NGGP: NextGen Garbage Pile (aka: No one reads the topics or stays on topic) *spawn*

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I think the 14 + 4 setup of PS4 is the missing piece to explain why it has been said PS4 and Xbox 3 are as close as they are supposed to be. From a rendering viewpoint you're looking at 14 CUs vs 12 CUs respectively. PS4 has more raw compute while Xbox 3 is designed for maximum efficiency. Due to designing around 14 CUs for rendering even though the 4 CUs could be used for this as well, they would not be fully utilized in that task as they could in a "normal" setup. At the same time if they are used for rendering, then the compute tasks are left solely to the Jaguar cores.
 
I still don't see them any close ... unless there's 12 CU + extra something for XBX to help with compute , Orbis is far ahead .
 
kots said:
I still don't see them any close ... unless there's 12 CU + extra something for XBX to help with compute , Orbis is far ahead .
Click to expand...

Ahead I agree with, but I don't know about far ahead. Though I'm also trying to take it from a multi-plat devs perspective. Without shifting around the usage of the 4CUs, 14 CUs vs 12 CUs is only a 128 ALU difference. And maybe a heavy amount of focus was given to that when comparing the two as opposed to the compute side of the equation. Especially since GPU compute hasn't been tapped into much for game development. Maybe the difference will be shown in multi-plat games later in these consoles lives as more development includes GPU compute?
 
bgassassin said:
At the same time if they are used for rendering, then the compute tasks are left solely to the Jaguar cores.
Click to expand...

Which is the case for Durango, no? The question is now if the performance hit to these extra 4 CU's is made up by the efficiency improving silicon in Durango.

edit: aegis is commenting on the recent rumors:

https://twitter.com/aegies/status/296320251983953920
current state of next-gen hardware rumors: what you're hearing spec-wise is accurate but incomplete. also, subject to minor changes.
Click to expand...
https://twitter.com/aegies/status/296320930555236352
both next-gen consoles are essentially finished, but are in various states of final tweaking.
Click to expand...

He also says the details are incomplete and we're still missing extra hardware.
 
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In the face of the most recent hardware leaks from Orbis, I wonder how hard it would be for Microsoft to just increase the GPU core clocks by some 20-25% in order to narrow the difference in performance between the two consoles.
Both consoles seem to be designed for very good power efficiency.
Maybe it'd be best for Microsoft to cut a bit on that power efficiency, increase the speed on the internal fan a bit making it a bit louder too, just to get platform parity with the Orbis.

Otherwise, with such similar architectures and an obvious performance advantage in Orbis, we'll just see better versions in the Sony console in pretty much every multi-platform title that comes out this next gen.
 
anexanhume said:
Which is the case for Durango, no? The question is now if the performance hit to these extra 4 CU's is made up by the efficiency improving silicon in Durango.
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My take on the rumors was that both Durango and Orbis can use (part of their GPU's) CUs as "additional" GPGPU units to help the Jaguar cores with the more parallel processing stuff.

The difference is suposed to be that Orbis seems to have 4CUs "reserved" for GPGPU tasks (and can't use more than that for that purpose), while Durango should be capable of using as many (or as few) of it's 12 CU for compute purposes as is required by the nature of the specific code.

What system will be better will probably depend a lot on the kind of code that they'll have to run in each individual case:

Worst case for Durango would be code that fully uses 4CUs for compute stuff on both Durango and Orbis. In that case, Orbis would have 14CUs left for GPU purposes - while Durango's GPU part would practically be cut down to 8CUs. Even with heaps of efficiency improvements and additional hardware helpers, that kind of gap would be difficult to bridge.

I reckon real-world performance will probably end up to be very similar, though. Just like RSX vs. Xenos (whose conceptual differences seem rather similar in high-level-abstraction).
 
anexanhume said:
Me either. I feel like we'll just get more story as to why Orbis>Durango rather than Orbis>>>Durango.
Click to expand...

you can't do the math without the numbers, with an extra compute/render block plus an extra helper module plus an extra dedicated functional block, this can be a totally different story, too soon to came to conclusions
 
anexanhume said:
Me either. I feel like we'll just get more story as to why Orbis>Durango rather than Orbis>>>Durango.
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Well, Proelite has been saying we expects Durango to be 5%-10% more powerful than Orbis, so there must be something to back those comments if they are true.

If aegies is right, we might see some extra CUs for Durango?
 
SKYSONY said:
Well, Proelite has been saying we expects Durango to be 5%-10% more powerful than Orbis, so there must be something to back those comments if they are true.

If aegies is right, we might see some extra CUs for Durango?
Click to expand...

I feel like they would have been reported had they been actual CU's. Must be something modified enough to not warrant the name.
 
I'm still struggling to see how Durango would come close to the performance of Orbis. Hypothetically, I could see a 1.2 TF GPU closing the gap with 1.4 TF through an improved ISA and embedded RAM thanks to efficiency gains. That's only a 15% or so difference, but the other compute capability. I'm not sure can be close easily.

What I find interesting is the Orbis leak mentions Jaguar explicitly while the Durango doc doesn't, just says x86. Perhaps the Durango CPU is more customized. Someone suggested you could upgrade the CPU's from one ADD and one MUL unit to two FMA's instead, this way you could effectively double the flops. I figure the L2 and memory couldn't support the bandwidth, but by using the embedded RAM, maybe that alleviates the bandwidth issue.
 
Sorry for a offtopic question, but it is for both Orbis and Durango. (Thought it was better than under each leak thread)

I have not seen any interview or comments from MS or Sony regarding the rumoured specs. Normally we can read this and we get the usual "we do not comment on rumoures" or maybe some interesting comments. Have I missed it?
 
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