News and Rumours: PS4

[liolio]

Is it so hard to imagine how much technology for mass production could improve by 2013-2014 and whats the rush?

Not that hard but with nowadays barely 200 sq. mm GPU shipping at 350$ the other side of the equation is true too it's easy to be pretty concerned. OK Pitcarin sells at this price because of it's perfs, its BOM it's unknown but it would be interesting to have AMD margin and how much the design cost, etc.

Anyway like pretty much like every body here, lets pray for best

 

[RudeCurve]

So has it been confirmed that PS4 will use x86? Will it be Larrabee?

 

[Acert93]

So has it been confirmed that PS4 will use x86?

Only Rumors. The Rumors are an AMD APU (A8-3850 which is a Bulldozer revision + GPU).

Will it be Larrabee?

LOL What? Larrabee is not being actively developed (at least not publicly). there is Knights Corner but it is aimed at 2013 and, being Intel, doesn't appear to be available for consoles whatsoever. And of course the question is would 50 small x86 cores with SIMD be a good console candidate.

 

[RudeCurve]

Haha thanks for the info...I haven't seriously followed SONY's next generation console development progress for awhile. The last time I checked the rumor was that SONY would go with a Larrabee architecture or PowerVR.

 

[Ninjaprime]

So has it been confirmed that PS4 will use x86? Will it be Larrabee?

Would be awesome, I so want to see a Larrabee product in action, in the hands of people like Tim Sweeny, who can devise new and interesting rendering methods. Wouldn't hold out much hope for it though, realistically.

 

[BoardBonobo]

I thought Intel had given up on larrabee?

 

[RudeCurve]

I thought Intel had given up on larrabee?

Well not completely. Aubrey Isle was a Larrabee derivative and there's still ongoing development of their MIC architecture leading to actual products but those aren't GPUs.

 

[Grall]

Pretty much the last thing Sony wants now is another hard-to-program-for, wonky, difficult-to-profile piece of hardware with poor development system support.

They're going to go for something bog standard, off the shelf that make developers feel at home. Larrabee won't happen, at least not in PS4.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

can nay one here let me know what is difference between rummer and a news ?

News is supported with evidence, like official confirmation from someone involved or proven photographic evidence. eg. an AMD employee saying anonymously that PS4 will feature an APU is a rumour. An AMD employee announcing publicly in a press conference that the Ps4 will feature an APU is news. A photograph of a presentation slide is rumour (as it might be photochopped) until it's confirmed by trusted sources, maybe a couple of devs here, who were at the presentation. Except of course devs should be keeping their NDAs and not talking about it.

 

[DJ12]

Well opm in the uk have built a ps4 (a pc with the rumoured hardware) and report that the performance is not that good and no visual improvment on the ps3.

Not an exact prediction of what will happen with a closed box but certainly an indication. Really makes me hope the specs are totally wrong.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Well opm in the uk have built a ps4 (a pc with the rumoured hardware) and report that the performance is not that good and no visual improvment on the ps3.

How did they reach that conclusion?

Not an exact prediction of what will happen with a closed box but certainly an indication. Really makes me hope the specs are totally wrong.

Not an exact prediction is a bit of an understatement.

 

[mrcorbo]

How did they reach that conclusion?

Here's the article.

Here's a quote:

The AMD A8 3850 processor belongs to AMD’s ‘Llano’ range, designed to handle both the usual CPU tasks and deal with graphics – it’s aimed at those who want to save the pennies and go without a graphics card.
As you’d expect then, it’s priced low – available at a pinch over £100, and it’s raw operating speeds aren’t that impressive. It runs at 2.9 GHz across four cores – for reference, the PS3′s six-year-old processor runs at 3.2 GHz across essentially four of its availible 6 cores.

So, the answer to your question is: Start with a flawed premise, add a poor technical understanding of the subject matter and top it all off with questionable methodology.

 

[Rangers]

It's much like IGN built a 4850 PC and used it to comment on the alleged potential of Wii U. Total rubbish.

 

[RedVi]

The idiocy of that article is overwhelming... It is interesting though, if Sony use more off-the-shelf parts, the mystical aura of exotic hardware will be gone and will take with it the assumption that it must be better even though the relative real world performance is relatively unknown because, well, it's exotic!

The reality is that easy to code for hardware that developers are already familiar with will mean that the hardware itself doesn't have to be quite as good as it would otherwise have to be with Cell 2 and 20 power VR chips on one die. No, I don't believe they will use Llano, that's probably what is in the current dev kits. I believe at the very least a slightly modified Kaveri will be used. The fact that it will be 28nm and not the more exclusive and exotic 32nm SOI really makes sense for use in a console. I do hope the GPU they use is perhaps tweaked to at least use GDDR5, and maybe have more shaders or something. Maybe the CPU will be 3 module, 6 core? I don't know, all I do know is that cost and efficiency wise - the move makes sense. If morons don't buy it simply because they look at a PC with the same specs and say "that's not that good!" then so be it... but if Sony go under for that reason, then that's just sad. If anything the opposite should be true and the exotic hardware of PS2/3 should have done them over, I'm just glad it didn't and they have finally woken up.

 

[Rangers]

The idiocy of that article is overwhelming... It is interesting though, if Sony use more off-the-shelf parts, the mystical aura of exotic hardware will be gone and will take with it the assumption that it must be better even though the relative real world performance is relatively unknown because, well, it's exotic!

A APU+ a discrete GPU would be pretty odd/exotic in itself though, and one reason I consider that rumor plausible, just that Sony seems to like that kind of weird shit.

It's a tiny bit of a follow on from Cell really. They probably think the SP's on the CPU can do all sorts of physics and other wacky stuff, even though like Cell it wont get used for that in reality.

 

[Prophecy2k]

The idiocy of that article is overwhelming... It is interesting though, if Sony use more off-the-shelf parts, the mystical aura of exotic hardware will be gone and will take with it the assumption that it must be better even though the relative real world performance is relatively unknown because, well, it's exotic!

The reality is that easy to code for hardware that developers are already familiar with will mean that the hardware itself doesn't have to be quite as good as it would otherwise have to be with Cell 2 and 20 power VR chips on one die. No, I don't believe they will use Llano, that's probably what is in the current dev kits. I believe at the very least a slightly modified Kaveri will be used. The fact that it will be 28nm and not the more exclusive and exotic 32nm SOI really makes sense for use in a console. I do hope the GPU they use is perhaps tweaked to at least use GDDR5, and maybe have more shaders or something. Maybe the CPU will be 3 module, 6 core? I don't know, all I do know is that cost and efficiency wise - the move makes sense. If morons don't buy it simply because they look at a PC with the same specs and say "that's not that good!" then so be it... but if Sony go under for that reason, then that's just sad. If anything the opposite should be true and the exotic hardware of PS2/3 should have done them over, I'm just glad it didn't and they have finally woken up.

To be fair though if the rumoured specs are true then it won't just be the morons that refuse to buy it, simply because it wouldn't be a justifiable increase in processing power from the current generation at all.

I don't think anyone would refuse to buy it because it has off-the-shelf PC innards. Xbox 1 did. I think they'd refuse to buy it if it was a sh!tty performer in comparison to even top-end PC HW available today.

I personally think that most of the rumours about PS4 and Durango HW for that matter are pure nonesense.

 

[Rangers]

I don't think anyone would refuse to buy it because it has off-the-shelf PC innards. Xbox 1 did. I think they'd refuse to buy it if it was a sh!tty performer in comparison to even top-end PC HW available today.

I dont think that enters in to it, much, it's more how it will compare to the other consoles.

If a 7770 console is top dog next gen, people probably wont care that a PC smokes it, if it smokes the console competition.

I am somewhat sympathetic to the argument that if it flounders technically compared to the general crappy PC+iOS ecosystem, even 2-3 years down the line, that could be a problem. Something like a Pitcairn, though tame by PC standards, would never suffer from that though imo.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I think they'd refuse to buy it if it was a sh!tty performer in comparison to even top-end PC HW available today.

I'm completely with Rangers on this one. I dont think any typical games cosole consumer compares the consoles to PCs. They'll compare PS4 to Wuu and XB3. If it's comparable, they won't be turned off. If it's superior (imagine MS really cheap out for some reason) then PS4 will sell to the COD-type fans despite the PC offering a better experience. There isn't yet a direct connection between PC and console gaming that makes them interchangeable. There's a wall between the two universes that is only crossed on gaming forums and websites and by some who frequent them.

 

[DJ12]

It is not likely Sony can polish a turd though. Cell is better than the A8, why change when devs already know all about it. Better to use exactly the same CPU as PS3 and go for a top spec GPU.

I think the crux of the matter is the CPU seems like a massive downgrade.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

That wont solve the 3rd party games generally running better on x360 than ps3 and it will just get worse with the new xbox720 cpu. Slapping on a better gpu won't solve everything. For example, with my current gpu I could easily get 20fps more in skyrim just by upgrading my q6600 to an i7.

Maybe it seems like a downgrade on paper but would actually provide better real world results? Not to mention that even though devs now have experience working with cell they would propably prefer working with a x86 because it's easier to use.