This was.
Current Generation Games Analysis Technical Discussion [2023] [XBSX|S, PS5, PC]
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Both were RTS games with high levels of destruction created all over the map by up to 16 people simultaneously. That combined with the particle effects found in World in Conflict would have crippled either console.
Even the simpler interconnects like nVidia's "N2C" allow for 450GB/s+ transfer rate in one direction. There is no reason to stay with one company.
arandomguy
Veteran
An ARM design would've given them more flexibility to mix and match IP and do control more IP in basically in house. By going for x86 it's basically limited the options to AMD and if they want backwards compatibility it's going to be basically an anchor going forward to stick with x86, which in turn means the GPU IP effectively will have to also be AMD.
Something I've always suspected is that if ARMv8/Cortex A57 timing was slightly more ahead for the PS4 gen both consoles would've likely gone ARM instead of x86.
D
Deleted member 11852
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You've skipped over the price point which is, I think, the factor that most swayed both Microsoft and Sony to go with AMD again. Discrete CPUs and GPUs add some complexity which in turns add quite a lot of cost. A further AMD design, which was an evolution of the previous designs used which made backwards compatibility easier, was also a factor I am sure.
Consoles need to be cost effective, in terms of either making a profit, or taking as little as loss for as short a time as possible.When consoles aren't cheap.. well, just look at NeoGeo, 3DO and PlayStation 3.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Yup, I'm doubtful NV would have been willing to create anything remotely similar in performance to what's in the PS5/XBS consoles at the price point that Sony and MS wanted for a console that was targeting a 500 USD price point.
Regards,
SB
Please don't use GFLOPS as a direct measure of performance like that. Particularly not when adding CPU + GPU GLFOPS together and even more particularly not when comparing between different architectures, one of which is significantly more advanced than the other.
The G80 (the 8800GTX) could issue 256 FMADS per clock as well as 128 MULS per clock under the right circumstances. That's 384 FLOPS across at 1.35Ghz = 518.4 GFLOPS. The MUL wasn't always usable in that way which is why you sometimes see the lower number which just counts the FMADS. But regardless, counting GFLOPS like that is ridiculous when you can simply look at the benchmarks in the PC space. This is how an 8800GTX typically performed compared to the GPU in the PS5:
See that 7900GTX right at the bottom? Yeah, that things is way faster than the RSX GPU in PS3. Yes the Cell could be used to prop up RSX performance somewhat - particularly it's lack of vertex shader throughput, but you're not talking anything near the 3x increase it would need to be competitive with the 8800GTX. If it could do that, Sony would never have swapped out the second Cell for RSX in the first place.
Regarding the CPU comparison, CPU performance isn't even measured in GFLOPS. It's measured in actual performance in real world, branchy, memory sensitive, and often single threaded code. The only part of Cell that could deal with that kind of code (it's central PPE) was laughably slow at this. Like, probably an order of magnitude slower than a decent PC single core CPU of the time. And quad core CPU's landed in the PC space around the same time as PS4 launched.
Crysis 2, Crysis 3, Metro Last Light, Alien Isolation. And that is just few. All those games were on 7th gen consoles and I can't even find test on 7800, but will not be surprised if performance wouldn't be great.
Crysis 3 will not work at all, because that game doesn't support Direct X10 and below. But that is different story.
You can't use an assumption that performance wouldn't have been comparable to the consoles as evidence that it wouldn't have been comparable. I agree any game that required DX10 baseline support or that was heavily optimised for a unified shader design obviously wouldn't run well, or at all on any DX9 GPU, but the games you're quoting above launched in 2013/2014 lol. That's 8-9 years after that 7800GTX 512 launched and 7-8 years after DX10 and unified shaders arrived in the PC space. Of course games wouldn't be targeting such an ancient architecture in the PC space by that time. My argument above was very specifically about the DX9 era of games that would have been optimised to run well on the older split shader design GPU's within say the first 2-4 years of it's life. No-one in the PC space was worrying about whether a 7800GTX 512 would run Crysis 3 as well as an Xbox 360 when you could have bought a GTX 670 the year prior which would have been significantly more powerful than the Xbox One, let alone the Xbox 360. I'm saying the 7800GTX 512MB was comparable to the 360 during the time period that it was relevant to PC developers. Had PC hardware never evolved beyond that GPU, and developers continued to target and optimise for it, I'm sure it could have held up fairly well for the life of the console, but that's not the reality of PC hardware or software development.
It was launched before the PS3 so it's a pretty fair comparison to that console.
Have a look at the GPU notes here:
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX Specs
NVIDIA G80, 576 MHz, 128 Cores, 32 TMUs, 24 ROPs, 768 MB GDDR3, 900 MHz, 384 bit
By who's measure? Please be more specific. Some would argue that Crysis absolutely showed that 2x power differential in the first year or so. And I think many console gamers today would argue that being able to play games at a solid 60fps / 1440p vs a shaky 30fps / 720p is a great use of those multiples of GPU power. Would you be happy with that performance from the gen 9 consoles in exchange for better core graphics? I doubt many would.
But how many years are you talking? If you're going up to GPU's that are 7x more powerful than the 360 then you're probably looking at something around 7790 level performance which is getting pretty damn close to the performance of the XBO GPU and hence capable of playing most if not all Gen8 titles at lower resolutions. I'd say RDR2 for example running on a GPU of that calibre at say 720p/30 is vastly better looking than anything that released on the gen7 consoles.
Just under 77 GFLOPS. But that's entirely irrelevant. For reference the PS4 CPU was the same I believe. It means next to nothing in a CPU.
davis.anthony
Veteran
The problem with your comparison is the SPU's in Cell were used for GPU tasks where as a PC CPU was purely used for CPU work.
And factoring that in the PC CPU's slaughtered Cell for that kind for general CPU work.
PC GPU's were more than powerful enough to not need the CPU to help out.
And hasn't PS5 vs XSX taught you anything about comparing flops?
Those games didn't work on PS3 either unless you consider 10-15fps 'working'
Silent_Buddha
Legend
TL: DR on cell processor simplified
Extremely good at doing massively parallel tasks. When you could properly leverage the parallel nature of the Cell's SPEs you could easily crunch more maths than a traditional CPU. This is why it was quite good at doing some tasks that were traditionally done on GPU. It also made it quite good for tasks without a lot of dependencies or branching.
Really poor at general CPU tasks. It's difficult to make use of a massively parallel architecture for heavily branching code or anything with a lot of dependencies on a previous calculation. Both of which dominate most typical CPU loads. In this case only the PPE was really that useful and it alone wasn't that great for general CPU tasks.
So, could it be used to take on some GPU tasks, yes? Could it do it as well as a dedicated GPU using the same silicon area? Unlikely. Was it better to use it to assist with GPU rendering rather than CPU tasks? Obvious in hindsight. But until developers were able to leverage it for GPU tasks, the Cell CPU combined with the RSX GPU meant that the PS3 was woefully underpowered and underutilized in the first year+ of it's lifespan compared to the competition with a more traditional CPU + GPU setup. Once Sony developers started to use the cell CPU to assist the GPU then it could finally trade blows with the competition with it being better in some things but worse in others.
When played to its strengths it could certainly do some impressive things, but in multiplatform games, developers were still far more comfortable with doing a traditional CPU + GPU rendering path while using Sony provided code for the Cell processor to assist with some of the GPU code. This meant that in general multiplatform games tended to do better on the competing platform (especially in the first few years of the generation).
However, some things the cell processor could not assist the GPU with an you were still stuck with the GPU's limited capabilities in those cases (transparencies for example would always be lower resolution on PS3 versus the competition).
It's far too complex of a situation to use a single number to say PS3's Cell (great parallel computing) + RSX (weak GPU) was better or worse than X360's more traditional setup with a powerful traditional CPU (but less powerful in massively parallel tasks) + traditional powerful GPU.
It's like asking different people what's the better fruit? Apples or Oranges?
Regards,
SB
Extremely good at doing massively parallel tasks. When you could properly leverage the parallel nature of the Cell's SPEs you could easily crunch more maths than a traditional CPU. This is why it was quite good at doing some tasks that were traditionally done on GPU. It also made it quite good for tasks without a lot of dependencies or branching.
Really poor at general CPU tasks. It's difficult to make use of a massively parallel architecture for heavily branching code or anything with a lot of dependencies on a previous calculation. Both of which dominate most typical CPU loads. In this case only the PPE was really that useful and it alone wasn't that great for general CPU tasks.
So, could it be used to take on some GPU tasks, yes? Could it do it as well as a dedicated GPU using the same silicon area? Unlikely. Was it better to use it to assist with GPU rendering rather than CPU tasks? Obvious in hindsight. But until developers were able to leverage it for GPU tasks, the Cell CPU combined with the RSX GPU meant that the PS3 was woefully underpowered and underutilized in the first year+ of it's lifespan compared to the competition with a more traditional CPU + GPU setup. Once Sony developers started to use the cell CPU to assist the GPU then it could finally trade blows with the competition with it being better in some things but worse in others.
When played to its strengths it could certainly do some impressive things, but in multiplatform games, developers were still far more comfortable with doing a traditional CPU + GPU rendering path while using Sony provided code for the Cell processor to assist with some of the GPU code. This meant that in general multiplatform games tended to do better on the competing platform (especially in the first few years of the generation).
However, some things the cell processor could not assist the GPU with an you were still stuck with the GPU's limited capabilities in those cases (transparencies for example would always be lower resolution on PS3 versus the competition).
It's far too complex of a situation to use a single number to say PS3's Cell (great parallel computing) + RSX (weak GPU) was better or worse than X360's more traditional setup with a powerful traditional CPU (but less powerful in massively parallel tasks) + traditional powerful GPU.
It's like asking different people what's the better fruit? Apples or Oranges?
Regards,
SB
It really makes me wonder what the case would have been if Sony invested proberly in a good GPU and still retained Cell. Considering how Cell managed to leverage the GPU's weaknesses, if Sony didnt waste too much silicon and money on non gaming features, Sony might have come with a beast.
I think you and some other guys still don't understand what I said. I compared just raw performance. That's all. I know what CPUs and GPUs can't be compared just using gflops.
Thanks for that info.
Yes, similar to PS2 CPU, but as a result on PS2 were a lot of amazing games for that time and on PS3 were a lot of amazing games for that time. I think that means what capabilities of different CPUs also can't be comparet directly.
Wasn't they released years before?
I meant comparison to Xbox 360.
In my opinion use power of GPUs mostly for resolution and fps is wrong way for industry. Would've been better to calcultae more polygons, better lighting, better effects ad mora at same time and better shadows. Would've been interesting to see what Xbox oNe X could do in 1080p 30fps. Same with 9th gen consoles. I understand what a lot cheaper to make higher resolution and fps that make a lot more detailed assets. So Microsoft and Sony said what on XSX and PS5 player can play in 4k 60 fps. BUt they haven't told what graphics will not be far ahead of X1 and PS4. Ofcourse tet will change later this gen. But I think what that will not change a lot. PS5 have 5 times more power that PS4 but resolution is 4 times higher. XSX have only 2 times more power that X1X but there at least almost same resolution. Of course improved CPUs and GPUs architecture, more RAM, SSD and ray tracing will help, but as I said I think difference will not be big. That dorsn't mean what I will not play new games and enjoy them, I already have XSX and PS5, but wow effect what was playing 7th gen games will be lower.
I just wanted t know raw power of Xenon. Thanks.
Yes, but all games worked, so what advanteges those CPUs had?
And what they should've taught me? Please explain.
THose games worked 30 fps or ~ 30fps n PS3. There is a lot of tests and comparisons. And of Xbox 360 they worked even better, with higher resolution, higher fps and some better effects.
davis.anthony
Veteran
PS5 has less Tflops than Series-X but often matches or beats its performance.
So what lesson do you think you should have learnt from that?
We still in star of thes generation, and some conclusions will be possible to make in 2-3 years.
Going with the a low cost and outdated tech doesnt provide a good example either.
Interestingly the 360 and the PS3 are performing on similar levels. Even though the PS3 had a worse GPU. Did the devs leverage using the Cell effectively?
I owned the game on my 360 btw, and I was impressed with the visuals and the performance didnt mind me much. Most of the time it performed pretty well
davis.anthony
Veteran
There are multiple segments where it's at or below that level.
Crysis 2, much like the first game gets more demanding the further in to the game you go.
In a game that is combat based saying it's 30fps when there's none is laughable.
I suggest you watch the video properly to prevent having to screenshot the many, many instances where they're well below 25fps.
Again, watch the video.
I remember having a locked 60fps on PC with ease.
And at console equivalent settings (But at 2.5x the resolution) even mid-range GPU's offered 2-3x the frame rate performance.
davis.anthony
Veteran
Crytek did heavily use the SPU's in CryEngine and in CPU limited situations it did provide PS3 with a higher frame rate than 360, which typically performed better when the action was not as intense.
I also remember them specifically saying to keep drawcalls below 2000 on PS3 to not kill RSX.
Crysis 1 and 2 definitely run a lot of combats at like 15-24 fps.
Multiple doesn't mean often or mostly.
Ok, wjat is your point? PS3 and Xbox 360 are trash?
I watched some moments from video. And I played Crysis 2 on Xbox 360, there is only some moments when game is running with low fps. They made great result for consoles what were released 5-6 years befor Crysis 2 had 5 times less GPU power and 20 times more RAM.
Yeah, and what was your PC specs comparing to consoles?
As I remember they didn't used SPUs in Crysis 2 for graphics tasks, only for CPU tasks. Maybe in Crysis 1 Remastered or Crysis 3 they started use SPUs also for graphics tasks.
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