How big is the performance leap over Xbox 360 & PS3 with the Xbone and PS4?

[Kaizhen]

Hi guys,

I'm very much a ''noob'' when it comes to technology and whatnot, but essentially I'm trying to figure out how much more powerful the PS4 & Xbox One are compared to the previous gen.

From what I've read and understood, this is actually the first time where the leap isn't really that spectacular. As a comparison; the performance gap between PS2 and PS3 was HUGE. From PS3 to PS4, not so much. Atleast, this is what I understood it from reading different articles.

Back when the PS3 and 360 launched, the technology was pretty much state of the art. You weren't able to build a similar PC without spending a few thousand bucks. The new generation consoles are being compared to low to mid end gaming PCs. Isn't this a little strange? Is there any reason as to why hardware is so mediocre(?) this time around?

Any clarification would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The new generation consoles are being compared to low to mid end gaming PCs. Isn't this a little strange? Is there any reason as to why hardware is so mediocre(?) this time around?

Business sense. Making expensive hardware and selling it at a high price results in no-one buying it. Selling it at a loss results in losing money. If there's no competition with more powerful hardware, you don't need to break the bank competing with them.

One way to think of it is this - MS and Sony designed consoles that were bleeding edge, $1000 boxes in 2010/2011. However, instead of releasing them at $1000 and selling none, or selling them at $500 and losing a fortune, they waited until price-reductions got the boxes down to $500. They release those boxes at $500 to lots of buyers (most successful console launches ever I believe) without losing money. Seems very sensible. The end result is pretty much the same. Instead of selling 5 million at $750-1000 over two years before 2014 with very little interest, they've sold 5 million at $500 in a few months.

 

[Cjail]

From what I've read and understood, this is actually the first time where the leap isn't really that spectacular. As a comparison; the performance gap between PS2 and PS3 was HUGE. From PS3 to PS4, not so much. Atleast, this is what I understood it from reading different articles.

I think it's too soon to tell.
We are merely at the dawn of the next-gen so what we seen now doesn't surely represent the true potential of the new consoles.

 

[Rangers]

Business sense. Making expensive hardware and selling it at a high price results in no-one buying it. Selling it at a loss results in losing money. If there's no competition with more powerful hardware, you don't need to break the bank competing with them.

One way to think of it is this - MS and Sony designed consoles that were bleeding edge, $1000 boxes in 2010/2011. However, instead of releasing them at $1000 and selling none, or selling them at $500 and losing a fortune, they waited until price-reductions got the boxes down to $500. They release those boxes at $500 to lots of buyers (most successful console launches ever I believe) without losing money. Seems very sensible. The end result is pretty much the same. Instead of selling 5 million at $750-1000 over two years before 2014 with very little interest, they've sold 5 million at $500 in a few months.

The difference though is the gen took 7/8 years instead of 5. So I think even though they aimed mid range the ~10X traditional gen leap was still there and as great as prior gen's.

So far they're not showing it as much, diminishing returns I guess.

You weren't able to build a similar PC without spending a few thousand bucks.

Surely not actually true. 8800GTX came out on late 2006 and was a gen ahead of consoles. I wouldn't recall it's exact pricing but I'm sure less than even $500 and even $2k would have left a ton of fudge room to beat the consoles back then I'm sure.

It's true Xenos itself was basically equivalent to any top of the line PC GPU in 2005, maybe clocked a bit less. That's definitely not close to true this time. 360 still would have lost in some other areas such as CPU grunt and total RAM to a top spec PC in late 2005.

I'd have loved a 4 TF+, lets say R9 290X based console sure, would have been interesting anyway, to see what kind of leap it would have delivered. Alas not to be.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

So I think even though they aimed mid range the ~10X traditional gen leap was still there and as great as prior gen's. So far they're not showing it as much, diminishing returns I guess.

Agreed some of the changes (1080p being achievable for the most part) are very noticeable, consoles not struggling with frame rates is also very noticeable, however a lot of the visual improvements are subtle.

However with a few exceptions, nobody is really exploiting GPGPU and certainly nobody is optimally using the hardware. None of my PS4 games feel beyond the realm of running on PS3 with some cutbacks, but even this early into the generation, almost all of the rough edges of last gen have been smoothed out.

 

[steveOrino]

Consoles were traditionally unique in that their hardware was specifically designed from the ground up to play games on the cheap. Plenty past examples of console manufactures using either, reduced versions of "off the shelf" ICs or custom built architecture. Technology, Intellectual property, Economies of scale and software development costs have influenced the design each generation.

This gen in particular is influenced by the continual homogenization of the computer industry more so than ever. In reality there are only 2 companies that own all the meaningful GPU IPs and out of those 2 only one of them has the ability to package a competent CPU with said GPU (AMD). The cost savings from that alone are huge so much so that both Sony and MS both chose APU solutions rather than separate and or custom CPU/GPU combinations of past generations.

On a personal note, its a bit disappointing from an enthusiast perspective. I enjoyed that "mystery of potential" each generation brought with it. But I also understand the economic realities associated with that exotic architecture. Developers with huge financial backing aren't working in small teams like in the past. Bigger budgets means more sales are needed thus wasting time figuring out new architecture isn't worth the cost anymore.

All things considered, yes, the jump isn't that big this time around but only because the general purpose computing is good enough to do away with the need for specialized hardware. Has that done much to diminish the marketability advantages of consoles? In the present with MS and (especially) Sony's offerings, absolutely not but the future is far more cloudy then its ever been.

One distinction I can forsee is the use of GPGPU. PS4s architects seem to think its going to be a driving force given that they added "extra" hardware resources. Its so far been a pipe on the PC because of non standard/immature APIs, architectures and multiplatform design limitations. At least now there is a baseline for developers to use it.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

On a personal note, its a bit disappointing from an enthusiast perspective. I enjoyed that "mystery of potential" each generation brought with it. But I also understand the economic realities associated with that exotic architecture.

I felt the same about PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 however, although the GPU architectures in both last gen consoles and current gen, are based on conventional GPU architectures found in PCs, they'll never get exploited as well in a PC - not while GPU functions are largely chained to API standards and developers are kept from the hardware by at least a couple of levels of abstraction (DirectX/OpenGL and drivers).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

In reality there are only 2 companies that own all the meaningful GPU IPs

You mean in the console/desktop space, right? Because there are a few notable players in the mobile space and they may manage to encrouch into the desktop.

...they'll never get exploited as well in a PC - not while GPU functions are largely chained to API standards and developers are kept from the hardware by at least a couple of levels of abstraction (DirectX/OpenGL and drivers).

The likes of Mantle may upset that notion in the future. It's certainly not impossible for a PC to get low-level performance, but it'd need some work to make that available to everyone. Of course it starts to become immaterial when games are developed on middleware sat on middleware using libraries sat on middleware on VMs etc. which is what the hideous complexity of future games really needs to make anything within a sane time-limit and with the business potential to release on multiple architectures.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

The likes of Mantle may upset that notion in the future. It's certainly not impossible for a PC to get low-level performance, but it'd need some work to make that available to everyone. Of course it starts to become immaterial when games are developed on middleware sat on middleware using libraries sat on middleware on VMs etc. which is what the hideous complexity of future games really needs to make anything within a sane time-limit and with the business potential to release on multiple architectures.

Mantle will reduce overhead between the game and the hardware but it's doesn't remove the complexity of trying to optimise while accounting for the hundreds/thousands of performance variances innate with a PC: DDR and GDDR speed differences and sizes, chipset timings, GPU and CPU architecture differences, the number of cores, the cache sizes, I/O utilisation and system resources available at any given moment because of the operating system.

The PC will always represent a more complicated problem which makes optimising several steps beyond what most developers will do, compared to a console. Throw money at it, of course, and you solve that. It's brute force over efficiency.

 

[Inuhanyou]

Its a combination of many things OP.

A lot of where we are now in the console space has to do with the mistakes that MS and(particularly Sony) made at the beginning of last generation.

We had to wait an extra 2 or 3 years for the new gen because Sony and MS blew the budget on high end boxes last time and needed time to recoup their losses on the HW sufficiently.

During that extended period standardized semi generic HW has encroached onto the scene, making it easier than ever to simply upgrade to more power through revision instead of having to create crazy HW solutions every single time.

Sony and MS both knew that they could not suffer those mistakes again. The Xbox division would not survive something like that, and Sony as a company would not be able to survive. So they did the smart thing and worked with vendors of that standardized HW to make the boxes instead of(in sony's case) using custom in house solutions.

And based on Sony(and MS's) check list of having boxes that used less power than the previous gen, were generally more reliable out of the gate than the previous gen, made them much more of a profit than previous gen, as well as put them in a position where they could competitively price much more easily, and much quicker than previous gen, these two boxes are what we got.

In regards to the price to performance ratio, i personally think Sony did a good job with their box and a much better job in general than the One. It does what they wanted it to do and for the most part it still feels like enough of a seachange in terms of fixing the previous gen's late woes to satisfy customers as well. Its definitely a piece of kit on a budget, but you don't quite notice it when your looking at CG quality visuals like The Order in my case...the compromises that need to be done this early on aren't nearly as extreme as what i'm seeing from Sony's competitor.

It makes me glad i bought a PS4 for my third party needs

 

[Goodtwin]

Just my opinion, and I am a simple gaming enthusiast not a tech guru, but we are seeing a combination of diminishing returns on hardware advances, and the fact that they didnt release hardware nearly as powerful for its time as they did the previous gen. When the 360 released, it rivaled a good gaming PC, but with the X1 and PS4, they are not even close to matching a good gaming PC by todays standards.

There is also a huge difference made when you go from no programmable shaders to a small number of shaders. Now when you double that, it doesnt give nearly the same leap that going from none to a small number brought to the table. Its kind of like a car with 200HP vs a car with 400HP, the car with 400HP doesnt accelerate twice as fast as a car with 200HP, but the 200HP car may accelerate twice as fast a car with 100HP. It takes more and more power to get the same leap in performance.