual machine.
b) Render native for 100% compatibility, and generate additional samples by subpixel-offsets and accumulation (which is what that patent-link suggests).
Former adds considerable complexity to the VM, and if you allow non-even upscales, math gets fuzzy with regards to "correct" outputs. I suspect PCSX2 is doing something like this, and results are predictably poor - virtually no PS2 game I've tried on it actually looks fully "correct" in high-res, albeit in the "good" ones, artifacts aren't offensive enough to affect playability in any meaningful way, and many come with specific-hacks to approximate the original look more closely.
The latter is more sensible way to actually guarantee correctness/compatibility, and if you can afford it, you can render as many extra samples as naive-upsizing would. Non-integer scaling-ratios are still a problem, so it's presumably why they went with 2x2 exact.
Contrast this with emulating machines that used dedicated Framebuffer memory(like GC/Wii/DC) - where emulators get consistently better results with the "naive" approach, so to speak.
If they can use compute for reprojecting 1080P 60fps to 1080P 120fps they can also use compute to bypass the the ROP's limits or offload it with a DPU.
Need to Offload Your Apps Processor? See How Customizable Processors Can Help
lightchris
Member
As if any game was fillrate bound anyway. A 980 Ti is plenty for running games at 4K at PS4 graphics and framerate.
It's not out when the GPU twice as fast. Still a bad idea though imo.
Would be better to just run the same game at same framerate and performance at a higher resolution; if 4K is too much, pick a resolution in between, upscale it and market it as "4K". Most people won't know or care that it isn't actual 4K.
Sort of like original XBox?
Yes.
Yeah, I was more considering the engineering challenge to create an exactly 4x PS4 in the worst case (for graphics resolution), so it would be possible for Sony to just force 4x resolution on all games and that was really the only area that I could think of where it would be a challenge... the PS4 isn't a hugely powerful machine.
You are talking about a massive R&D challenge and engineering feat, to have a DPU running next to and on top of the GPU and doing "stuffs" so that the 4x performance increase I'm talking about in the other thread can be achieved. That's at best a pipe dream.
Uhyve elegantly put it in numbers that I didn't in the other thread.
That might happen with the few games that are 900P
The DPU is already on the chip with the GPU & this don't seem like massive R&D challenge and engineering feat to me
http://ip.cadence.com/knowledgecenter/know-ten/dataplane-design
The DPU is already on the chip with the GPU & this don't seem like massive R&D challenge and engineering feat to me
http://ip.cadence.com/knowledgecenter/know-ten/dataplane-design
The problem is not whether there's already a DPU or not, or where it is on the chip. We're talking about 4x performance increase over PS4 apu to be able to render 4K without developer intervention and optimization, fully transparent to the dev, handled entirely on the OS. If we had such a silver bullet to increase GPU performance for like for like code, using external DPU functions to boost the GPU, it hasn't yet been done. And that's a massive challenge, to do this transparent to the devs.
jeff_rigby
Banned
onQ123, in the PS4 the Xtensa DPU is in southbridge and would be massively easier to upgrade than a APU. The problem then is the PCIe interface bandwidth and latency between the APU and Southbridge.The DPU is already on the chip with the GPU & this don't seem like massive R&D challenge and engineering feat to me
http://ip.cadence.com/knowledgecenter/know-ten/dataplane-design
The video you referenced is about APPs not games. You and I know something about the power of the DPU as a Stream processor with hundreds of CPUs and something like 20X more efficient than a CPU at those Video and audio tasks. From ultra low power Key phrase audio recognition to Gesture/face/head tracking/depth map generation from stereo video recognition, Codecs, Encryption and decryption, up and down-scaling resolution (Digital bridge), optical distortion for VR googles, doubling frame rate for VR and anti-aliasing/video processing.
The XB1 on the other hand has the Xtensa DPU inside the APU and while less efficient at this task could be a GPGPU for Games. Off loading Anti-aliasing from the GPU could result in a potential large increase in game performance if the GPU cycles freed could be used for the game.
Dictator93
Member
This thread has really gone off the rails with weirdo wish-listing and hearsay derived from acronyms in obsure power point presentations.
IMO, anything is hearsay and guesswork at this point, and historically, I would try and remain as conservative in estimations as possible regarding architectural changes if at all. I mean, this thing needs to remain simply forward compatible with PS4. That disallows quite a lot of everything.
IMO, anything is hearsay and guesswork at this point, and historically, I would try and remain as conservative in estimations as possible regarding architectural changes if at all. I mean, this thing needs to remain simply forward compatible with PS4. That disallows quite a lot of everything.
Truth? There is no high end market, just a console market as it stands.
jeff_rigby
Banned
Yes to everything but anti-aliasing which developers could just skip and allow the OS to do it using the Xtensa DPU. Same with up-scaling to 4K.
I was talking about using it to create a offloading processor to replace the ROPs