I was about to reply the same to tkf, you just read my mind. It is a further implication I hadn't thought of. The apps won't become non essential though, aside from the tweaks in the overall interface you can expect.
Freeing up the Kinect Reservation *spawn*
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I doubt that will change, I bet there's some security features that it provides.
If something does change, I could see them freeing up more memory for games, maybe an additional gig.
Actually, they better leave 1% for "Xbox volume up/down".... Just saying MS, I use that a bunch and I do not want to have to find where I hid my AV remotes.
/kidding but not really - I use this and mute constantly while in games.
/kidding but not really - I use this and mute constantly while in games.
Darn you MisterX for not having an insider that was right about some more power sauce, because now we are losing functions to find spare power. Or so it seems... Sigh
Don't worry MisterX's insider will be proven right 'soon', when Mono/Stereo/12GB dev kits/stacked SoCs/HSA/HBA/DX12/cloud are all confirmed on stage at E3 in a glorious explosion of strangely intricate collages of unrelated imagery, mangled grammar and logic leaps large enough to bound over oceans.
Oneofthesedays
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The 10% GPU reservation that is being given back to developers will apply to ALL X1 consoles. This is something that his been in the works for a long time. There is NO extra power that will be somehow allocated to Kinectless SKUs and not existing consoles. That is misleading garbage clickbait.
Now, there are important caveats. You will ONLY get that 10% back if your game opts out of advanced Kinect features that require the GPU like skeletal tracking, biometrics, face recognition, etc. and opt into the new dynamic GPU reservation model. This requires extra testing to make sure your games run smoothly with system tasks like notifications and such. Speech/audio will still work as these do not require GPU processing. Developers have to opt into this model to get access to the GPU boost, it won't blindly come for free. In other words, your games won't see an automatic boost unless devs retarget the games for the new SDKs and publish an update. On top of all of this, the Kinect GPU reserve itself is being chopped in half. So if a game does opt in for Kinect features, it will still be able to access more of the GPU than it was able to before.
Keep in mind this a GPU boost only, not a CPU boost. So any games that are currently CPU bound will see no real benefit from this. Only games that are GPU bound will get the extra benefit. Now keep in mind 10% GPU improvement is a pretty big deal, in fact it's a hell of a lot bigger an improvement than they could have gotten by just upping the clock speeds on the GPU.
Now, there are important caveats. You will ONLY get that 10% back if your game opts out of advanced Kinect features that require the GPU like skeletal tracking, biometrics, face recognition, etc. and opt into the new dynamic GPU reservation model. This requires extra testing to make sure your games run smoothly with system tasks like notifications and such. Speech/audio will still work as these do not require GPU processing. Developers have to opt into this model to get access to the GPU boost, it won't blindly come for free. In other words, your games won't see an automatic boost unless devs retarget the games for the new SDKs and publish an update. On top of all of this, the Kinect GPU reserve itself is being chopped in half. So if a game does opt in for Kinect features, it will still be able to access more of the GPU than it was able to before.
Keep in mind this a GPU boost only, not a CPU boost. So any games that are currently CPU bound will see no real benefit from this. Only games that are GPU bound will get the extra benefit. Now keep in mind 10% GPU improvement is a pretty big deal, in fact it's a hell of a lot bigger an improvement than they could have gotten by just upping the clock speeds on the GPU.
Oneofthesedays
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Yes.
This sounds like a good summation to me.
With the caveat that, you'll never get the full 10% back, will you? It could go down to 5 or 2%, but you'll always need something, I think. On 360 you needed it to pull up the guide. There isn't something similar on X1? Also, MS own wording said they give "some" back, right? This goes for any console ever designed I assume.
It is very good to see MS is being proactive about this stuff though, and not just burying their head in the sand with some Nintendo-like "consumers dont care about graphics at all" crap. I still always wonder if they had the decision to not enable the two redundant CU's back, they wouldn't jump on it knowing what they know now, and heck maybe they would have pushed the GPU upclock 50 mhz higher or something too. They probably really didn't expect the backlash against X1 performance to be so big. Hopefully they are taking notes for next gen.
Oneofthesedays
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It's dynamic. It can be as high as 100% if the system isn't doing anything and the game opts out of Kinect.
Two capable DSPs for whatever the developers want. Just because they handle speech processing now, doesn't mean that's all they can do. Similar, if motion tracking is implemented on CPU and GPU, freeing those up release more CPU and GPU power for whatever the devs want.
(((interference)))
Veteran
Hmm, getting ~10% or so back would definitely help.
What I don't understand is that some of the 10% reservation must be going to the UI, apps and system features so how do things like snap work with games after this patch that frees up GPU resources? Or does the game just run at a lower FPS when an application is snapped to it.
And does the XB1 actually have a real world CPU advantage over the PS4 (1.75 Ghz vs 1.6 Ghz) or is that merely compensating for the VM overheads - as the CPU benchmarks seem to indicate.
What I don't understand is that some of the 10% reservation must be going to the UI, apps and system features so how do things like snap work with games after this patch that frees up GPU resources? Or does the game just run at a lower FPS when an application is snapped to it.
And does the XB1 actually have a real world CPU advantage over the PS4 (1.75 Ghz vs 1.6 Ghz) or is that merely compensating for the VM overheads - as the CPU benchmarks seem to indicate.
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Head of Xbox says plans to decouple Kinect from Xbox One began in April
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/...decouple-kinect-from-xbox-one-began-in-april/
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/...decouple-kinect-from-xbox-one-began-in-april/
But that would also introduce more testing so it wouldn't actually help overall, it just pushes up the cost of testing. And for me that's where the idea of dropping the Kinect reservation on the basis of have/not have is a non-runner.
That's not to say they might reduce the overall reserved % of GPU time for Kinect and Kinectless skus as that would both deliver more power to developers and allow the always on Kinect elements ("XBox Snap...", "Xbox Go Home", etc) to continue to work as before.
Also where did this idea that there's 8% reserved just for Kinect? I thought the 10% was a slightly high reserve to account for the 'spiky' nature of System + Kinect features without anyone explicitly saying "this much for system, that much for Kinect".
The previous Eurogamer/DF article points to being able to prioritise separate workloads through the ACES. The implication being that snap can just be set to lower priority and the updates are done in the "bubbles" of the game rendering.
From the article, "Xbox One software will get better from a technological standpoint, but it will come down to a range of factors - the most dramatic of which has little to do with Kinect. Development sources indicate that the DirectX driver is improving rapidly, but developers' increased familiarity with the hardware is also paying dividends - a state of affairs exemplified by the new Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, which even in its pre-production form offers a 50 per cent resolution boost over its 720p predecessor, while also incorporating a wealth of new rendering technologies."
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