Technical Comparison Sony PS4 and Microsoft Xbox

[patsu]

I sure hope Sony won't go and find 3 OSes to fill 3GB, or leave the extra RAM untouched. ^_^

Sony has said nothing of cloud and it's not in their planning. Likely takes years of planning, coding etc. The reason gakai servers cant run game related code is because that's not what they do.

I doubt there are many Gakai servers anyway. Company was small.

Cloud save is already in PSN since 2+ years ago.

Gaikai is cloud gaming. In its original form, Gaikai servers run the entire game, including the computations.

It seems that what Sony plan to do initially is make every PS4 a Gaikai server.

 

[kalelovil]

Same with cores: 2 is ideal.

6 game-available cores (2 reserved cores) is a good fit for early Xbox One titles since it matches the thread count of the Xbox 360, which developers are already familiar at working with.

Developers porting work which used all 6 of Cell's available SPUs (plus the PPE) would likely find 7 Jaguar cores (1 to orchestrate and the rest to execute jobs) a better fit.

 

[Rangers]

6 game-available cores (2 reserved cores) is a good fit for early Xbox One titles since it matches the thread count of the Xbox 360, which developers are already familiar at working with.

Developers porting work which used all 6 of Cell's available SPUs (plus the PPE) would likely find 7 Jaguar cores (1 to orchestrate and the rest to execute jobs) a better fit.

6 cores on PS4 is all but confirmed.

 

[liquidboy]

How the Xbox One draws more processing power from cloud computing - http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/...s-more-processing-power-from-cloud-computing/

"A rule of thumb we like to use is that [for] every Xbox One available in your living room we’ll have three of those devices in the cloud available,"

 

[Rangers]

Cloud save is already in PSN since 2+ years ago.

Gaikai is cloud gaming. In its original form, Gaikai servers run the entire game, including the computations.

It seems that what Sony plan to do initially is make every PS4 a Gaikai server.

I'm aware of all that. Xbox has cloud save too but that's eons of complexity away from what we're talking about.

Gakai I dunno whats up, but it's gone dark from Sony's side and I'm sure their resources are nothing compared to Azure. The speculation is it would be used only as PS2/PS3 backwards compatibility but even that seems stalled to me but I guess e3 would be the place to hear more about Gakai if we are going to.

For better or worse Gakai's technology is totally different than what MS is discussing, as you know. It sends a compressed non-interactive video stream out. It would have to replace the PS4, not augment it.

 

[mosen]

Is it possible that Windows 8 apps on Xbox One Contain indie games? I mean X1 running This games on WinRT OS without any port or ... for Game OS.

 

[DJ12]

Your bs (and bias) is getting out of hand.
Where do you come up with these things?

Have we forgotten the OSs dedicated job queues?

I don't think there will be a GPU reservation to be honest. If the OS can take GPU resources whenever it wants then why bother.

I imagine when I bring up the xmb the game will pause anyway, so it won't really matter.

 

[liquidboy]

BTW for those that don't already know .. MS is already implementing a hybrid (cloud + device) like rendering for games in "Galactic Reign" ... this is the future of how MANY games will be designed.. And galactic reign is actually a cool game

http://www.wpcentral.com/galactic-reign-windows-8-impressions

game renders the battle in the cloud ...

 

[kalelovil]

6 cores on PS4 is all but confirmed.

No, all we know is that at least 6 cores on the PS4 are available for the game running.

I take back what I said though about reserving a core for the use of scheduling, which should be a very lightweight task in most cases.

 

[SedentaryJourney]

BTW for those that don't already know .. MS is already implementing a hybrid (cloud + device) like rendering for games in "Galactic Reign" ... this is the future of how MANY games will be designed.. And galactic reign is actually a cool game

http://www.wpcentral.com/galactic-reign-windows-8-impressions

game renders the battle in the cloud ...

Always be wary of those who quote selectively.

Once the fleet is ready, the battle starts. Players don’t actually control the battles – they simply sit back and let their ships take on the opposing forces. Here’s where Galactic Reign differs from pretty much every other game out there. Instead of rendering the battle in real-time, the game renders the battle in the cloud. The results are then streamed to your device as a video. You can choose to ‘scan’ the video, which adds tactical overlays and allows you to jump to any point in the battle.

This video-based system allows Galactic Reign to showcase impressive-looking space battles on relatively underpowered Windows RT devices. However, the obvious downside is that players have to wait for the video to process on the cloud and then download. It’s not a fast system; the game actually says this process can take several minutes. You can start another challenge or play multiplayer while the video processes and downloads though. Once it’s done, you find out whether you won the battle and how many stars you earned.

This setup as described could easily be done with Gaikai.

While the cloud computing aspect of the XBO may have some interesting applications, I think assuming that it's some panacea for having less local processing power is just outright self-deception. As far as we know it's something that could be a potential advantage to Microsoft, but even then should game developers leverage more cloud computation MS isn't the only game in town.

 

[Rangers]

Always be wary of those who quote selectively.

This setup as described could easily be done with Gaikai.

While the cloud computing aspect of the XBO may have some interesting applications, I think assuming that it's some panacea for having less local processing power is just outright self-deception. As far as we know it's something that could be a potential advantage to Microsoft, but even then should game developers leverage more cloud computation MS isn't the only game in town.

it could negate any local power advantage though which is what the PS4 is counting on to beat Xbone.

And no matter what happens I dont think realistically Sony can beat MS on cloud anything really. They could hope to match. It's kinda like XBL features vs PSN. PSN is only ever trying for parity. That's probably the best you could hope for even years from now, that they wouldn't be far behind. And if comes down to money=server power, MS has a lot more money.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Yep.


I imagine Sony is reserving 10% or more of the GPU as well, likely more since they are typically less efficient as they reserved a lot more memory on PS3 for OS. I'd guess 15-20% PS4 GPU reserved for OS/apps.

Why the hell would the PS4 need to reserve 3/4 whole CUs for the operating system and apps?!

Unless that by apps you mean playing a whole secondary 3D game at the same time as the main game, or the operating system is based on GPGPU, that doesn't make any sense.

 

[Qrius]

Yep.


I imagine Sony is reserving 10% or more of the GPU as well, likely more since they are typically less efficient as they reserved a lot more memory on PS3 for OS. I'd guess 15-20% PS4 GPU reserved for OS/apps.

Yes, makes perfect sense. Intel, who until the last year, couldn't produce a decent graphics core to save their life, managed to run the entire Windows OS (which has never been known for its efficiency) on god awful GT graphics cores. Full time. With no problems.

Sony on the other hand, who have no OS interface running at the same time as a game, need to reserve as many CU's as the top of line AMD Richland APU. All the time. Just in case you want to pull up the home screen. Sorry developers, we need the power to draw all those rectangles in 2D.

Obvious really.

 

[liquidboy]

Always be wary of those who quote selectively.

This setup as described could easily be done with Gaikai.

While the cloud computing aspect of the XBO may have some interesting applications, I think assuming that it's some panacea for having less local processing power is just outright self-deception. As far as we know it's something that could be a potential advantage to Microsoft, but even then should game developers leverage more cloud computation MS isn't the only game in town.

Very true ...

Thou MS are betting heavily on the cloud, actually risking quite a lot. They could of gone for a crazy cutting edge console BUT choose what they did with "cloud" firmly as a primary goal as part of the render pipeline.

As the technical interview highlighted, they explicitly rate the "cloud" aspects of XO as a major major investment ..

I honestly also believe, MS couldn't give a crap losing gamers not willing to be online and part of the "cloud" future. And if I were them I wouldn't waste time and resources trying to please that demographic too! (saying it bluntly and sorry to offend those that fall into that bucket)

 

[Cjail]

I asked and I was told that the OS reserved memory is not official.

 

[SedentaryJourney]

it could negate any local power advantage though which is what the PS4 is counting on to beat Xbone.

And no matter what happens I dont think realistically Sony can beat MS on cloud anything really. They could hope to match. It's kinda like XBL features vs PSN. PSN is only ever trying for parity. That's probably the best you could hope for even years from now, that they wouldn't be far behind. And if comes down to money=server power, MS has a lot more money.

I see that you have a lot of confidence in Microsoft and a lot less in Sony, but why should I take it for granted that MS is somehow inherently superior just because? The idea that parity with Microsoft is somehow the height of Sony's ambitions and as a result the most they are capable of is just substituting narrative for reasoning. If this were true then how does anyone explain PS Home or PS+?

Furthermore, before the leaks I remember doom and gloom in the predictions thread about Sony's ability to compete with MS on specs. It was just assumed that this would be the case since MS had deep pockets, and yet Sony surprised many of us. At this point I think the notion that MS has the advantage across software, hardware, and design shouldn't be taken for granted.

I'll wait and see if anything interesting comes out of cloud assisted rendering in the near future. MS hasn't shown any proof of concept yet. If it does take off, who's to say Sony even have to match Microsoft's infrastructure investments in order to take part? There's always Oracle, Google, Amazon, IBM, HP et al.

 

[Rangers]

I asked and I was told that the OS reserved memory is not official.

asked who? and for which console?

 

[Strange]

Sony has said nothing of cloud and it's not in their planning. Likely takes years of planning, coding etc. The reason gakai servers cant run game related code is because that's not what they do.

I doubt there are many Gakai servers anyway. Company was small.

... And we choose to ignore the fact that they're also running probably the most computational intensive thing: running your entire game in the cloud.

 

[HollovVpo1nt]

-nvm-

 

[Cjail]

asked who? and for which console?

I am talking bout PS4, sorry I should have been more clear clear.