esram astrophysics *spin-off*
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While it does decrease bandwidth vs deferred shading, the cost of rendering with light pre-pass is the geometry pass must completed twice, and it also increases cpu demand, so its definitely not all roses.
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It's not all roses, it's a trade off, less off chip bandwidth usage for higher geometry load.
Cheers
rokkerkory
Regular
I am looking forward to 3rd and beyond gen games to make more use of X1's unique architecture.
I'm just curious on what you consider unique about XB1?
Personally, IMHO, the PS4 and XB1 are not unique... mostly mid-spec PC variants, tailored for the gaming console space. Granted the XB1 has ESRAM and PS4 has GDDR5, but this isn't that unique in my opinion, just a more forward design of marrying (union) the game console space with the PC space.
Unique would have been the return of a more beefier Cell or even the Emotion Engine / GSX combo...
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rokkerkory
Regular
I'm just curious on what you consider unique about XB1?
Personally, IMHO, the PS4 and XB1 are not unique... mostly mid-spec PC variants, tailored for the gaming console space. Granted the XB1 has ESRAM and PS4 has GDDR5, but this isn't that unique in my opinion, just a more forward design of marrying (union) the game console space with the PC space.
Unique would have been the return of a more beefier Cell or even the Emotion Engine / GSX combo...
When I look at other consoles or PC systems out there, none of them has quite the architecture of X1. ESRAM, shape and DME makes it unique to me. It doesn't mean that it is the best h/w out there of course.
Betanumerical
Veteran
Most PC's have something akin to SHAPE, or at least a sound processor on board somewhere (maybe not now days, but i certainly remember always having a sound blaster). The eSRAM and DME's don't really look that unique to me the eSRAM is just a large scratchpads (there are other consoles out there with large scratchpads) and the DME's are just juiced up DMA controllers (which PC's have a plenty).
You can quantify those things.
The esram alleviate the bandwidth limitation on the gpu and can improve rop performance.
The move engines alleviate the anemic low ipc low clocked jaguar cpu from the burden of moving data, freeing up the cpu to attend to other task, helping compensate for its weakness. PS4 does not have this luxury, though its not as ambitious in trying to bring pc like multitasking to console.
The X1's additional vertex engine brings it in line with 78xx gpus and the ps4 gpu which has 2 vertex engines.
Swizzle/AV/Video/Audio MMUs help alleviate the cpu/gpu a great deal from the burden of processing the kinect data and assist in helping multimedia applications.
The 8GB Nand allows the hdd to be fully utilized by games, and prevents impaired game hdd data transfer when accessing the OS side. Apps/OS data stored on Nand. Multitasking Nirvana.
In the end, lots of things to enhance the low clock low ipc jaguar cpu, to compensate for ddr3 based main memory, and to reduce kinect impact on cpu/gpu.
If there is anything unique about th system architecture its whether the heterogeneous system architecture (HSA) can offer anything of mildly substantial benefit to games, and not just number crunching in the scientific applications, but then PS4 has that too.
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True in an individual basis, although we had never seen all of those things together in a single system. I think that's what rokkerkory was trying to get at.
Pixel, REALLY liked your post, quite interesting.
No, no PCs have had anything akin to SHAPE. Many PCs have a DSP, if they have a newish soundblaster. (SB16 doesn't cut it. that's just a DAC and FM synthesis chip - most motherboard default "sound cards" are equivalent to that, usually without the FM synthesis), but the concept of a large fixed-function block is pretty new. About the closest you get is the SRC implementation in the latest soundblasters, but that's not the same.
Most high end PC soundcards prefer the flexibility of a full DSP solution, it gives you a lot more options, but at a higher cost, higher power, and more difficult to program.
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
Sorry but, holy crap!!
No kidding, I have a few laptops, some older than others and I wonder what the Conexant Smartaudio chip is, it if exists, it seems to me that it is the CPU doing all the work.
Tensilica cores are not the same thing. SHAPE is a set of fixed function units, running at a higher clock than most DSPs, and optimised to give maximum throughput for minimum power. A tensilica core is a general purpose CPU with DSP extensions, it has no fixed function units, and a single tensilica core would not be able to equal the throughput of the fixed function block. That's why even the latest soundblasters break out the SRC into a fixed function block, it's a waste of DSP power. It is, however, a _lot_ more flexible. TrueAudio can, for instance, do Reverb and HRTF, something SHAPE cannot. (Although one of the Tensilica cores in the audio block could, if needed.)
Holy crap what? Is my statement incorrect?
D
Deleted member 11852
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I'm taking you at your word, the 'holy crap' is in respect to the lack of progress. I bought my first Wintel PC (400Mhz Pentium II, Nvidia Riva 128 GPU) in circa 1998/99 and its crazy to think that baseline sound hardware really hasn't moved forward.
TheWretched
Regular
It has moved forward, but it was broken in half when Windows Vista/7 (dunno remember which) disallowed hardware accelerated audio from within the OS... makes me wonder why Creative didn't go under because of it.
Um, windows 8 supports hardware accelerated audio. There are WASAPI calls specifically for offloading audio workloads. You're referring to the deprecation of directsound and how it no longer supports hardware I assume. That should only affect older games. Games using OpenAL or any of the other sound solutions still use hardware directly. And default audio hardware (most consumers never buy an add on sound card) is no better than the SB16. At least it's better than the SBPro, since the DACs are usually 16 bit, and sometimes it even supports 6 channels. Technology wise, the soundcards in use by the majority of PC owners today are no better than the soundcards in use in 1995, 18 years ago. Heck, I built my own in 1993 that was almost as good, although it did require four printer ports.
TheWretched
Regular
Yes, Windows 8 does... I didn't say anything else.
And yes, there were indeed ways to still use good audio in 7. But... somehow not a lot of games did. Though I am a bit out of the loop to be fair. I've switched to Linux for a long time now (well, I do still have Windows for some stuff).
I am now using HDMI only (video and audio out). So I am not even bound to the horrible DACs of the mainboard audio anymore (I used to own a Soundstorm, which was great, the SoundMax I have now, which used to be able to do DTS Live on XP, but not thereafter, is quite bad in terms of software). Here's hoping that TruAudio will take off and start an "audio revolution" of sorts. Comparing "AAA" movies to games in the audio department is quite disappointing, even on consoles (which don't have the excuse of "different hardwares").
Funny enough, I've had little trouble enabling AC3 5.1 audio via SPDIF on Linux in games etc (not bitstreaming a DVD, but actually encoding audio to AC3), yet Windows... no dice.
And yes, there were indeed ways to still use good audio in 7. But... somehow not a lot of games did. Though I am a bit out of the loop to be fair. I've switched to Linux for a long time now (well, I do still have Windows for some stuff).
I am now using HDMI only (video and audio out). So I am not even bound to the horrible DACs of the mainboard audio anymore (I used to own a Soundstorm, which was great, the SoundMax I have now, which used to be able to do DTS Live on XP, but not thereafter, is quite bad in terms of software). Here's hoping that TruAudio will take off and start an "audio revolution" of sorts. Comparing "AAA" movies to games in the audio department is quite disappointing, even on consoles (which don't have the excuse of "different hardwares").
Funny enough, I've had little trouble enabling AC3 5.1 audio via SPDIF on Linux in games etc (not bitstreaming a DVD, but actually encoding audio to AC3), yet Windows... no dice.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Windows Vista/7/8 all support real time encoding of audio to AC3 (or any other standard) if your hardware has drivers for it and supports it. Motherboard audio has been able to do that in all of those Windows incarnations.
It's not that Windows can't do it. It's that hardware makers often won't go to the trouble of updating their drivers when no one is buying those older cards anymore.
Regards,
SB
TheWretched
Regular
I don't think this is the right topic to go further down this line... I'll say this much... the driver support for my mainboard dried up right after I bought it (I am not making Microsoft responsible for it).
So... ESRAM. I am still wondering as to why MS first had just 102 and now has ~twice that. I mean, they should now what they were designing. And by the time they were getting ready to announce their hardware, they should've also known if it works or not... Seems too strange to me, sort of.
So... ESRAM. I am still wondering as to why MS first had just 102 and now has ~twice that. I mean, they should now what they were designing. And by the time they were getting ready to announce their hardware, they should've also known if it works or not... Seems too strange to me, sort of.
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