Taking XSX out of the equation, is anyone really surprised at PS5's performance? It's pretty much performing where I expected it to, when comparing it to the previous generation systems. It's the Series X that seams to be falling short of it's expected performance more than anything.
Current Generation Hardware Speculation with a Technical Spin [post GDC 2020] [XBSX, PS5]
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This is why the phrase "punching above its weight" isn't applicable. The PS5 is performing at the levels that it should be.... consistent with what developers have stated for quite some time. As for XBSX, things will improve, but in the end these systems will be pretty much evenly matched.
I though XSX GPU was full RDNA2 stuff? And what you showed proved nothing.The MS silicon team would disagree with your assessment of their silicon.
It's a little disappointing to see B3D turn against the stated capabilities of hardware and take up the costumes of consoles wars.
Some of that is inevitable, but the likes are ... disappointing.
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I find this extremist fanfare of DF - to the point of trying to cancel the work of everyone else doing similar jobs - to be really unhealthy.
Not all of them need to have backgrounds in software engineering and have 2 decades of game journalism to provide useful data measurements (that are being offered for free BTW).
Especially considering the fact that DF's time isn't infinite and they can't deep dive into every game under the sun.
I always thought gatekeeping content on B3D under the awfully subjective notion of not being holy enough to be an extremely bad idea.
We had posts with references to what is currently the (by far) most accurate source of hardware leaks - Red Gaming Tech - being erased by mods for not being high quality enough. I believe this even happened with their first video to ever mention Infinity Cache.
Cancel culture is cancer IMO and it's bad enough that it flourishes on twitter and resetera. But this is just a general sentiment.
His point actually comes across more meaningfully because he's using a Maxwell GPU that is known to have much higher compute utilisation than XBone's GCN1.
Everything should be faster in his PC setup, yet it isn't.
Not all of them need to have backgrounds in software engineering and have 2 decades of game journalism to provide useful data measurements (that are being offered for free BTW).
Especially considering the fact that DF's time isn't infinite and they can't deep dive into every game under the sun.
I always thought gatekeeping content on B3D under the awfully subjective notion of not being holy enough to be an extremely bad idea.
We had posts with references to what is currently the (by far) most accurate source of hardware leaks - Red Gaming Tech - being erased by mods for not being high quality enough. I believe this even happened with their first video to ever mention Infinity Cache.
Cancel culture is cancer IMO and it's bad enough that it flourishes on twitter and resetera. But this is just a general sentiment.
His point actually comes across more meaningfully because he's using a Maxwell GPU that is known to have much higher compute utilisation than XBone's GCN1.
Everything should be faster in his PC setup, yet it isn't.
I am not a fan of red gaming tech PS5 coverage because it looks like fantasy and it is not very precise but on the same time Sony lacks transparency about the APU of the console. For AMD leaks it is a very good source.
The official stuff from AMD and Sony the GPU is custom RDNA2 and unofficial from the Sony ATG engineer the GPU doesn't have the full RDNA2 features but have other advanced customized features. CPU 8 cores 3.5 Ghz variable and GPU 36 CUs 2.23 Ghz variable and 10.28 Tflops, unified 16 GB RAM 448 GB/s. The specifications aren't complete and it is subject to fantasy on the two sides some people think there is hidden infinity cache other it is RDNA3.
I think Microsoft can be lauded because of the transparency. For the guy who like to have details about the 499 dollars/euros console he bought or will buy this is good.
The official stuff from AMD and Sony the GPU is custom RDNA2 and unofficial from the Sony ATG engineer the GPU doesn't have the full RDNA2 features but have other advanced customized features. CPU 8 cores 3.5 Ghz variable and GPU 36 CUs 2.23 Ghz variable and 10.28 Tflops, unified 16 GB RAM 448 GB/s. The specifications aren't complete and it is subject to fantasy on the two sides some people think there is hidden infinity cache other it is RDNA3.
I think Microsoft can be lauded because of the transparency. For the guy who like to have details about the 499 dollars/euros console he bought or will buy this is good.
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D
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This is true, once you hit the clock speed ceiling your recourse is to go wider even if that means you need to lower the clocks to do so - the marketing goal has always been to push that teraflops number because that is what many people use as their measure of performance. But as we see with benchmarks, twice the teraflops rarely equates to twice the graphics performance and not even when running at higher settings with disproportionate gains eat through excess teraflops like a one-handed blue monster through cookies.
Let me correct you, I'm not arguing about tools at all. I am asking those who are blaming Series X performance creative to PS5 to provide some citable evidence that SDK and tools are what is causing the disparity in performance, rather than narrow/fast just being a better arrangement for the game code we're seeing.
And to be clear, I'm not arguing that PS5's fast/narrow is better either because there is literally no evidence for that either. What's I'm seeking is some evidence-based analysis rather than the "this is what I believe.." that the recent discourse has become.
I'm not sure where this came from but it wasn't me and it's exaggerated nonsense. Dynamic frequency scaling under their various trademarks names have been around for a while. AMD introduced PowerNow! in 1998 and Intel introduced SpeedStep in 2005 and these technologies have evolved over time and become the default operational configuration (rather than an operational power saving mode) for more than a decade. The advantages should be obvious: better/lowerer power usage and improved thermals. Running low activity at high clocks is simply inefficient.
I can see where you're coming from but there is just so much wrong with this from an engineering perspective. PSU's need to be rated for the worst possible power draw scenario so on Series X this means running a game, background installing another game from disc, perhaps running two external spinning-platter drives, the internal NVMe, the expansion NVMe, possibly a USB headphone transceiver and anything else you can think of. If you're not dong all of this then there is a lot of power left on the table.
What's the power draw when all the above things are happening?
I think you need to re-watch Mark Cerny's The Road to PS5 presentation again because he explained why Sony shifted paradigms and why you're seeing what you're seeing. It will also explain why Series X will probably never demonstrate a consistent power draw like PS5 but it's nothing to do with the system not using the available power, it's about consistent power draw with a balance tip going to either CPU or GPU - whichever needs it more - which will reduce overall draw fluctuations.
I've provided some additional things to need to factor in before claiming the Series X isn't closing on its rated PSU capacity.
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BillSpencer
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Is it really transparency though? They released numbers which some industry specialists warned they would be misunderstood. How the 12 TFLOP is calculated for example.
Also there are gems like:
If that was true then Xbox Series X would have 10 times the raytracing performance compared to Nvidia 2080.
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CU count x Ops per second x ROPs x Core Frequency = total floating points operations
XBSX: 52*2*64*1.825= 12.15TF (rounded)
PS5: 36*2*64*2.23= 10.28TF (rounded)
I am not a fan of red gaming tech PS5 coverage because it looks like fantasy and it is not very precise but on the same time Sony lacks transparency about the APU of the console. For AMD leaks it is a very good source.
The official stuff from AMD and Sony the GPU is custom RDNA2 and unofficial from the Sony ATG engineer the GPU doesn't have the full RDNA2 features but have other advanced customized features. CPU 8 cores 3.5 Ghz variable and GPU 36 CUs 2.23 Ghz variable and 10.28 Tflops, unified 16 GB RAM 448 GB/s. The specifications aren't complete and it is subject to fantasy on the two sides some people think there is hidden infinity cache other it is RDNA3.
I think Microsoft can be lauded because of the transparency. For the guy who like to have details about the 499 dollars/euros console he bought or will buy this is good.
SIE lack of communication on certain gaming issues (e.g., exclusivity messaging) and their lack openness on the PS5 SoC is very reflective of Jim Ryan's management and PR style. One of an authoritative nature and need-to-know basis approach... and bit of a sadist masochist too. Never forget the PS5 blue-balls logo reveal.
Why should it be faster? The 750Ti has massively less memory bandwidth and VRAM. Its also 7 years old and no longer supported by nvidia in drivers or developers in their code. Those facts alone would suggest it would be slower despite having the same max TFLOPs throughput.
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Yes, exactly. All things being equal; same code, same APIs, architecture, memory and capacity, bus, bandwidth, cache - then you would expect the GPU with the greater number of teraflops should yield high performance. When things aren't equal, that's not longer the same.
That's the point of the video. To make this point.
There is no deeper meaning than that. 
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SIE lack of communication on certain gaming issues (e.g., exclusivity messaging) and their lack openness on the PS5 SoC is very reflective of Jim Ryan's management and PR style. One of an authoritative nature and need-to-know basis approach... and bit of a sadist masochist too. Never forget the PS5 blue-balls logo reveal.
Is it? I think we have way more information about the PS5 than we had about PS4 back at the time. Back then it was Jaguar + GCN Card + 8GB VRAM plus some talk about ACEs to improve GPU utilization, the rest was known through leaks. Cerny's PS4 presentation was very high level. This time we had a couple of Wired interviews + a full hour talk by Cerny talking about hardware specific items.
It seems worse because MS has been so open about it, but after the PS3 we never had a tech talk like E3 2005 until this year before the launch of a Sony console.
I believe it's about how you want to communicate with people. MS focused on 12TF and "most powerful console ever" but then, IMO, failed to translate that into exciting games that turned into the backlash they got during their game reveals, especially the first one.
Sony's strategy is different, in their first reveal, just before the Spiderman trailer kicks in Jim Ryan says "enough from me, we'll let our games do the talking". That phrase has a lot of meaning and it was completely targeted at MS.
Pretty sure that Nvidia hasn't release their ray/box or ray/triangle peaks.Is it really transparency though? They released numbers which some industry specialists warned they would be misunderstood. How the 12 TFLOP is calculated for example.
Also there are gems like:
If that was true then Xbox Series X would have 10 times the raytracing performance compared to Nvidia 2080.
For the PS4, Mark Cerny did an interview with Gamasutra explaining what were the customization of the PS4 GPU 8 ACEs, bus Onion + and volatile bits. We were knowing the GPU feature set was GCN 1.1, the same for PS4 Pro with double rate FP16, ID buffer and other customization.
They can have done the same thing in March and let the game do the talking later.
I will buy a PS5 for the games and I think at the end XSX will be a bit better in third party title but PS5 is good enough and have other advantage like the dualsense.
But I prefer transparency.
BillSpencer
Regular
There is something with the SX compute units having less... per..... compared to RDNA1, RDNA2, Polaris, PS4, PS5, One X, One, etc
It was 12 per something versus 8 per something. I'd have to look it up.
The calculation is good. Microsoft was very transparent with the technical capability of the two consoles.
It is not to say that the location of the Raster Unit is better or worse, but the change from RDNA1 to RDNA2 is better. And by better means RDNA2 Raster Units can scan convert triangles covering a range from 1 to 32 fragments, with coarse grained and fine grained rasterisation (rather than up to 16 fragments with 1 scan converter with RDNA1):
https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/2176807/
So, XSX with RDNA1 Raster Units isn't as efficient with shading small triangles (CUs wasting fragment shading cycles by being less efficient). Add this inefficiency with XSX having RDNA1 CUs as well, then your raw Tera Flops are underutilised.
If PS5 has its Raster Units setup like RDNA2, looking at Navi21 means instead of processing 4 triangles per cycle like XSX, it would drop to 2 triangles per cycle. Because Navi21 with 8 Shader Arrays only rasterises 4 triangles per cycle (halve to 4 Shader Arrays to get PS5). Lower triangle throughput, but higher efficiency of rasterising smaller triangles, with better utilisation from CUs and raw Tera Flops. Your geometry throughput is closer to your lower peak. This was briefly covered in Cerny's presentation about small triangles.
People mention tools, and they can have an impact on performance, but this applies to both XSX and PS5. Specifically optimised compilers. However, both XSX and PS5 aren't some clean slate designs, and are based on AMD technology. There isn't some multicore paradigm shift and new architecture that we got with Cell and PS3, so I'm not expecting massive improvements from compilers. Significant improvements will come from engines making use of XSXs and PS5s custom features and strengths.
See above for frontend.
Full RDNA2 is a marketing term to differentiate a competitors offering. Also, if you're full and all encompassing RDNA2, you can't be fully customised at the same time. Both XSX and PS5 are custom designed, and they use different APIs. But their underlying capabilities are similar. Even Navi21 will build on previous architectures as it isn't a cleanslate design itself.
See above for RDNA2. It's more a fulfilment of DX12 Ultimate. And stating something is "full" doesn't mean it's more performant. GPU manufacturers have a range of offerings from budget to enthusiast level. And over the years have advertised new offerings with DX 9, 10, 11, 12 etc... Yet some were under-performers compared to previous offerings by being compromised in some way for cost. It's the overall package that counts for both XSX and PS5, not some arbitrary components from various timelines being included.
Geometry Engine being fully programmable will be important. Its culling capabilities also important if being compared to a TBDR-like architecture. I'm expecting coarse grained and fine grained culling, unlike a TBDR which would remove all occlusion before fragment shading.
There are plenty of VR patents dealing with various issues, so a collection of them is accurate. With foveated rendering, you have to deal with 2 viewports for each eye. And you get overlapped primitives across tiles which makes shading inefficient. So culling primitives efficiently is important so that you don't waste shading visible triangles later with CUs. VRS is about shader efficiency, and all this helps later down the pipeline.
Cache nomenclature can vary. The patent describes L1 and L2 can be the local caches. Which means L3 that I highlighted would be a Level 4 cache.
This would make the CPU have 8 cores, all with local L1 and L2 caches, L3 would be shared with 8 cores, making this more like Zen3. And L4 would be shared with other components like the GPU.
Yes, the diagram shows that, but the patent mentions variations for the CPU as mentioned above. In addition, it mentions the GPU can also follow the same cache hierarchy and topology up to 4-tiers of cache.
This was one of my first thoughts. However, the PS4 arrangement doesn't make sense because:
- the patent is about backwards compatiblity and PS4 didn't have hardware BC
- PS4 launched 2013, and work for it would've been filed years before, circa 2010-2011
- patent was filed 2017, for an architecture not yet released for BC for PS4s predecessor from 2006, the PS3 (Cerny has better things to do)
- patent was granted 2019, with enough years development to launch for PS5
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