Technical Comparison Sony PS4 and Microsoft Xbox

[BoardBonobo]

Oh good grief. Durango Clock increases? impossible! Clock decreases? Now of course that speculation has great merit




In which case we're gonna need leaks...

Why has all leaks gone so dark?

Bkilian dont work at MS for months so he cant hint anything recent, Lherre, well not sure it's true but I heard rumor he wasn't even a real dev, whatever the case he doesn't talk now...we have nothing

Vgleaks is petering out, supposedly DAE was their source and he is shut down now too with legal troubles.

Save I guess articles by Edge, CVG and the like should they ever appear. I think good Xbox spec news tends to get suppressed by the media anyway, if there was a clock increase it's going to be a lot harder to find out.

Things leak at E3 though maybe anyway just because you know, a lot of gaming people talking in one place. Then I said the same thing about GDC and absolutely nothing came out of that.

In the absence of news the 1.6/800 clocks have to be assumed the status quo.

I guess we'll get the true low down once the box comes out. Not really that long to wait now as long as they have no production issues.

 

[Rangers]

I guess we'll get the true low down once the box comes out. Not really that long to wait now as long as they have no production issues.

November...pretty long to me

 

[Bagel seed]

and this is his other recent x-bonery post

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=58517553&highlight=#post58517553

They are way, way behind schedule. Virtually nothing is on schedule, from games to services to hardware. It's a clusterfuck.

So is that just or yields or just lack of updated dev kits?

 

[Pugger]

So is that just or yields or just lack of updated dev kits?

Don't believe everything you read on the net' .

 

[Bagel seed]

Don't believe everything you read on the net' .

Meh, it's plausible at this point. Kotaku 6 months behind rumor, RAD Tools dev twitter posts, Avalanche Studios comments, etc.

That Esram was more trouble then it was worth, imo, if it is yield issues holding things back. How about 2 banks of DDR3, could that have been an option?

 

[menmau]

Can anyone show me a console in the past that has a significant upclock just prior to launch?.

Original Xbox, I believe they lowered GPU speed and increased CPU clock.

 

[Rangers]

Meh, it's plausible at this point. Kotaku 6 months behind rumor, RAD Tools dev twitter posts, Avalanche Studios comments, etc.

That Esram was more trouble then it was worth, imo, if it is yield issues holding things back. How about 2 banks of DDR3, could that have been an option?

Could well be, sure. But I guess me and you arent in a position to know, and really never will be. So so many factors to consider. Not even just what it costs today, but what will it cost 5 years from now? What will it cost on unit 10 million, unit 20 million, unit 40 million? Is it even the ESRAM causing whatever problems exist? Maybe MS was just sloppy somewhere or something.

Another key part of the equation is, I cant wait to get a die measurement, and compare that to PS4 also. So we get a real idea how much space the ESRAM is taking. Even then we wont know yields of the respective SOC's though, maybe ESRAM yields much better per die area than logic, etc. Only complex spreadsheets deep inside Microsoft contain the information key to their thinking, but it can also be that thinking was misguided. Maybe it's a net loss in years 1-2 (vs GDDR5+no ESRAM) but they hope to make it back in years 2-7 with process shrinks? So many variables.

I just hope it can give some performance boost too for all the trouble and not just alleviate bandwidth. That would make it more worth it, and who knows maybe that was part of their thinking.

 

[Betanumerical]

Original Xbox, I believe they lowered GPU speed and increased CPU clock.

By how much?. i cbf'd looking tbh.

 

[Cjail]

@Betanumerical

2GHz require a 66% increase in TDP so I would rule out any overclocking.

 

[menmau]

By how much?. i cbf'd looking tbh.

If my memory is correct:
GPU was lowered from 300Mhz to 250, and finally to 233Mhz;
CPU increased from 600Mhz to 733Mhz (although I am not quite sure if this change was due to AMD -> Intel transition);

 

[BoardBonobo]

Don't believe everything you read on the net' .

There were quite a number of rumours early on that they were experiencing yield issues and thermal issues. But after seeing the case I can't believe there would be any thermal issues with that amount of venting.

 

[liolio]

The amount of cores Sony reserving is probably more than you think, disabling one for no reason makes no sense. And MS are not downgrading the specs my quote was pointing out that upgrading a system can mean anything.

Well do you have something to tell to us?

So far rumors had that Durango had 6 cores available to the games, it would not be a disaster for Sony to disable 1 out of 8 cores even if they allocate 1 core for the OS (which is quite a lot already).

MSFT or Sony may have to downgrade the specs depending on what comes back from the foundry, it happened last gen (slightly lower than clock speed than anticipated).

I agree with you MSFT will try as hard as it can to not downgrade anything as they can't really afford it from a performances perspective. On the other hand I think it would make sense for SOny to maximize the use of what they got back from the foundry as they have the headroom (in perfs) to do so /they are in a much more comfortable situation. Slightly lower clock speed and a few disable units (1 Cu+8 ROPs & 1 CPU core) should lower the power consumption, I would also go for slightly slower GDDR5 (and so lower power both the memory chips and the memory controller).

 

[Cjail]

MSFT or Sony may have to downgrade the specs depending on what comes back from the foundry, it happened last gen (slightly lower than clock speed than anticipated).

AFAIK Sony has already downclocked the GPU form 850Mhz to 800mhz.

 

[MrFox]

AFAIK Sony has already downclocked the GPU form 850Mhz to 800mhz.

Are you sure? The earliest specs from vgleaks were 800MHz.

EDIT: Ah! If you mean RSX, I think it was 550 to 500.

 

[patsu]

May be he's talking about RSX.

 

[patsu]

I'm always looking to consolidate equipment when I can, but have been putting off building an HTPC. I'm hoping I can use one of the upcoming consoles to do the trick, because the 360 isn't doing it for me. It is crazy loud and I can't stream some larger files.

If you have a PS3, google for "PS3 media server" and see if it meet your needs.

 

[McHuj]

I really don't think we'll be seeing any downgrades by either company. Both APU's seem to be targeting a conservative sweet spot for both CPU and GPU clocks. Had they been going for a 2GHz/1GHz approach or a 3+ GHz Steamroller/Piledriver CPU, I think we would have seen some adjustments in clocks.

 

[liolio]

May be he's talking about RSX.

"he" is me?
There was the RSx, I wonder if Xenon were not the same (slight clock speed decrease), iirc the 360 GDDR3 speed was also lower 50MHz.

 

[patsu]

"he" is me?
There was the RSx, I wonder if Xenon were not the same (slight clock speed decrease), iirc the 360 GDDR3 speed was also lower 50MHz.

Cjail.

 

[Betanumerical]

thats pretty much my main point, most consoles get clocked down not up prior to launch.