Current Generation Hardware Speculation with a Technical Spin [post GDC 2020] [XBSX, PS5]

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what do you mean? why do we need to see those details to know if these GPU's are strong compared to current gen base consoles? or are you referring to the 'midrange' part?
Yea the midrange part. If neither are really pulling all that far away from a 2080. Then I would still consider it high end.
 
I dont really see it as 'midrange' or underwhelming hardware at all considering we're only talking about the GPU when referring to the whole system. The CPU and SSD alone are the lions share of the next generation and that's a night and day change compared to the strain on the hardware that jaguar and the HDD were coming into current gen. Even the GPU is roughly 6 or 7 times more powerful than the PS4's which is essentially the lead platform of most game design this gen at 1080p.

Yes bandwidth could be higher but i think if they have to go with what they have now for cost i think its a reasonable trade off. The resolutions of these machines will already be so high that scaling to a 4k screen will be fine even if certain games dont hit native 4k(not that i think either console will be trying to force native res over reconstruction, dynamic res and other more efficient methods to use GPU performance)

Tell me if im off base with any of that

It will be interesting to see the dichotomy of how ray tracing will effect resolution targets. Is dynamic rendering with RT is even as easy to make happen as with a regular forward renderer? I'm sure we'll see our share of Remedys and Bungies who will gladly sacrifice resolution for artistic reasons or trying to get very high rays per rendered pixel. Then you have checkboard rendering, and DLSS like solutions.

Personally 1080p does not bother me if it means high FPS, and of course it's properly and cleanly anti-aliased. Project Lockhart may be good enough for me :LOL:

As for "midrange" or not, these new systems will be much higher end relative to PC GPUs than the PS4 and Xbox One. It's not like the 3x difference between the PS4 and R9 290X in 2013. Hard to say, which is ultimately a good thing since we don't have the full on performance details of RDNA2 on our hands. It's shaping up to be interesting.
 
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It will be interesting to see the dichotomy of how ray tracing will effect resolution targets. Is dynamic rendering with RT is even as easy to make happen as with a regular forward renderer? I'm sure we'll see our share of Remedys and Bungies who will gladly sacrifice resolution for artistic reasons or trying to get very high rays per rendered pixel. Then you have checkboard rendering, and DLSS like solutions.

Personally 1080p does not bother me if it means high FPS, and of course it's properly and cleanly anti-aliased. Project Lockhart may be good enough for me :LOL:

As for "midrange" or not, these new systems will be much higher end relative to PC GPUs than the PS4 and Xbox One. It's not like the 3x difference between the PS4 and R9 290X in 2013. Hard to say, which is ultimately a good thing since we don't have the full on performance details of RDNA2 on our hands. It's shaping up to be interesting.

that's what im saying. these machines are gonna show us awesome stuff.
 
that's what im saying. these machines are gonna show us awesome stuff.

Even with the "paltry" performance level of the original PS4 and Xbone, it was easily enough to propel the graphical state of the art quite beyond the PS3 and 360. Alot of new things became the norm like PBR, 1080p (for PS4 at least), a broader adoption of 60 FPS through dynamic resolution targets, and further building upon established techniques that had been done in the previous gen. The PS5 and XBX are in a very similar position to where the paper specs don't necessarily look that great compared to previous gen-on-gen transitions. Ray Tracing is enough to get excited for, and I wonder how it pings the shader compute units. The CPU cores will actually be top end in terms of capabilities, and then you have the crazy SSD I/O in place.

Alot of interesting things will happen.
 
Doesnt that last part of your post contradict the middle? Just by listing out those specs its a clear monumental upgrade from base PS4 and XB1....RAM capacity jump isnt that large and bandwidth for both machines could be higher, but the CPU and SSD seem to take a lot of weight off of needing ram like you traditionally would in a console(i heard that on the spiderman ps4 game, most of the available RAM was used as cache to load objects in quickly into the world as opposed to actually using that space for actual development of the game itself)
 
I'm saying that the paper specs don't reflect the actual improvements the new gen will when all is said and done. The previous transition was very similar, and I remember the Xbox to Xbox 360 transition being particularly underwhelming for alot of people. Given a year or two, games will start to truly take advantage of the hardware in a manner the previous gen cannot hold a candle to unless you make some huge concessions.
 
Ps5 Architecture :

Total - 448 Gbyte/s

minus

Cpu - around 50 Gybyte/s
Tempest Audio Engine 20 Gbyte/s max.

Result : Only 378 Gbyte/s for the GPU and not the full 256 Bit Bus for Graphics.
This has already been explained as wrong thinking a couple of times.

BW is a rate, not a quantity, defined by the amount of data divided by time. You're just looking at the amount of data and not the time needed to read that data. For the period of time the CPU is accessing the RAM, it can read 448 GB/s, meaning a fraction of a second to read some GBs of data. When the audio accesses the RAM, it can read 448 GB/s, meaning a fraction of a second to read some GBs of data. And when the GPU is accessing the RAM, it can read 448 GB/s, meaning a fraction of a second to read some GBs of data.

Now if in one second, you have the CPU read 50 GB and then the audio read 20 GB, that'll take about 0.156 seconds, leaving 0.844 seconds left of that one second for the GPU to access data. In that 0.844 seconds, the GPU will be able to read at most 378 GB/s. But the speed of that data would be 378 GB / 0.844 seconds which gives the rate of 448 GB/s.

A car is advertised as having a top speed of 140 mph. If you take that car out and drive flat out at 140 mph for 30 minutes, you'll have covered a distance of 70 miles in 0.5 hours which gives a speed (rate) of 70 / 0.5 = 140 mph.

If you take that car out at 140 mph for 30 minutes, then stop the car for a 20 minute rest, then drive flat out for another 30 minutes, what's the maximum speed of the car? It's still 140 mph. What was the average speed of the journey? 140 miles / 1.333 hours == 105 mph. That doesn't change the paper specs of the top speed of the car, but describes the work done.
 
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If there is anything to show the potential of what SSD's like PS5's can do for next gen gaming, its star citizen


It's impressive alright!

If you look closely though, even that's giving you about 3 seconds to complete the main transition, and a chunk of the graphics data is for the ship, which remains unchanged. I assume that in SC the game starts caching assets to ram as soon as you trigger the warm up for the jump drive.

In a similar situation, in a similar* game for PS5, you might have swapped out about half of your ~13GB of game memory, or something very roughly like that (maybe even less). Even without a large ram cache the PS5 should be plenty fast enough for this type of transition. I'd even expect an alternate hypothetical system with around half the SSD speed to be fast enough, to be honest.

~ 3 seconds gives a fast, low overhead (not something SC has the luxury of yet) SSD a relatively large amount of time to make transitions!

*I don't think we're going to see anything else quite like SC for a long, long time!
 
*I don't think we're going to see anything else quite like SC for a long, long time!

True. And then after a while SC adopts to rtx3000 class cpu's, 3900x 12 cores and intel optane drives as a minimum. Unfair to compare to normal games as sc develops for new hw the whole time, which consoles can never keep up to. Even sc in its current state, as you say, wont be seen for a while.

both XBSX and PS5's GPU's may be midrange but i think they are worthy full gen upgrades

At around 10TF, it's close to a 5700XT, which many consider a mid range product from AMD (they havent launched big navi yet, to compete in that market). Initial tests show XSX being close to 2080 (port of MC).
If rumors are true, and 18+ TF's are true, a 10TF GPU is in the mid-range class at max, about what we saw in 2013.

Yeah 2080RTX is midrange

For one we talk about when the consoles actually exist, by then a 3060/3070 migh perform close to a 2080, putting it close to mid range in performance.
 
SC is only a 'game' after it's release. Currently, it's just the most expensive dev diary of all times :D
So you can only compare it with other games after release, and eventually some of those other games were also planned for more powerful HW.

Yes it's what i ment, they adjust to new hw the whole time. It will always look better then anything else that way, it's never finished. Atleast it's playable though, purely for the tech/graphics etc a nice oppertunity to explore newest tech/latest development. See it on the bright side, there's atleast something that would make a 2080Ti, and later 3080ti or titan sweat.
 
One must not forget, SC is a very Singular game. Not every game needs such a traversal mechanic of course!
The Potential most definitely, but not the norm of what to expect I think.
Thats on PC and has no special SSD sauce like the PS5. So that means PC and XBOX can do the same cool things :yep2:
 
Yes it's what i ment, they adjust to new hw the whole time. It will always look better then anything else that way, it's never finished.
Yeah, the question then is: At the time of release, will it already look dated? To me this already started to happen, then they escaped their current (but soon last) gen look with adding impressive volumetric lighting.
But not not sure if they can maintain 'ahead of time' forever, because their bloat of engine tech and infinite content only grows and grows.
IMO a much better bet would be: Release at time X, assuming HW power Y, design for this and avoid the costs of constant iteration and expansion.
Though, their success clearly proofs me wrong. It does not seem they need to release at all to be successful. And this makes me worried.
I mean, look at this:
This is a PS3 game. It did not release but they showed epic gameplay, and it was not funded by fans.
It seems SC has a very long way to go from toy universe to a fun game like this, and i'm not convinced they intend to do so.
I truly hope they deliver - otherwise the idea of crowdfunding games may fall with them, which would be sad.

But i see good chances it works out, and following the development is very interesting.
 
One must not forget, SC is a very Singular game. Not every game needs such a traversal mechanic of course!
The Potential most definitely, but not the norm of what to expect I think.
Lol. I thought you were going to say:
One must not forget, SC is very much running on a much slower PC SSD!
 
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Yeah, the question then is: At the time of release, will it already look dated?

What if it never will actually release? Don't see it happening imo, i think if anything release, they will keep adding and improving things, a dynamic 'game' then, following hardware trends and software tools/improvements. That seems to be their vision, otherwise they would have finished it i think, they don't set a bar, or intend to, it seems.

Though, their success clearly proofs me wrong. It does not seem they need to release at all to be successful. And this makes me worried.
I mean, look at this:

Doing what they do has it's drawbacks clearly, but it still looks ahead of anything else, i think it's what we can expect from next gen games, if not then later in the generation, or high budget exclusives or ID tech/rockstar games productions with resources like they have.

This is a PS3 game. It did not release but they showed epic gameplay, and it was not funded by fans.

Huh, i remember that footage. But that's gameplay indeed :p SC seems more about the tech then gameplay, although im sure there's people out there that enjoy the gameplay. I like it for the tech, not so the gameplay, havent played it since last summer.

It seems SC has a very long way to go from toy universe to a fun game like this, and i'm not convinced they intend to do so.
I truly hope they deliver - otherwise the idea of crowdfunding games may fall with them, which would be sad.

But i see good chances it works out, and following the development is very interesting.

Ye, but that Dust514 game was never playable i think, it's a whole different thing to SC, which seems to be a dynamic game, it most likely will never release, and perhaps that could work out, no idea. Dust had different plans, a SC on consoles in the current side of things wouldnt be possible since they have had to set the bar to 10TF, ram and cpu limits.

Lol. I thought you were going to say:
One must not forget, SC is very much running on a slower PC SSD!

On what kind of SSD setup was that GIF running anyway? Can't imagine it's anything less then some blazing fast NVME or even optane drive, seeing what they achieve. Would be fun if they tried the same thing with an mechanical hard drive :p
 
Yeah, the question then is: At the time of release, will it already look dated? To me this already started to happen, then they escaped their current (but soon last) gen look with adding impressive volumetric lighting.
But not not sure if they can maintain 'ahead of time' forever, because their bloat of engine tech and infinite content only grows and grows.
IMO a much better bet would be: Release at time X, assuming HW power Y, design for this and avoid the costs of constant iteration and expansion.
Though, their success clearly proofs me wrong. It does not seem they need to release at all to be successful. And this makes me worried.
I mean, look at this:
This is a PS3 game. It did not release but they showed epic gameplay, and it was not funded by fans.
It seems SC has a very long way to go from toy universe to a fun game like this, and i'm not convinced they intend to do so.
I truly hope they deliver - otherwise the idea of crowdfunding games may fall with them, which would be sad.

But i see good chances it works out, and following the development is very interesting.
weird, I thought dust 514 was released? This is the EVE FPS linked to the persistent world right ?
 
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