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[acm2000]

um

it's going to be 5 ddr3 vs 3.5 ddr5

real talk

i doubt final console os will take 3GB of ram, sorry, early alpha versions? sure, final? no way

 

[i-Lo]

OK, this makes a lot more sense.

You would accept it without further verification of this logic (pertaining to TU)?

 

[-Pyromaniac-]

I'm not so tech savvy, so I don't understand these numbers. But I hope we start seeing leaks of what the console itself will look like. With all the rumors and tech specs coming out, it seems likely that we'll see something of Orbis and Durango at E3.

lol

pretty sure we'll be hearing about both officially before E3, and then a lot more at E3. Been known for a while now.

 

[Emarv]

Lol, likely?

GAF has been pretty much unanimous that they will have full out unveil this E3.

If not before then at their own, respective unveiling ceremonies.

 

[Grief.exe]

no I mean it like this. If a console had 1.84 and a PC had 1.84. The console 1.84 will be capable of doing more. So you can't accurately judge the gap.

Yes, but the argument is when the consoles are actually released there will be 5 TFlop cards to be had on the PC side. 7970 and 680 are already pushing 4 when overclocked.

That's quite a gap right out of the gate.

My guess is that Orbis is using a underclocked 6870 based on the data.

I am impressed with the GDDR5 though, that will be nice for latency.

 

[Dawg]

- 3.5 GB (RAM) available to games (estimate)

 

[Allonym]

Lmao. Perfect

 

[Singularity42]

 

[daveo42]

Pertaining to ROPs I got verification because it was a separate term and iamashadowhawk provided source. But do you have proof for "Texture Unit" needing to be multiplied by 4 as well?

Agreed. Need confirmation that Texture Units were also divided by 4. Only reason why it worked for the ROPs is because they were listed as backend ROPs to begin with.

 

[Beerman462]

All of these are really nice features. The decompression hardware should help with loading of data into the smaller RAM pool.

The texture units thing is kind of fucked though. Isn't that only 6 more than the PS3 has? I can't believe we may not get AF next gen.

Think it will enable preloading or continuous loading into the ram without taxing the CPU?

 

[The Abominable Snowman]

I don't get everyone's disbelief at this console costing less than $400. This isn't a PS3 case, and in all honesty at PS3 launch we were getting a bargain for the tech. We were just not seeing the worth. Had the PS3 been more traditional, it would've been far less.

Blu Ray drives are just a few hairs more expensive than the penny-DVD drives and 500GB HDs are the cheapest platters out now. In contrast to the PS3's launch where the next cheapest Blu Ray player in the first 6 months was still $400 and 20GB HDs were still $50-75.

I'm still disappointed in a few hardware design choices in this machine, though.

 

[jayb]

lol, the lady next to him (his wife?) looks like she's escaping from a straight jacket.

 

[Tobor]

Kinect is probably one of the strongest consumer devices MS has ever produced. It is the reason why the 360 has seen such strong sales even years after its launch. Now, you think MS is going to ignore that?

$350 is not some magic number. Kinect, however, provided a massive boost for the system even with lukewarm support since its a peripheral.

There is no way in hell that MS will launch a new system without Kinect packed in. To do that to hit some ideal pricepoint would be idiotic.

It's a interesting predicament. Including the camera means a higher price, yet the people most interested in the camera are also the most price conscious. It's an upgrade for casuals. Maybe they go with two skus, and the Kinect model is gimped some other way to make up the cost difference.

Either way, both companies need a machine that starts at $399. This is not a market that will accept an overall increase in base price.

 

[McHuj]

You would accept it without further verification of this logic (pertaining to TU)?

 

[-Pyromaniac-]

Yes, but the argument is when the consoles are actually released there will be 5 TFlop cards to be had on the PC side. 7970 and 680 are already pushing 4 when overclocked.

That's quite a gap right out of the gate.

My guess is that Orbis is using a underclocked 6870 based on the TFlops.

there will always be a gap between PCs with new shit inside and consoles, for sure. All I'm saying is the fact that it's in a closed environment on consoles and whatever other programming reasons, it'll remain competitive.

 

[RoboPlato]

You would accept it without further verification of this logic (pertaining to TU)?

I don't know much about these things and he obviously has a better understanding than I. 18 TUs seems absolutely tiny for next gen so 72 makes a whole lot more sense, especially since that's still lower than many PC cards.

 

[Ponn]

Kinect is probably one of the strongest consumer devices MS has ever produced. It is the reason why the 360 has seen such strong sales even years after its launch. Now, you think MS is going to ignore that?

$350 is not some magic number. Kinect, however, provided a massive boost for the system even with lukewarm support since its a peripheral.

There is no way in hell that MS will launch a new system without Kinect packed in. To do that to hit some ideal pricepoint would be idiotic.

Wonder how that would turn out. A base Durango with Kinect at $499 or Orbis for $399, especially if these specs hold true. Would show if Kinect really is that popular or just being shoved down peoples throat.

I think Kinect will be included with every Durango but i dont think MS will let Sony be cheaper and i think the specs and build of Durango show that. They are going to save a little on specs and have more cheaper ram to push kinect in exchange for what will be a negligible difference in games for most consumers.

 

[deanos]

Pertaining to ROPs I got verification because it was a separate term and iamashadowhawk provided source. But do you have proof for "Texture Unit" needing to be multiplied by 4 as well?

 

[Interfectum]

hardware gaf: if MS managed to get 6-7 GB or RAM for games and Sony had the 3.5 GB for games, eventhough Sony's is faster does MS see any advantage at all with more RAM? Is that better for lazy devs? Are devs going to have to jump through hoops to account for that faster RAM?

 

[gofreak]

You would accept it without further verification of this logic (pertaining to TU)?

See my last post.

AMD does indeed refer to the group of 4 texture filter units in a GCN CU as 'a texture unit' in docs.

 

[Krabardaf]

Durango = 7 letters.
Orbis = 5 letters.

Durango > Orbis cause it has less letters.
Orbis > Durango cause it takes less time to type.

And when you need to fetch the two letters Orbis is missing on the HDD, then Orbis is infinitely much slower than Durango.

Of course games should be optimized to avoid this as much as possible, but if Durango is lead platform and offers substancially more ram, i could see some issue in memory intensive games.

 

[btkadams]

Does this mean non-bad downloads & installs?

the vita has non-bad downloads & installs (downloads and then the install take like 4 seconds no matter how big the file is), so there's no way the ps4 will be like the ps3.

 

[i-Lo]

Yes, but the argument is when the consoles are actually released there will be 5 TFlop cards to be had on the PC side. 7970 and 680 are already pushing 4 when overclocked.

That's quite a gap right out of the gate.

My guess is that Orbis is using a underclocked 6870 based on the data.

To my knowledge 6870 does not use GCN architecture which the Southern Island GPUs do. So it actually based off of pitcairn.

 

[DieH@rd]

I don't think Sony will be stupid with the price but $350 with all that included in the box? I can't believe it.

I hope that the moves controllers are for other SKU....

"All that" is one 28nm APU that can be produced cheaply in whatever factory they want and 4 gigs of fast ram. Its not really expensive. They literary aimed it to be cheap and easy to produce, but still nicely put together and offering a lot of power for sub 200W box.

 

[Reiko]

And when you need to fetch the two letters Orbis is missing on the HDD, then Orbis is infinitely much slower than Durango.

Of course games should be optimized to avoid this as much as possible, but if Durango is lead platform and offers substancially more ram, i could see some issue in memory intensive games.

I wonder if either of these consoles are Bethseda proof?

 

[gundamkyoukai]

no new info really , we even found out about the 176 GBs few days ago .

 

[Elios83]

I don't get everyone's disbelief at this console costing less than $400. This isn't a PS3 case, and in all honesty at PS3 launch we were getting a bargain for the tech. We were just not seeing the worth. Had the PS3 been more traditional, it would've been far less.

Blu Ray drives are just a few hairs more expensive than the penny-DVD drives and 500GB HDs are the cheapest platters out now. In contrast to the PS3's launch where the next cheapest Blu Ray player in the first 6 months was still $400 and 20GB HDs were still $50-75.

I'm still disappointed in a few hardware design choices in this machine, though.

Indeed it's a pretty cheap machine to build.
Nothing exotic, SOC, UMA. Main issues are the SOC's yields and the cost of the peripherals included (cameras, advanced controllers).
But there's no reason to believe the basic SKU won't be priced at 399$ (could be even lower if they wanted to take losses on it).

 

[evangd007]

Considering his death, this doesn't bode well for hardware stability

I realized that after I typed it. My subconscious is on fire.

 

[Eideka]

there will always be a gap between PCs with new shit inside and consoles, for sure. All I'm saying is the fact that it's in a closed environment on consoles and whatever other programming reasons, it'll remain competitive.

When it will come to multiplats...I'm not sure.

If those specs are representative of the final hardware then it will be pretty easy to run the first wave of next-gen games better than either consoles as long as you have a fairly powerful PC (GTX660-7870).
That was not the case back in 2005-2006.

PC has some catching up to do back then, not this time, they are actually ahead by quite a margin.

 

[onimushroom]

First footage of launch game Fantavision 4K!

 

[BruceLeeRoy]

I'm with Vinci. There is absolutely no way that Kinect isn't packed in with the 720 and that Microsoft isn't allocating significant resources to developing games for it. It's going to be the focal point of their next system.

 

[Always-honest]

Yesssss! It has specs.

 

[herod]

Isn't that still bad though? I mean, if what you are saying is true, 680 is supposedly double that?

no, it isn't anything like the older days when consoles had no in-memory OS and generic middleware was still an immature basis for development.

 

[Demon Lizardman]

So, was this wait for nothing or what?

 

[michaelius]

I don't get everyone's disbelief at this console costing less than $400. This isn't a PS3 case, and in all honesty at PS3 launch we were getting a bargain for the tech. We were just not seeing the worth. Had the PS3 been more traditional, it would've been far less.

Blu Ray drives are just a few hairs more expensive than the penny-DVD drives and 500GB HDs are the cheapest platters out now. In contrast to the PS3's launch where the next cheapest Blu Ray player in the first 6 months was still $400 and 20GB HDs were still $50-75.

I'm still disappointed in a few hardware design choices in this machine, though.

Well you actually need to know anything about PC market to know it's relatively cheap tech

 

[daveo42]

Not as tech savy as some. I see the 4 blocks of texture units, so we are getting 18*4=72 or 14*4=56 + 4*4=16 TU total?

Had to look at the actual url to see these were really CUs. Where's source document?

 

[gofreak]

this makes sense. Doesn't the GCN normally split GPGPU and normal GPU duties up? So if you use GPGPU you lose half your CUs. By focusing like this, you can use 4CUs for GPGPU and still have 14 for graphics. With the normal architecture you'd be left with only 9CU if you need GPGPU functions.

I doubt GCN is that inefficient about mixing GPGPU and graphics tasks normally (?) I thought it could mix them around on a pretty finely grained level.

I'm sure this probably does have something to do with task scheduling though.

 

[i-Lo]

I think I have an explanation for the '18 texture unit' thing. I think it's just another semantics issue about how things are referred to in different contexts.

In some AMD documentation, they talk about each CU having one texture unit e.g. in here: http://www.siliconwolves.net/frames...allel_Processing_OpenCL_Programming_Guide.pdf



The texture unit has 4 texture filter units (what we refer to as 'texture units' or tmus) and 16 texture load/store units.

So, like the render backend/ROPs thing, I think it's talking about 18 'texture units' in this sense - the group of 4 texture filter units in each GCN CU.

It is interesting. Thank you. So in essence the semantic difference is due to GCN architecture, correct? I really do hope that you are correct. It would place the GPU bang in the middle of 7850 and 7870 again.

Thank you guys.

 

[Felix Lighter]

Welp. Time to enjoy either:
a) low texture resolutions
b) increased disc manufacturing costs -> higher game prices (hopefully they go full digital as well, like with Wii U, so this isn't a factor)
c) multiple disc games

I'm not following this. How is Blu-ray a limiting factor and what were you expecting? If the vast vast majority of games can't fit on a 25GB - 50GB disk comfortably, than I don't think digital distribution will be a great solution anyway.

 

[Thoraxes]

I expected more power, but I can rest easy knowing I don't have to buy one till they make a FF again.

 

[Iacobellis]

 

[acm2000]

hardware gaf: if MS managed to get 6-7 GB or RAM for games and Sony had the 3.5 GB for games, eventhough Sony's is faster does MS see any advantage at all with more RAM? Is that better for lazy devs? Are devs going to have to jump through hoops to account for that faster RAM?

not that simple, MS apprently also has high speed ESRAM, connected to both cpu and gpu, just to add another spanner to the works

 

[Sephiroth503]

Now I need Killzone gifs please! Let's see what GG can do!!!!

 

[Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew]

Welp. Time to enjoy either:
a) low texture resolutions
b) increased disc manufacturing costs -> higher game prices (hopefully they go full digital as well, like with Wii U, so this isn't a factor)
c) multiple disc games

Err... what? PS3 uses 50GB blu-ray disc. There is no increased manufacturing cost or multiple disc games. Textures won't consume all the space as evident on PC games with better texture than console counterparts.

 

[mrklaw]

I'm with Vinci. There is absolutely no way that Kinect isn't packed in with the 720 and that Microsoft isn't allocating significant resources to developing games for it. It's going to be the focal point of their next system.

But Tobor's point stands. Kinect was a mid-gen peripheral to sell to casuals and get them to buy cheap 4GB arcade 360s. That doesn't sit with launching a high priced console appealing initially to core gamers (especially as those casuals only just bought a kinect a couple of years ago, they aren't in the market for a new console yet)

Why not save the cost and release mid-gen?

They'll probably include it, and they'll do some embarrasing Minority Report shenanigans with the OS that people will lap up and then just use the controller like normal.


Kinect is my biggest 'I don't get it' this gen.

 

[Hydrargyrus]

So what happens with those 18/14 CU???

 

[Fistwell]

I'm not following this. How is Blu-ray a limiting factor and what were you expecting? If the vast vast majority of games can't fit on a 25GB - 50GB disk comfortably, than I don't think digital distribution will be a great solution anyway.

With you on that. Even just 20 something gigs sounds like plenty for most games.

Err... what? PS3 uses 50GB blu-ray disc. There is no increased manufacturing cost or multiple disc games. Textures won't consume all the space as evident on PC games with better texture than console counterparts.

Yeah, was gonna say... I don't necessarily track precise numbers, but I don't remember installing any 50gig PC game.

 

[RoboPlato]

I'm not following this. How is Blu-ray a limiting factor and what were you expecting? If the vast vast majority of games can't fit on a 25GB - 50GB disk comfortably, than I don't think digital distribution will be a great solution anyway.

Probably because several PS3 exclusive games this gen almost filled 50Gb blu rays. What a lot of people don't realize though is that they had lots of languages on the disk which took a ton of space. Cut that and it should be fine for next gen.

 

[metalslimer]

I can see this being sold for 399 although I say no to the idea there won't be a smaller say 50GB SKU at launch for 399 and this one will be 450. I'm not seeing anything particularly amazing here i.e. blows away high end PCs.

 

[Verendus]

Wonder how that would turn out. A base Durango with Kinect at $499 or Orbis for $399, especially if these specs hold true. Would show if Kinect really is that popular or just being shoved down peoples throat.

I think Kinect will be included with every Durango but i dont think MS will let Sony be cheaper and i think the specs and build of Durango show that. They are going to save a little on specs and have more cheaper ram to push kinect in exchange for what will be a negligible difference in games for most consumers.

No way MS is more expensive. Kinect was a great initial boost, but it doesn't mean much now. It would be a smart marketing move to include a Kinect 2.0, especially if they can drive strong media impression over a substantial upgrade, but not if they end up more expensive. They'd be screwing themselves over because they won't be much competition for Sony. I imagine Kinect will be involved, but I don't see MS being more expensive.