Technical Comparison Sony PS4 and Microsoft Xbox

[patsu]

In many ways it doesn't have to be adapted. The back end servers for Gaikai could be running SLI'd Titans (and beyond) and therefore rendering the games at top end PC level before streaming the result to the PS4.

Nothing would stop MS from doing the same thing (turning the same "sony can do the same" logic you always hear around)

Anyways in all cases cloud warfare is going to nerf Sony's supposed advantage, a superior local box.

But I dont see Sony doing anything of that sort for a long while. I dont know if Onlive/Gakai were quite ready for prime time. Picture quality sucked.

I never tried Onlive's update to better image quality that Eurogamer explored, so dont know how much they improved.

Gaikai is also a cloud service, but different flavor from what MS announced.

Gaikai is more GPU-centric, while MS's cloud is more CPU centric. Gaikai is a cloud streaming service, where as MS's cloud is a general purpose platform. Both have impressive computational power.

In the Feb announcement, David Perry mentioned that he got the green light from management to kick off Gaikai service. So Sony may be going after cloud gaming aggressively too. It will likely be part of Sony Entertainment Online (e.g., Music Unlimited, PlayMemories, ...). These services are bundled with Sony devices.

 

[Hecatoncheires]

They also came out afterwards and said that was all just aspirational stuff that they hope they can do someday down the road. :/

As far as I understood, the aspirational stuff was this idea of an online library that contains all PlayStation games ever created, in other words, an unlimited backwards compatibility for all future PlayStation devices via GAIKAI.

Up til now I've been thinking that GAIKAI will stream demos of PS4 games and will be used for the "virutal living room" from day one.

Can someone clarify? :smile:

 

[patsu]

Don't know who's from Sony here.

I think they confirmed Gaikai on PS4 (i.e., Gaikai streaming from PS4). That's RemotePlay.

They also unofficially confirmed Gaikai progressive download.

They have been doing instant demo streaming before Sony acquired them. They haven't talked about instant demo streaming since then.

They also spoke about live streaming and remote assistance. I am not entirely clear how this is done yet.

Best is to wait for E3.

EDIT: Many forumites speculate that Sony will add cloud gaming to Playstation Plus.

I suspect Sony may take a two-pronged approach to counter used game sales: Digital sales and disc sales tracking.

 

[Hecatoncheires]

Best is to wait for E3.

As always!

 

[SedentaryJourney]

Gaikai renders everything remotely there is no division of gamestate between the cloud and the local render device. In MS' cloud vision only some subdivision of the gamestate is remote returning data to the local render device for final display. Gaikai is simply a remote gameplay or streaming tech there is no way to use it for this purpose

I'm not disagreeing here, but ostensibly if Gaikai has virtualized CPU and GPU resources available then how much of a step is it to set up a cloud compute api that can serve compute requests? I remember Gaikai talking about enabling their cloud to serve as a platform like iOS so obviously they intended to let developers have access to it eventually.

 

[astrograd]

You make a good point, the speedup would probably be less then 3x the max GFLOPS output due to how hard it is to parallelise certain algorithms and how there are probably going to be other restrictions of the peak performance of a piece of code outside of the pure computational ability. But to have a rough idea of the max power it'll be able to put out you can simply just multiply the max GLFOPS by 3.

GFLOPS are still a decent (floating point) metric even if some of the stuff isn't time sensitive, it'll have to compute something or else it'll just be sitting there as a giant set of dumb storage just streaming something, and if it is computing something there is most likely going to be some kind of cap on how much time it has to compute.

I wouldn't call 300GFLOPS a 'supercomputer' your going to need thousands more times that to be even anywhere near one.

I've discussed in mroe detail on TXB my views and don't wanna just copy/paste that here as to why I think you've undersold the visual impact (which is more about conveying convincing, realistic movement and animation than it is about raw flops). I've also posted in the other thread specifically on the cloud concept, so you can maybe see my views there. :smile:

And I think the AMD guy's were likely referring to it as a supercomputer in a more conceptual sense.

 

[astrograd]

As far as I understood, the aspirational stuff was this idea of an online library that contains all PlayStation games ever created, in other words, an unlimited backwards compatibility for all future PlayStation devices via GAIKAI.

Up til now I've been thinking that GAIKAI will stream demos of PS4 games and will be used for the "virutal living room" from day one.

Can someone clarify? :smile:

Jack Tretton, president and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America, sat down for an interview with Forbes and was asked if Sony's new fleet of cloud services would be available at launch. "I think it's aspirational on the device, as opposed to us standing up there, pounding the floor and saying the day this thing ships all this stuff will be there," Tretton replied. "I think it'll absolutely be there for the device, but I don't know whether it will be there for day one on the device."

http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/22/4017222/sony-says-ps4-cloud-features-are-aspirational

I think things like demos and letting other ppl play for you and uploading your shared vids etc will be there day 1. But BC won't be happening day 1 it seems. If they are still catching up to doing that kinda thing I'm not going to expect them to do actual compute in the cloud for gaming sub-tasks. MS has been writing new coding paradigms specifically to help programmers transition to the cloud so I get a vibe like this is just one more online network-related software area where Sony will be caught off guard and need to play catch up.

My impression is that Gaikai/Sony see cloud gaming as OnLive saw it...fully server side and semi-social. Which is fine, but still yrs away. MS sees it that way too, but seems to be moving towards that end goal with a hybrid strategy for the interim. I think that's smart on a number of levels.

 

[patsu]

I'm not disagreeing here, but ostensibly if Gaikai has virtualized CPU and GPU resources available then how much of a step is it to set up a cloud compute api that can serve compute requests? I remember Gaikai talking about enabling their cloud to serve as a platform like iOS so obviously they intended to let developers have access to it eventually.

Technically not difficult, but businesswise, may require more thinking.

This is because Gaikai probably has a plan on how to make money (from progressive download and streaming).

But that general computational cloud may have a different business model.

Gaikai's servers may be more optimized for game streaming in order to make money. I actually don't think Sony should follow MS. It should go one level higher. Like creating specialized cloud framework for certain use cases that can make money. They can share the technologies with partners if they want.

 

[Cjail]

@patsu

Isn't Sony already a level higher?
I mean Gaikai can already stream entire games while, from what we know so far, MS doesn't do that.

 

[patsu]

It is. But there are other possible areas. e.g., Within Gaikai games, see if they can split other specialized but common parts out. Outside Gaikai, they already have Gracenote (video and music meta-data for iTunes and other big name music services), PlayMemories backend (simple image processing). Those have their own business models.

And IMHO, they may be applicable for social or casual level games too.

I was curious to see Playstation Home evolve into a horizontal cloud-based social services too, but it became a vertical game space.

... and Maps ! Go get OpenStreetMaps data for DriveClub or LBP or GT6/7. Have been saying this for 2-3 years now.

 

[arijoytunir]

The rumble in the triggers of xbox one is really a cool feature .

Can sony add it in DS4 ? or should they?

 

[chris1515]

http://www.edge-online.com/news/ps4...crosoft-will-catch-up-says-avalanche-studios/

Avalanche said that the library and tools are better on PS4 and tells PS4 is more powerful than Xbox One

 

[Rangers]

http://www.edge-online.com/news/ps4...crosoft-will-catch-up-says-avalanche-studios/

Avalanche said that the library and tools are better on PS4 and tells PS4 is more powerful than Xbox One

Not exactly

The specs on paper would favour the PS4 over the Xbox One in terms of raw power, but there are many other factors involved so we’ll just have to wait and see a bit longer before making that judgment

 

[Arwin]

The rumble in the triggers of xbox one is really a cool feature .

Can sony add it in DS4 ? or should they?

Is it just rumble, or actual force feedback?

Sony can't add that on such short notice. The legal trademark work alone would take a year I bet.

 

[Betanumerical]

Not exactly

Whats this mean exactly then

PlayStation 4 currently beats Xbox One in terms of raw power and has a more mature developer environment, Avalanche Studios has told us.

 

[french toast]

Can some of you guys do me a favour and clarify the total ROPS and Tmus of both next gen systems please?

There seems to be alot of confusion with it, does ps4 carry more of those resources as well as 50% more compute power?

 

[Betanumerical]

Can some of you guys do me a favour and clarify the total ROPS and Tmus of both next gen systems please?

There seems to be alot of confusion with it, does ps4 carry more of those resources as well as 50% more compute power?

TMU's are tied 1:1 to the CU's so it has 50% more of those too.

It also has double the ROPs.

So.

50% more CU/TMU
100% more ROP/Fill

 

[Rangers]

Whats this mean exactly then

It means that's the fast and loose interpretation they dreamed up that wasn't supported by the quotes. Happens all the time.

At least in terms of power. The dev environment part was supported.

Speaking of

PS4 is more powerful than Xbox One on paper – but Microsoft will catch up, says Avalanche Studios

Are you going to assume they really said that even though it wasn't in the article like you did for the other part? I bet not.

 

[Rangers]

TMU's are tied 1:1 to the CU's so it has 50% more of those too.

It also has double the ROPs.

So.

50% more CU/TMU
100% more ROP/Fill

PS4 GPU has the same triangle setup rate as Xbone GPU (two per clock) 0% more, to highlight another fundamental spec for french_toast

I wonder why we dont have code names for these GPU's? Unless I missed it somewhere. Last time we had Xenos and the even deeper C1 IIRC, and RSX.

It's interesting MS developed a seemingly underpowered GPU in many respects yet felt the triangle setup rate was worth bolstering over a 7770. They must have felt it was key. Or perhaps AMD who I feel really makes many of these decisions for both sony and ms.

 

[french toast]

TMU's are tied 1:1 to the CU's so it has 50% more of those too.

It also has double the ROPs.

So.

50% more CU/TMU
100% more ROP/Fill

Shit, that's massive.
That is know where near current gen differences, add to the the improvements to compute efficency with the 64 compute threads, in the first 18 months this is bound to make a visible difference, maybe same IQ at twice the frame rate, or somewhere in between?

PS4 GPU has the same triangle setup rate as Xbone GPU (two per clock) 0% more, to highlight another fundamental spec for french_toast

I wonder why we dont have code names for these GPU's? Unless I missed it somewhere. Last time we had Xenos and the even deeper C1 IIRC, and RSX.

It's interesting MS developed a seemingly underpowered GPU in many respects yet felt the triangle setup rate was worth bolstering over a 7770. They must have felt it was key. Or perhaps AMD who I feel really makes many of these decisions for both sony and ms.

Triangle parity does seem a bit odd considering the other glaring differences, I think without cloud computing, ps4 will be able to run the same game with the same IQ and frame rate.. At twice the resolution 720p vs native 1080p.

Massive difference, only thing that could stop that is if microsoft implement a game parity contract agreement.