PS4 Pro Speculation (PS4K NEO Kaio-Ken-Kutaragi-Kaz Neo-san)

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Shifty Geezer said:
I'm asking if Neo is even compatible with PS4 :oops: based on what 3dilittente said here:

Neo should run PS4 code as is. If it doesn't we're looking at a very different product. Which may be forwards compatible - perhaps the incompatiblities with PS4 are an API abstraction to facilitate FC in future - but which throws a massive spanner in the running PS4 as a business.
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ahh. What @3dilettante read/knows is different than the leaked documents that Giant Bomb and DF verified you mean. Interesting, at least that part wasn't clear to me at first until you pointed that out.

2 code bases... hmm. I didn't expect this given how similar everything should be between PS4 and Neo.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
I'm asking if Neo is even compatible with PS4 :oops: based on what 3dilittente said here:

Neo should run PS4 code as is. If it doesn't we're looking at a very different product. Which may be forwards compatible - perhaps the incompatiblities with PS4 are an API abstraction to facilitate FC in future - but which throws a massive spanner in the running PS4 as a business.
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See what I posted above. Many engines are probably hard coded for ps4's specific number of CUs or what have you. They are not like pc game engines because they don't have to, or at least didn't. Even a multiplatform game that is released for pc might probably have theyir rendering back-end recompiled with ps4 gpus specifics hard-coded into it. This gains a bit of extra performance, and keeps things a lot simpler and more manageable in terms of profiling, debugging, and general development.
Games could be built with flexible engines that elegantly adapt between ps4 and kaio ken without a split code-path, but I bet games already in development before sony announced the kaio ken spec, along with the requirement of having kaio ken improvements as a requirement by the end of the year, will just split the code path. It might be too much of a hassle to do deep refactoring of the engine inner workings mid development.
 
In the past things that were hardcoded "to the metal" were hindrance to backward compatibility, but is there anything that can be shorter than PS4 in PS4 Neo? PS2's VRAM bandwidth was greater than that of PS3 so BW was difficult. Are the console games still developed for specific CPU/GPU timings? The low-level APIs like Vulkan can work with Android, is there any PS4 API that exploits certain feature which can be deprecated in the newer AMD architecture?
 
Even if there are deprecated GPU instructions (I doubt it), function which loads shader could modify binary in realtime without much trouble.

one said:
Are the console games still developed for specific CPU/GPU timings?
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They are not since PS2. Look at what a giant hack a PCSX2 is. It does not need to emulate tight timings.
 
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I think the leaked specs give off the idea that ps4k will be fully hardware compatible with vanila ps4. Diferent code paths is about games that wanna make use of the extra grunt.
 
milk said:
I think the leaked specs give off the idea that ps4k will be fully hardware compatible with vanila ps4. Diferent code paths is about games that wanna make use of the extra grunt.
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But if the game is not tied to any CPU / GPU / ram clocks. If we suppose that BC is 100% hardware based, they could just activate the upclocks (CPU, GPU - 18Cus, Ram) and the game would benefit from them, right?

That should not be a difficult "code path", like setting this in the kaio-ken-ps4.ini

cpu-ken on
gpu-ken on
ram-ken on
misterx-dual-gpu-kaio-ken off
 
Some code may alocate certain tasks to specific CUs by hand. Those tasks would sure benefit from the upclock, but would still leave half of neos gpu idle.
I'm just guessing though, if devs could comment it would be great, bit they are under NDA most likely, so are rather not risk anything
 
Globalisateur said:
But if the game is not tied to any CPU / GPU / ram clocks. If we suppose that BC is 100% hardware based, they could just activate the upclocks (CPU, GPU - 18Cus, Ram) and the game would benefit from them, right?

That should not be a difficult "code path", like setting this in the kaio-ken-ps4.ini

cpu-ken on
gpu-ken on
ram-ken on
misterx-dual-gpu-kaio-ken off
Click to expand...
They won't do this by default. Games could have bugs which are only visible at higher framerate.
 
Rikimaru said:
If framerate is unlocked ~30fps game could hit 60 fps and break. Like recent Valkyria Chronicles remaster 60 fps bug.
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I am not talking about uncapping the fps. Just make the game use the upclocks in order to have more stable framerates. Many games could benefit from this.
 
Globalisateur said:
I don't understand this.
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It happens all the time. Even with pc old pc games. Console games are specially prone to those cause developers take zero precautions for that kind of thing. A fixed spec allows them to make many assumptions on how their code is enginered that make their life easier, yet the code lessrobust.
Source is always much more flexible though, and recompiling is not the end of the world.
 
Globalisateur said:
I don't understand this.
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Remember how the Dark Souls PC port was locked to 30fps despite the PC being perfectly capable of hitting 60 or more? When DSFix arrived and PC gamers were able to unlock the framerate, it broke aspects of the gameplay. Specifically, sliding down ladders caused problems because the code that calculated position wasn't able to properly update at framerates > 30. This is the kind of thing that can happen if you just let games run at faster framerates than they were specifically designed to run at.
 
Shifty Geezer said:
How so? There's more work. There's a smaller audience who'd otherwise buy a PS4 and be quite content with the PS4 version. How can the gains outweigh the costs?
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There is always more work to do.
It's actually the one thing you can't avoid if you want your next product/work/service to be successful.


Now if they can sell enough copies, which is possible, to cover the costs of development and even profit it will be worth developing for PSNeo.

Of course it will depend on how easy/costly it will be to develop for PSNeo but I challenge the idea the it will be always prohibitive and unprofitable.

Every month there are millions of power hungry customers that are willing/ready to buy more powerful hardware (the market is there, it exists) so the room to make profit is there as well.
 
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I'm still assuming that most devs have PC ultra assets and writing changes to code to make use of them on Neo will be utterly trivial.*

* I say this from a position of total ignorance, which I will attempt to cover up with bluster if challenged.
 
Globalisateur said:
But if the game is not tied to any CPU / GPU / ram clocks. If we suppose that BC is 100% hardware based, they could just activate the upclocks (CPU, GPU - 18Cus, Ram) and the game would benefit from them, right?

That should not be a difficult "code path", like setting this in the kaio-ken-ps4.ini

cpu-ken on
gpu-ken on
ram-ken on
misterx-dual-gpu-kaio-ken off
Click to expand...

Is this some other language than English?
 
There are some significant low-level changes between GCN1/2 and GCN3 (which I presume PS4 Neo will use unless it is some frankenstein's monster-like combination of GCN3 memory compression with GCN2 shader cores, if that is possible).
This AMD OpenCL thread has some interesting discussion on that topic: https://community.amd.com/thread/188871 For further evidence there is the poor Mantle API performance initially on GCN3 cards.
 
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