Next Generation Hardware Speculation with a Technical Spin [2018]

[iroboto]

From the article: Halo Infinite is so ambitious it needed a new engine [1] - PCGamesN

When we started this project, the team’s vision for the game was ambitious – so much so that we knew we had to build new tech to fully realise our goals for Halo Infinite,” writes Chris Lee, studio head. “We still have a long way to go until we ship the game… though the engine demo is a clear indication of the direction we are heading and a great snapshot of where our tech is right now.

And from the article: E3 2018's Halo Infinite Trailer Was Only An Engine Demo, Game Still A "Long Way" Off [2] - Gamespot

343 created a new engine Halo Infinite because the game was so ambitious that the studio new technology to realise the game's ambition. "The E3 demo showcases some of the exciting potential of this technology--everything you see is running in-engine," 343 said.

I went back to see if there were RT features within the Halo 5 Infinite engine demo. [Source Youtube]

I was surprised by the ending in which there is clear ray tracing reflections happening in Master Chiefs helmet. I do not believe that’s this is a hack as the reflections stay in position as you’d expect even though his helmet curves downwards. The top of his visor reflects the clouds, the bottom the grass. And to the top left corner his own arm.

I believe there is also some subtle evidence of DXR sprinkled throughout the demo. The quality of the DOF is pretty good as well imo. I'm not sure how challenging that is, but on Gears 4, that required 'insane' settings to do, and it tanked frame rate hard.

For the deer here, the way that their reflections are unlike SSR, they blur as it goes further away from the deer.

But I think this is a positive sign of possibly RT in the next console. Granted it can be a PC only feature, but Halo has largely been a console tour de force and I expect to see these new features on next gen.

I recognize that this is a pre-render and the hardware it runs on is completely unknown, but they still took the effort to code some ray tracing render path in here.

 

[JPT]

It’s built upon a proprietary variant of the WiFi spec by Broadcom called Miracast.

Some stuff on Miracast

https://www.google.no/url?sa=t&sour...FjAMegQICRAB&usg=AOvVaw046iLHKowcOc84skl0Bal9

Miracast Codec Timing Application Note
https://www.google.no/url?sa=t&sour...FjANegQICBAB&usg=AOvVaw0RGsO9nFT1qSeHFTxxVGSW

Especially the last one is interesting and it probably would be similar for any PS to PSVR wireless link in regards to latency/delay.

 

[chris1515]

7870 with a first gen i5 will do better in almost anything.
Hope ps5 wont have low/mid hw by 2020/2021 standards.

An i5 is not a Jaguar processor...

 

[London Geezer]

An i5 is not a Jaguar processor...

It's also around £300, just for the chip alone...

 

[chris1515]

It's also around £300, just for the chip alone...

+1 an i3 is more powerful than a Jaguar processor. Next generation machine with probably a 8 cores Zen 2 processor is a very good news.

EDIT: Same things for Forza Horizon 4 I don't think a machine with the same specs than an Xbox One run it as good as the Xbox One.

 

[vipa899]

Lets hope next gen wont be this underpowered, i3/7870 2012 mid range pc beating a late 2013 console.

 

[chris1515]

Lets hope next gen wont be this underpowered, i3/7870 2012 mid range pc beating a late 2013 console.

The problem was that AMD can't provide better CPU. On multiplatform games it is normal to have better framerate with a much better CPU. Console CPU Jaguar was a very weak CPU.

 

[Jay]

Lots of people complain about the jaguars (which is fair), but also make out like Sony and MS went cheap, that there was better choices.
When the fact of the matter was, that was really the only reasonable choice they had.
AMD was in a very dark place CPU wise back then.
Obviously whatever flavour of zen they go with now will be a huge leap in performance. In fact it could very well be the only generational leap going by old metrics we get.
Especially if measuring from the 1X.

 

[chris1515]

Lots of people complain about the jaguars (which is fair), but also make out like Sony and MS went cheap, that there was better choices.
When the fact of the matter was, that was really the only reasonable choice they had.
AMD was in a very dark place CPU wise back then.
Obviously whatever flavour of zen they go with now will be a huge leap in performance. In fact it could very well be the only generational leap going by old metrics we get.
Especially if measuring from the 1X.

+1 it was not possible for AMD to provide a better CPU.

 

[vipa899]

It wasnt possible either to provide a better gpu?

 

[London Geezer]

It wasnt possible either to provide a better gpu?

Looking at what the base PS4 can still do today, considering its limitations and most importantly its PRICE, it's impressive.

We've been through this a million times. Consoles are about making decisions on what compromises Sony/MS/whoever will be stuck with for 5-7 years, and trying to fit everything into a crazy low price - it's a tough job.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

It wasnt possible either to provide a better gpu?

Yes. The console would also have cost more. They could have added a better HDD too - the console would have cost more and/or been larger. They could have added better cooling too - the console would have cost more. They could have gone Intel and gotten a far better CPU - the console would have cost way more.

Engineering 101 - pick a price point and design for it. 8 GBs of GDDR5 really pushed the envelope and no-one should be complaining about the overall choices. PS4 is a fairly ideal design given the working constraints; no-one could have produced a better console at that price-point while not making dumb losses.

 

[vipa899]

Beefy hardware would be nice, but the most important thing to me is BC, that way i can play those ps4 exclusives on atleast pro level, and whatever ps5 exclusives after a while.
No word on that tough.

 

[see colon]

Less good PC? I never saw a PC with a Jaguar core and a 7850 do better than the PS4 or the Xbox One.

You can't build an 8 core Jaguar PC, because AMD never released such a part outside the console space. And before anyone compared the FX line of 8 core desktop CPUs, they have 1/2 the FPUs which is why some people on the internet claim they are really 4 core CPUs. If you look at some benchmarks of cinebench you'll see that the 4 core Jaguars scale almost perfectly bewteen their single and multicore scores. The multicore score is 3.5-4x the single core. The FX cpus will beat the Jaguars (except the newer ones that basically match the clock speed), but they run at much higher clock speeds and an 8 core FX is usually in the 5-5.5x range in scaling between single and multicore. An 8 core jaguar should scale better, and in a console you can optimize for multicore better because the hardware is constant.

At the end of the day, the Jaguars have weak single core performance but decent multicore performance. This isn't radically unlike what we saw on PS3 or 360. Developers needed to properly thread their games so that the CPUs were able to efficiently process the code. Furthermore, even if the console makers went intel instead, Haswell launched in 2013 just like the consoles did, and a quad core i7 was $300+, so that's not happening. We'd probably be looking at consoles with dual core i3's, and to be honest, I think there's more performance available through optimization of an 8 core Jaguar than there is from a dual core Haswell with hyperthreading.

 

[vipa899]

An 8 core jaguar should scale better, and in a console you can optimize for multicore better because the hardware is constant.

So a FX8350 would be the better performer in single and multithread performance then the 8 core jaguars in the consoles?

 

[Gubbi]

So a FX8350 would be the better performer in single and multithread performance then the 8 core jaguars in the consoles?

Not if you normalize power consumption.

Cheers

 

[see colon]

So a FX8350 would be the better performer in single and multithread performance then the 8 core jaguars in the consoles?

No. Clock for clock single core performance is about the same. Multicore Int performance is also about the same (per clock), but floating point is double (theoretically) on an 8 core Jaguar. The Jaguar line was designed around low power while FX/Bulldozer was... Well I guess I don't know that it was designed around pushing high clock speeds, but that's what it ended up doing because the performance per clock was so far behind intel, so Jaguars are also a better choice there as well. I think for consoles that an 8 core Jaguar was a pretty good choice at the time. People like to talk trash on the internet about them because they equate them to FX cpus without understanding the performance per core differences, and comparing them to more recent i3s, which are solid performers. But I think in 2013, when these systems were released, if you are making something that's going to be as future proof as possible, you go with 8 cores over 2 because you can optimize and get performance from 8 cores while with 2, you probably have what you have from the get go. I do wish the clock speed was higher, though.

 

[vipa899]

Is rhe FX series that bad? Didnt expect a fx8350 to be slower then a 8 core jaguar. I do remember them getting bad reviews as opposed to anything intel though.

 

[Magnum_Force]

A webpage that has the flops/clock of various CPUs - worth a look if you are interested:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions...le-for-sandy-bridge-and-haswell-sse2-avx-avx2

AMD Bulldozer/Piledriver/Steamroller/Excavator, per module (two cores):

• 8 DP FLOPs/cycle: 4-wide FMA
• 16 SP FLOPs/cycle: 8-wide FMA

AMD Ryzen

• 8 DP FLOPs/cycle: 4-wide FMA
• 16 SP FLOPs/cycle: 8-wide FMA

AMD Jaguar:

• 3 DP FLOPs/cycle: 4-wide AVX addition every other cycle + 4-wide AVX multiplication in four cycles
• 8 SP FLOPs/cycle: 8-wide AVX addition every other cycle + 8-wide AVX multiplication every other cycle

 

[chris1515]

Simon Pilgrim of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe after some commit on the CPU side, commit something for the GPU

https://reviews.llvm.org/rL347326

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