Holy Wall of Text: My impressions post Playstation 4 (PS4) unveil

I find it odd how people claim the supposed gpu advantage would only be minor increase in resolution. What if the supposed gpu resource is used to render more cars, pedestrians and whatnot in grand theft auto. Also the supposed gpu resource could be used for physics, particles and whatnot... Then the comparison doesn't become between resolution but content seen. It's pretty easy to see if the city is barren and void or full of life.

Maybe this is good thread for this. I'm really happy about ps4. it sets bar really nicely. Next gen consoles and stuff running on those consoles will be purely awesome. I'm sure both microsoft and sony will bring their A game next christmas. Focus on the game might be different though(games versus services)

Sony should have a 12CU GPU,since 18 and 12 are some damn identical why bother with 18CU,it would have been cheaper,wait if 6 CU is nothing why no go 8 CU,from 12 to 18 there is almost no difference to 4 less is even less of an impact.

I bet you get my point,some people all over forums just can't handle the fact that MS has a weaker console,and they are trying extremely hard to compensate the lack of power with something,a blitter was mention here once,after that several other forums i visit which are not technical by the way copy this and from no where all of the sudden Durango had a blitter that would help out perform Obis.

Things like this ^^ happen every where.

The one thing i agree and some how much people don't get it,is that to win you don't need and ultra powerful console,i even debate that here in favor of Durango but some how people miss it,there is a difference in power how notable it would be only god knows,but i am sure of this power will not win a console generation,and people should accept the Durango for what it is a weaker console.

Some already criticize me for pointing the love on this thread toward MS and the huge benefit of the doubt about the console.
 
Strangely, the key differentator between the 2 systems may turn out to be quantity of RAM, rather than the speed.

IMHO the target platform (if not the lead platform) is always going to be Durango. MS generally seems to have a better relationship with 3rd party devs, I suppose partly because they do not tend to have '1st party' games competing against 3rd parties, and partly because their tools seem to be better.

So, with the original 4/8GB I was expecting multi-plat games to target "roughly Durango" - maybe ~5GB, then either try to dynamically use the HDD for the PS4, or reduce detail on the platform.

In short, the 2 consoles would have been better at 'different things'. Durango better in larger, varied, open environments where that extra RAM can be pushed, Sony better in corridors/effects. That would fit the rumours from insiders nicely...

But it would also quite massively hurt the PS4. Being worse at Skyrim II, and better at tunnel shooters is not a great place to be in 2013. MS were going to pull of a great coup, a lower powered console that was better for gamers in practice.


And then Sony randomly announce a "big meeting", which was a bit strange - it was a meeting where they weren't actually able to show much, and didn't raise much excitement for the platform... 3rd parties weren't showing much, nor were the 1st parties. It was all a bit strange o_O.

And yet in the middle of that, Sony dropped a bombshell... Developers will still target Durango, but (if rumours are correct) the PS4 version would appear to simply be 'better'.

Whether Sony felt that they "had to" do it to compete with Durango, or whether they got lucky in the GDDR5 market will become clear when the pricing is announced.
 
# Latency. The rumor is the PS4 has higher than expected latencies. This makes sense as the CPU and GPU share a memory controller and the CPU will be slotted as the primary client due to the CPU being less latency tolerant. That mixed in with possibly cheaper memory threshholds on the GDDR5 could impact performance.

As far as I know AMD equips each HSA APU with two memory controllers, one for the CPU and one for the GPU, that both can access one single DRAM controller. Therefore latencies shouldn't be a problem on PS4.
 
IMHO the target platform (if not the lead platform) is always going to be Durango. MS generally seems to have a better relationship with 3rd party devs, I suppose partly because they do not tend to have '1st party' games competing against 3rd parties, and partly because their tools seem to be better.

Is that true anymore? I mean we've heard that Sony put a lot of effort improving PS3 dev tools throughout the cycle and they've been trying to help 3rd party devs as much as they could, specially when at the beginning of the last gen multiplatform games looked much better on 360 and PS3 tools were publicly criticised. Hopefully they won't commit the same mistake.
 
Is that true anymore? I mean we've heard that Sony put a lot of effort improving PS3 dev tools throughout the cycle and they've been trying to help 3rd party devs as much as they could, specially when at the beginning of the last gen multiplatform games looked much better on 360 and PS3 tools were publicly criticised. Hopefully they won't commit the same mistake.

Tool-wise? Probably - they have the Windows development toolset to fall back on - which is supposed to be rather good.

But for Orbis/Durango I doubt it matters much. Developers in 2013 tend to use abstraction layers (UE4/crytek engine) to avoid platform differences... and there's not a lot of difference in the first place.
 
Problem of course is that for multi-platform titles at least, the weaker system generally sets the bar. ;)

Not necessarily. Games like grand theft auto generate content like pedestrians and cars procedurally. Stronger system could throw in more content if resources are available.

Another way to skin the cat is to exploit lod system assuming there is one in the game(longer draw distance, less popup, higher detail/shader models, more things cast shadows etc).

CPU bottle necks that limit framerate or whatnot could also be alleviated through the usage of gpgpu. It's likely that common middleware like unreal engine will take advantage of platforms specific strengths to some extent.

If nothing else I would be happy to see the extra gpu power used to make a non compromised 3d mode or split screen experience.
 
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http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/qcv4np/playstation-4-playstation-meeting-takeaways

This guy has pretty spot on points too.
They created such a huge momentum and they didnt meet it with the right announcements.
Some pretty big announcements were not treated in the right way either. Also many not so big announcemnets for which we wouldnt care much about took more time than necessary.
Not enough enthusiasm and not enough mindblowing games.. I think it would have been better if they showed more of the stuff they announced and talked less.

They should have also made more surprise announcements. We were pretty much expecting Watchdogs. Diablo 3? Not so great...I mean come on.....I was expecting something big like Starcraft or World of Warcraft. Bungie's new not so impressive game we know nothing about? Not anything impressive. Neither games that we are getting on both PS3 and PS4.


The dude is right. We want games that are impossible on current gen consoles. Games that are only on PS4

In general the show didnt come with a huge bang.... Whereas I remember the PS3 announcement was filled with one awesome announcement after the next....Killzone, Heavenly Sword, Warhawk, Gran Turismo, awesone tech demos, hardware that showed huge promise, everything indicated a HUGE jump.

For me the biggest awesome revelation was 8GB GDDR5

I hope Sony reserved the great things for E3.
And this is what I d love to see there:
The next GT
A game from Naughty Dog
A megaton announcement of a game we were never expecting to see on a Sony platform
NEW GAMES GAMES GAMES. Not games like Knak. GAMES THAT MAKE MY JAW DROP.
AR glasses to counter attack MS ilumniroom
More of the Stereocamera
More of the UI and some pretty awesome UI features
DVR functions
Cross game chat and new features asscosciated with it
Android app support
Gaikai becoming something more than simply streaming older generation PS games and demos.
Innovative ways of interaction between console and mobile phone/tablet devices
 
http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/qcv4np/playstation-4-playstation-meeting-takeaways

This guy has pretty spot on points too.
They created such a huge momentum and they didnt meet it with the right announcements.
Some pretty big announcements were not treated in the right way either. Also many not so big announcemnets for which we wouldnt care much about took more time than necessary.
Not enough enthusiasm and not enough mindblowing games.. I think it would have been better if they showed more of the stuff they announced and talked less.

They should have also made more surprise announcements. We were pretty much expecting Watchdogs. Diablo 3? Not so great...I mean come on.....I was expecting something big like Starcraft or World of Warcraft. Bungie's new not so impressive game we know nothing about? Not anything impressive. Neither games that we are getting on both PS3 and PS4.


The dude is right. We want games that are impossible on current gen consoles. Games that are only on PS4

In general the show didnt come with a huge bang.... Whereas I remember the PS3 announcement was filled with one awesome announcement after the next....Killzone, Heavenly Sword, Warhawk, Gran Turismo, awesone tech demos, hardware that showed huge promise, everything indicated a HUGE jump.

For me the biggest awesome revelation was 8GB GDDR5

I hope Sony reserved the great things for E3.
And this is what I d love to see there:
The next GT
A game from Naughty Dog
A megaton announcement of a game we were never expecting to see on a Sony platform
NEW GAMES GAMES GAMES. Not games like Knak. GAMES THAT MAKE MY JAW DROP.
AR glasses to counter attack MS ilumniroom
More of the Stereocamera
More of the UI and some pretty awesome UI features
DVR functions
Cross game chat and new features asscosciated with it
Android app support
Gaikai becoming something more than simply streaming older generation PS games and demos.
Innovative ways of interaction between console and mobile phone/tablet devices

In a sense I get the feeling that the show was more of a presentation directed towards developers, and in that regard they're pretty successful.

Looking across multiple interviews and news clips, game media and gamers hated it for not showing the console itself and pricing. Traditional news sources thought everything looked the same. Some news sources were pleased at Gaikai and the cloud services but gave generally mediocre remarks.

You turn the camera over to developers and you have guys Mark Rein literally getting an orgasm (pardon my expression) over 8GB GDDR5 (like a lot of people on these forums) and the other developers excited about the relative ease of coding for the platform and not having to expect next-gen costs go up like last time.

Maybe this is the right path, maybe it's not.
 
MS is right about diminishing returns. If Sony and MS have the same CPU architectures they can run the exact same game at very similar performance levels with the bottleneck shifting to the GPU. The good news for gamers is GPU performance can scale with features and resolution. If Sony encourages developers to target 1080p, and the next Xbox is truly 33% slower, the performance deficit is easily remedied by resolution scaling. In each of the following scenarios only 66% of the pixels are drawn compared to 1080p:

1536*864 (80% * 80%)
1280*1080 (66% * 100%)
1920*720 (100% * 66%)

Of course it gets complicated when comparing the entire product (33% less compute and triangle setup, possibly half the pixel fillrate, etc) but the point is diminishing returns may mute the difference in performance. While pixel counters will quickly point out the difference in still shots but there is a real question how noticeable these differences will be—and matter—to the 150M+ target audience? The fact is while HD display penetration continues to grow at an exceptional rate many consumers still connect up to non-True of Full HD displays.

I don't get this .. now it's ok to accept sub-standard resolutions just because Microsft is using cheap harware ?
I paid good money for a gorgeous Samsung 1080p set , obviously i don't feel good to have upscaled games .
And since when the advantage of a better GPU is only for more resolution ... better effects , better AA , more physics don't count ?
Well i don't want to sound too negative towards MS , but i really EXPECT from them to step up their game .
 
In a sense I get the feeling that the show was more of a presentation directed towards developers, and in that regard they're pretty successful.

Looking across multiple interviews and news clips, game media and gamers hated it for not showing the console itself and pricing. Traditional news sources thought everything looked the same. Some news sources were pleased at Gaikai and the cloud services but gave generally mediocre remarks.

You turn the camera over to developers and you have guys Mark Rein literally getting an orgasm (pardon my expression) over 8GB GDDR5 (like a lot of people on these forums) and the other developers excited about the relative ease of coding for the platform and not having to expect next-gen costs go up like last time.

Maybe this is the right path, maybe it's not.

Well, I think it was right in many respects. The one with the developers was actually great. They are the ones that support the platform. Its them that produce the gaming content for us consumers.
I think it was also right to not show everything now and leave nothing for E3. Pricing especially. Thats something you dont want competition to know early.
Some consumers might have been happy now but unhappy later.

I think what they should have done with this presentation was design the presentation differently. Define priorities. Change the sequence in which each announcement will be unveiled. Change the focus. Choose different wording and less talk. Rethink how and what will be shown from each selected announcement. And choose something extra to show. Or avoid something and replace it with something else. Knack was a boring showcase for most.

The presentation started awesomely with some gaming footage from the old generations, and reference to IMAGINATION and REALITY. Then they showed the words P then S and just when you expect the 4, they cut it.. That created anticipation "COME ON SHOW US THE NEXT PLAYSTATION". Then the Andrew guy comes in and shares some stuff.
But what about if his talk at the beginning was shorter? And then he said "But you know all why you are here and what we are about to show you"

And then they showed a short footage of the tech demos, Drive Club, Watchdogs and Killzone without being "clear" just making the spectators wonder and guess "hey is that Gran Turismo? Hey was that Killzone? What game is that? Is that real time?"

Or what about if they talked about all the social stuff, how great Move, Gaikai, Vita remote Play first without referring to anything related to PS4, and then showed that short footage? And then BAM! "This is the PS4. Everything you saw was real time." And first show Knack, Media Molecule, Blizzard, Bungie and later on the GREAT looking tech demos and games like Killzone? Then refer to the surprise announcement "everything you saw was designed with 4GB Memory in mind. We are happy to announce that the final specs will include 8GB GDDR5. Things will get even better" then show the controller the camera? and BAM suddenly show Deep Down for last without too much blah blah and end the presentation with "This is just the beginning. This is a small taste of what to expect" and leave us gasping for more. "Find more surprises at E3"
 
Thanks for the replies folks--although I must admit that a post that is pretty positive and impressed with Sony had drawn so much ire from a number of you.

I don't get this .. now it's ok to accept sub-standard resolutions just because Microsft is using cheap harware ?
I paid good money for a gorgeous Samsung 1080p set , obviously i don't feel good to have upscaled games .
And since when the advantage of a better GPU is only for more resolution ... better effects , better AA , more physics don't count ?
Well i don't want to sound too negative towards MS , but i really EXPECT from them to step up their game .

What part don't you get: The diminishing returns part? The fact resolution (notably horizontal) seems to be a trade off not nearly as noticeable to many consumers?

What I really don't get is how core gamers continue to have a really hard time seeing past their personal preferences. I am a core gamer but even I understand the market is a much wider net than my preferences--which you can be thankful for as there would never have been a JRPG ever released and the market would be saturated with Sports, Shooters, and Racers with an emphasis on local MP. What a lot of core gamers continue to resist is that Market >>>> You; and the market has spoken: Unique features (lightening in a bottle) and Price are very, very important variables in designing a console platform. There are other factors--like how great the games look--but the headstrong, inflexible, refusing to consider the reality that extra pixels, while valuable to one segment, may not be worth the extra cost/tradeoff to another consumer segment (btw, extra pixels not only eats up fillrate but also texel and shader, hence why on the PC you often can either turn down features and hit the same framerate or ramp down resolution and hit the same frame rate when comparing 2 GPUs; often but not always, sometimes other LOD like geometry may need to be slightly adjusted as well).

And to draw attention to the specific point drawing my attention in your post:

now it's ok to accept sub-standard resolutions just because Microsft is using cheap harware ?
I paid good money for a gorgeous Samsung 1080p set , obviously i don't feel good to have upscaled games .

If you are *inflexible* on the 1080p I have a recommendation for you:

Get a PC.

Because the PS4 will certainly have its share of upscaled games. I find it humorous MS is going to have to scale back not just resolution but also effects, AA, and physics while you have implicitly assumed the PS4 is going to mate perfectly with your 1080p set without sub-standard resolution.
 
Not to mention that graphics were good enough this gen that differences between the PS3 and 360 were already marginal enough that the vast majority of people outside of message boards simply didn't care. Next gen, the base level of graphics is going to be so high that these marginal differences are going to be even less relevant.
 
Not to mention that graphics were good enough this gen that differences between the PS3 and 360 were already marginal enough that the vast majority of people outside of message boards simply didn't care. Next gen, the base level of graphics is going to be so high that these marginal differences are going to be even less relevant.

You do know it pains me a great deal to have your awesomesauce quote in my signature; And now you are forcing my hand to agree with you on your posts? :p

Of course you said the above much more concisely than my ramblings about diminishing returns and the difficult to spot a 33% percent resolution difference due to TV market penetration and issues involving the function of the eye :rolleyes: At least I labeled my thread appropriately as a warning...

And for the record, as a core gamer, I do care about stable framerates and the rendering technology "check boxes" being utilized the artists intended (it drives me nuts, e.g., a game is designed for SSOA but at the end it is cut due to performance so the game looks flat because it was not baked in and dynamic objects have no solution for such), so I am inclined so far to be leaning toward Orbis over Durango (especially if Orbis has more free memory for games, somehow makes Move standard, and most importantly has free online play) but my brain tells me that my particular gaming interests are far and wide not in sync with how a normal gamer looks at the screen or engages their video game entertainment.
 
# RAM.

.....

We don’t know if this is 16 chips (4Gb) in clamshell x16 mode or 8 chips (8Gb) in x32 mode (which don’t appear to be in volume production, yet) but all that doesn’t really matter.

I thought 4Gb chips were only just released last quarter? There's no device I know of that is using them just yet. So it's definitely 16 4Gb chips; 8Gb probably won't be available until the end of 2014 of the start of 2015 - if at all, stacked memory could start to replace GDDR5 by then making development of 8Gb GDDR5 unnecessary. If stacked DRAM isn't possible to transition to in PS4 or it just won't be cheap enough soon enough, Sony may be the sole driver of 8Gb GDDR5 chips being produced. With the regular 2 year(ish) cycle, I guess having 16 DRAM chips in a console for 12-18months isn't too bad of a thing. At this point I suspect we may get the first price drop, or more profits (perhaps any?) for sony, from a reduced cost model. Not necessarily a slim, but the 16 RAM chip models will be kind of like the original 60GB PS3 with BC chips.

EDIT: 4Gb GDDR5 is set to be rolled out this quarter,
http://www.hynix.com/inc/pdfDownload.jsp?path=/datasheet/Databook/Databook_2Q'2012_ALL.pdf
Page 20.

So that means no 8Gb until 2015. Expensive hardware until mid 2015 at the least. That might be long enough of a gap to release the first slim. Assuming they can't switch to stacked DRAM sooner, of course. I'm wondering now exactly how much 8GB of 4Gb GDDR5 will cost. 2GB of 2Gb is around $20 right now, right? So we can expect at least $80 just for the RAM? Or could it end up around $60? Taking into account that it's only twice the amount of chips, just on a new process so initially around 50%~ more expensive. That's all just guesswork, but I'm assuming somewhere between $60 and $100.
 
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Not to mention that graphics were good enough this gen that differences between the PS3 and 360 were already marginal enough that the vast majority of people outside of message boards simply didn't care. Next gen, the base level of graphics is going to be so high that these marginal differences are going to be even less relevant.

There's a big portion of the regular buyers that still want to know which system is the most powerful and even base their buying decision on it. This gen it could be swung either way due to the murkiness brought about by useless but technically** accurate paper specs. The PS4 is much more down to earth. The people swayed by the unknown mythical "what if?" super chips like CELL aren't going to be impressed by hardware very similar to other, existing gaming devices.

Without this fog of obscurity the unaware will actually have a proper idea of which system is in fact more capable! Of course they'll probably end up buying the one which has the most sequels to the games they liked last gen, or the one which they formed their allegiance to, if they happen to possess brand fanboyism of a certain level. However, they may not be able to shun the other console based off a uneducated here-say that console x has noob hardware compared to console y. If their allegiance to the last iteration of console y and its game franchises compels them to purchase console y^2 despite its (now apparently) weaker hardware, they will be much more likely end up buying console x^2 sometime in the future when those differences are made apparent in games.
 
There's a big portion of the regular buyers that still want to know which system is the most powerful and even base their buying decision on it. This gen it could be swung either way due to the murkiness brought about by useless but technically** accurate paper specs. The PS4 is much more down to earth. The people swayed by the unknown mythical "what if?" super chips like CELL aren't going to be impressed by hardware very similar to other, existing gaming devices.

Without this fog of obscurity the unaware will actually have a proper idea of which system is in fact more capable! Of course they'll probably end up buying the one which has the most sequels to the games they liked last gen, or the one which they formed their allegiance to, if they happen to possess brand fanboyism of a certain level. However, they may not be able to shun the other console based off a uneducated here-say that console x has noob hardware compared to console y. If their allegiance to the last iteration of console y and its game franchises compels them to purchase console y^2 despite its (now apparently) weaker hardware, they will be much more likely end up buying console x^2 sometime in the future when those differences are made apparent in games.

The key difference between the current generation and the next one is that the CPUs are more or less exactly the same, and the PS4 just has a faster GPU than Durango is rumored to have. Also, as far as I know, developers have access to more of the 8GB of memory on the PS4 than on Durango (OS used 512MB RAM in the old spec, may possibly be 1GB in new, final spec).

Yes, there are some differences, like DDR3 vs GDDR5, or Durango having 32MB ESRAM and whatever those "Data Move Engines" are supposed to be, but unless I'm mistaken, the PS4 is as PC-like a system as the original Xbox and developers should/will be/are estatic over it after the complicated mess that was the PS2 which was even worse with the PS3.

Also, because both consoles will be released in the same year, there is no lead platform this time around. In fact, I don't think that's ever happened before. And that's really to Sony's advantage since even with a year disadvantage and more expensive price point with the PS3, it's practically tied with the 360 (Japan has not been kind to Microsoft).
 
I thought 4Gb chips were only just released last quarter? There's no device I know of that is using them just yet. So it's definitely 16 4Gb chips; 8Gb probably won't be available until the end of 2014 of the start of 2015 - if at all, stacked memory could start to replace GDDR5 by then making development of 8Gb GDDR5 unnecessary. If stacked DRAM isn't possible to transition to in PS4 or it just won't be cheap enough soon enough, Sony may be the sole driver of 8Gb GDDR5 chips being produced. With the regular 2 year(ish) cycle, I guess having 16 DRAM chips in a console for 12-18months isn't too bad of a thing. At this point I suspect we may get the first price drop, or more profits (perhaps any?) for sony, from a reduced cost model. Not necessarily a slim, but the 16 RAM chip models will be kind of like the original 60GB PS3 with BC chips.

EDIT: 4Gb GDDR5 is set to be rolled out this quarter,
http://www.hynix.com/inc/pdfDownload.jsp?path=/datasheet/Databook/Databook_2Q%272012_ALL.pdf
Page 20.

So that means no 8Gb until 2015. Expensive hardware until mid 2015 at the least. That might be long enough of a gap to release the first slim. Assuming they can't switch to stacked DRAM sooner, of course. I'm wondering now exactly how much 8GB of 4Gb GDDR5 will cost. 2GB of 2Gb is around $20 right now, right? So we can expect at least $80 just for the RAM? Or could it end up around $60? Taking into account that it's only twice the amount of chips, just on a new process so initially around 50%~ more expensive. That's all just guesswork, but I'm assuming somewhere between $60 and $100.

I don't see 8Gb chips being too much cheaper than 2 4Gb chips.

PCB board would be fine too.
Clamshell mode simply means you SMT the board two times instead of once if you use both sides of the PCB board.

Both designing the board and SMTing the board two times don't incur costs (you don't keep paying for your PCB design, or in the case of SMTing the board twice, doesn't add a whole lot of cost either.

Assembly is the cheap part.

Like this
 

Sorry for the OT, but what board is that? I was thinking 1GB 2900XT, but the power connectors are facing the wrong way, it says AMD on the PCB and uh, looks more like a 2GB+ if I had to guess. :oops: It can't be recent because of the connectors but would have to be some variety of FirePro card from 2007-9? Just curious. :smile:
 
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