I think I've figured out how the variable clocks are a genuinely positive thing for PS5. It will lead to overall better (more stable) performance of games, meaning what's important... Framepacing and framerates can and probably will be rock solid 99.9% of the time on PS5.
Until today, I've remained quite confused about the whole thing, but it's actually genius and quite logical.
Based on the last DF article, the PS5 devkit doesn't boost, but instead has profiles which the dev programs and optimises against. So the devkit has locked clocks at whatever, say a fixed 10.0TF/3.3GHZ. The dev will feel comfortable in optimising right up against this limit with the knowledge that on a production console, the clocks will be variable and they'll boost up to their max frequencies to give the game that extra performance ceiling for those split seconds when the game engine requires it. This is what is meant by "continuous boost", there is clearly no throttling going on here.
This is the "new paradigm" that Cerny mentioned. It's not just a new paradigm in console design, but also a revolution in how devs normally optimise their games.
Let's take the XSX, you have a max fixed clock. You're a dev and you program against the peak theoretical limit of 12.15TF. However, suddenly there is a ton of action on screen when you're playing the game, hitting that GPU limit and there is no more power left so you'll experience stutters and dropped frames. Of course, extensive testing could mitigate all this and for sure, top studios may have the time and budget to do so, but this system is more difficult and more prone to dropped frames.
This isn't a slight on XSX... just that a game will never actually optimise up to the peak theoretical limit of the GPU, because there will always need to be some left over.
Bottom line, I think this optimisation phase of development is where the term "lazy developers" comes from... It's the spit and polish, it's what DF is testing for mainly... how steady is the framerate and how optimised is the game engine for the platform to be able to deliver a consistent frame time. With the PS5, it would appear the boost/variable clocks are there in the console to compensate for those instances that a dev did not foresee when developing their game and have that extra performance overhead to maintain that steady performance for us, the end user. It simply saves time and headaches. It really is a new paradigm and it's really ingenius.
Where this new way of optimising games will come in most importance is for VR where a steady, high framerate is absolutely key to reduce the chance of motion sickness.
PS5, to me, screams "steady, consistent, performance". Absolutely contrary to what the "variable clocks" makes it sound like. That is the true genius of it.
www.neogaf.com
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lol
