News & Rumours: Playstation 4/ Orbis *spin*

[Arwin]

Didn't someone say the vita tools are great now? It's likely the ps4 ones are of equal standing surely, they aren't going to regress after making good progress.

Interview with Just Add Water on Eurogamer suggests as much ...

 

[V3]

Based on what we know so far, is there anything to indicate that PS4 will be a repeat of PS3 in the sense of being a theoretically powerful system but ports may suffer due to being difficult to program for?
I would rather not suffer repeat of examples like Skyrim PS3.

PS4 isn't a powerful system though, it maybe compare to other consoles. The only problem I see is the latency from GDDR5. Both Wii U and Durango will utilise embedded memory to overcome it. Sony doesn't have any. But the CPU caches are big this time around, so maybe it'll be no biggie.

 

[ninzel]

PS4 isn't a powerful system though, it maybe compare to other consoles. The only problem I see is the latency from GDDR5. Both Wii U and Durango will utilise embedded memory to overcome it. Sony doesn't have any. But the CPU caches are big this time around, so maybe it'll be no biggie.

I just want to make sure I get the console that gets the best multiplatform games next generation.

 

[Arwin]

Developers seem to suggest that high bandwidth graphics memory addresses the most important performance bottlenecks in games. But obviously we will see both consoles having different strengths and weaknesses like last time. And if Microsoft intends to have WinRT running on the system, which I would consider quite likely and a potential system seller if Kinect 2 works well with it while sitting on the couch, and with WinRT always in memory with notifications and everything, then clearly they have different priorities.

 

[patsu]

Ok, so I concede that vanilla jaguar might not be a bottleneck when it comes to first party games, but what about games ported from the supposed Xbox next which could have upwards of double the flops as well as all that dedicated silicon?

But that's not my main gripe. it's more worrying about there being no real headroom... no room to grow.. I'm sure that developers wouldn't have minded a more powerfull CPU; I mean, from what I've heard CPU flops and GPU flops aren't exactly equal... not everything that can be done on the CPU efficiently can be moved over to the GPU and done just as effectively (from what I've heard).

Please tell me I'm wrong.

It works both ways. GPU can run certain compute jobs faster than the CPU.

The developers will probably use different methods to achieve similar results on the CPU and GPU combo.

On PC, the GPU may be restricted by the DirectX/GL programming model. On the new consoles, if they allow low level access, the GPU can be used more efficiently for compute jobs.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Ok, so I concede that vanilla jaguar might not be a bottleneck when it comes to first party games, but what about games ported from the supposed Xbox next which could have upwards of double the flops as well as all that dedicated silicon?

Let's save the comparison (with unknown devices) for the NGGP thread, and keep this one clear for general discussion.

 

[patsu]

His main gripe seems to be with the "headroom to grow".

As I understand, GPGPU and HSA programming model are pretty "new" in mainstream PC games. Most of the PC GPGPU tasks in games are for rendering or asynchronous compute jobs.

If so, there should be plenty of room for exploration for both Orbis and Durango.

The next gen Kinect and PSEye, plus the nextgen digital/social/integrated Internet platforms should offer incredible opportunities for science and business folks too.

 

[(((interference)))]

So basically, if both rumours are true, ps4 and Durango have the modified jaguar with twice the flops

There's just no win visible for Durango.

No, only the XCPU has twice the FLOPS - this agrees with what bg was saying

Sony's Jaguar is standard - hence why vgleaks are calling it Jaguar and not calling the XCPU Jaguar.

 

[DJ12]

I know bgassassins is a poster here but what makes him believable? (I don't say this to be rude, as far as I know he's just another poster, not an "insider" or developer - thats not to say he's not)

Anyway I was responding to the post above mine where someone suggested modifications have been made to the ps4 CPU, hence why I said if both rumours are true.

I don't see why one poster claiming insider knowledge should be believed over another, especially as they have been wrong many times with their claims.

 

[oramay]

Trying too hard to read these "insider" posts is a little pointless IMO.

From what I've seen, the people with "insider" contacts probably have heard something, but they are not very good at reporting things verbatim. They often mix in their own feelings, interpretation and speculations without explicitly stating so.

 

[Kb-Smoker]

New leak: seems to confirm some reports about changes to the gpu.

http://www.vgleaks.com/orbis-gpu-compute-queues-and-pipelines/

 

[DJ12]

Interesting, so it seems ps4 isn't the inefficient mess people want to believe.

 

[anexanhume]

Interesting, so it seems ps4 isn't the inefficient mess people want to believe.

Who claimed it was going to be inefficient? It's essentially a beefed up AMD APU with a faster, higher latency memory.

 

[(((interference)))]

I know bgassassins is a poster here but what makes him believable? (I don't say this to be rude, as far as I know he's just another poster, not an "insider" or developer - thats not to say he's not)

Anyway I was responding to the post above mine where someone suggested modifications have been made to the ps4 CPU, hence why I said if both rumours are true.

I don't see why one poster claiming insider knowledge should be believed over another, especially as they have been wrong many times with their claims.

You obviously haven't been reading the old Predict for long enough to realise why bg is reliable.
He was the first to give us ballpark FLOPs for the PS4 and 720 among other things, ( he also mentioned 12 CUs at 800 mhz too and that the RAM was DDR3 and not DDR4 and also that the Wii U had 2GB of RAM, with 1 reserved for the OS)

Strange is not an insider, nor claiming to be one so I don't see what you're trying to say.

I still place a ? on that. Does anybody have a confirmation the flops count for a vanilla 4 core jaguar? So far it's only VGLEAKS saying it's 102.4 Flops, but as with the 14+4 issue, we may have to get other sources when there's a bit more technicalities involved.

Other people here calculated 102.4 GFLOPS independently of vgleaks for the 8 core jag.

That Ars post lends further credence to bg's rumour, not to mention bkilian saying MS have customised the vector units for the 360 CPU so are not unlikely to do so again.

 

[(((interference)))]

my ? goes to how Durango is getting the 200GFLOP rating when we're rating PS4 at 102.4GFLOPS using simple math. I did the math too so I understand how the 102.4GFlops came from. I also think the 102.4 Flops is most probably accurate.

It's not 200 GFLOPS exactly, it's around 200 - could well be 204 GF

Would the bespoke audio bits have a Flop rating? (the diagram seemed to put kinect's MVEC inside the SoC - and there are persistent rumours that audio system is special).

Proelite has said 100 GF, which would make sense as the alpha kits apparently had an extra 8 CPU cores to emulate some of the custom hardware not in the kits.

 

[Kb-Smoker]

Seems the biggest down size is latency memory with PS4 design. Looking back at the ps360 a cache miss stall the cpu for around 500 cycles. Seeing the cpu is a lot slower, seem the latency would have to be very bad to be worst than ps360.

Wonder how big of issue this will be...

 

[patsu]

Seems the biggest down size is latency memory with PS4 design. Looking back at the ps360 a cache miss stall the cpu for around 500 cycles. Seeing the cpu is a lot slower, seem the latency would have to be very bad to be worst than ps360.

Wonder how big of issue this will be...

Need to look at the programming model. e.g. How does DMA tie in and sync with the commands in the queues and the running threads ? How is the cache used ? What happens when a thread is stalled waiting for memory ?

How many cycles of GDDR5 latency are we talking about ?

 

[DJ12]

Strange is not an insider, nor claiming to be one so I don't see what you're trying to say.

Never claimed he was I was referring to the other forum user that he linked to that said ps4 had customisations to its CPU

 

[manux]

I found this interview to be good recap for what the vision for ps4 is

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2013/feb/22/ps4-shuhei-yoshida-interview

We want to get out of this madness with PlayStation 4. The games are big, they're 50GB; download isn't instantaneous. So we're making purchase available from any device, so when you're at work, you can spend a couple of moments looking at PlayStation Store and choosing a game, and straight away it starts to download at home

I believe it's very important for the platform to have a wide variety of developers making things that are unique and creative. We're shifting our platform more and more to the digital side – PS4 will be similar to PS Vita in that every game will be available as a digital download, and some will also be available as a disc.

There is plenty more good stuff on that interview

 

[patsu]

This one is expected:

On that subject, I really expected you to announce a "Spotify for games"-type service, allowing gamers to sign up and pay a monthly fee to access as many titles as they like. Is that something we can look forward to?
As more and more services and contents become available digitally, we'll have more of an option to create attractive packages. So hypothetically we can look at different models – like a cable TV company. We could have gold, silver or platinum levels of membership, something like that. We can do subscription services when we have more content – especially now that we have the Gaikai technology available. With one subscription you have access to thousands of games – that's our dream.

Better put your money where your mouth is. Not just easier but fun and refreshing. The competition will be tough here:

The game experience is not just playing, it's talking about games, it's watching other people play - that's all part of the enjoyment and we wanted to make that easier. It's like Media Molecule said – they want to make creativity easy for everyone. well, in the same way, we want to make sharing great moments of gameplay easier.