Next Generation Hardware Speculation with a Technical Spin [post E3 2019, pre GDC 2020] [XBSX, PS5]

[MrFox]

Extremely limited view of what custom means here. The entire kinect/sound space are all custom creations. The changes to the microcontroller that enable executeindirect with state changes, the changes to the microcontroller that can reduce the CPU load on DX12 function calls. Those are exclusive to xbox platforms and continue to be.

As for changes to cache sizes, memory controllers; even if we ignore customizations for the sake of customizations, we're seeing significantly better performance out of 1X over 4Pro in excess of their power difference. Freeing the SoC of the bottlenecks to operate at 4K competently is pretty massive, I think understating this feat is folly in this discussion. Whole architectures are designed around target goals.

We have discussions across many forums about RDNA outputting X% more performance per TF over Polaris in the next gen console discussions.

What MS managed with 33% more TF over their competitor with the same architecture, similar power profile, same NODE should be considered very successful in terms of their customizations considering we see 3P titles operating at double resolution for more titles than it should be - with a lot of titles where 4Pro at 1440p vs the full 2160p on X1X equating to a 44% resolution advantage.

And I dont' really care about whether X1X outperforms 4Pro, ti's not really relevant; but it seems fairly reductive to call X1X just off the shelf components while it's outperforming it's competitor without requiring the usage of a feature like Rapid pack math, or any of the lot.

This is quite a lot of cherry picking. Both consoles are mostly AMD technology. Can we leave it at that?

 

[Shortbread]

They are just using other basic technologies now and sell it with some bells&whistles of them+label.

Sony does fabricate and manufacturer other electronics and microprocessors for GPS systems, robotics, sensors/guidance systems, imaging, health, and other global products. It's just their PlayStation gaming division that dwarfs most of their other divisions when it comes to revenue and profitability. If anything, Sony would allocate more funding / finances (than any other prior products) towards R&D on guaranteeing PS5 success.

 

[Nisaaru]

I can't judge Sony's engineering in areas I don't observe which I made clear in my first comment.

 

[Shortbread]

I can't judge Sony's engineering in areas I don't observe which I made clear in my first comment.

That's fine and understood.

I'm just replying on the things that I have observed outside of the common household CE products and services which Sony is well versed in.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

This isn't necessarily true. The DMA Engines (Move) were directly coupled / integrated into Xbox Ones GPU architecture. Making it a very bespoke design.

Slightly bespoke design, as GCN has two DMA units as standard.

I'm not particularly convinced that Sony's AMD GPUs are customised any more than MS's are off-the-shelf. They're both fundamentally basic AMD GPUs with slight modifications. Sony pre-empts the higher number of ACEs of lthe A10. I don't know if AMD kept that many. PS4P adds the ID buffer which doesn't appear to have become a popular concept. They're hardly highly custom parts.

 

[Shortbread]

Slightly bespoke design, as GCN has two DMA units as standard.

I'm not particularly convinced that Sony's AMD GPUs are customised any more than MS's are off-the-shelf. They're both fundamentally basic AMD GPUs with slight modifications. Sony pre-empts the higher number of ACEs of lthe A10. I don't know if AMD kept that many. PS4P adds the ID buffer which doesn't appear to have become a popular concept. They're hardly highly custom parts.

So, what should be considered fully bespoke or custom wares?

Something that's truly in-house tech (e.g., Sony/IBM Cell) not available in other massed market products other than it's original intended purpose?

 

[iroboto]

This is quite a lot of cherry picking. Both consoles are mostly AMD technology. Can we leave it at that?

I'm okay to leave it at that. Customization for the sake of customization is pointless discussion.

So, what should be considered fully bespoke or custom wares?

Something that's truly in-house tech (e.g., Sony/IBM Cell) not available in other massed market products other than it's original intended purpose?

At this point in time, nothing really. They are all slight modifications of existing architectures.
For the sake of staying on RT discussion, I can only expect MS to do with what they did on X1X; profile code and make adjustments where necessary to improve performance. Since DXR code has been out for over a year, they can already run DXR titles on their new console; flip the switch and it should go. They should know what resolutions they can target, how much DXR they can handle etc.

This type of profiling methodology should lead to some tweaks that I expect to see consistently good performance with respect to the target.

 

[Nisaaru]

What surprised me about the X1X profiling is actually that I would have expected AMD to do extensive profiling to see why and where their designs underperform. It's like AMD just designs top down without extensive evaluation about real code needs.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

considering we see 3P titles operating at double resolution for more titles than it should be

I'm genuinely curious about this one. Which 3rd party titles are pushing 2x more pixels on a XB1X than on a PS4 Pro?
Assuming we're talking about the same framerate, of course.

 

[iroboto]

I'm genuinely curious about this one. Which 3rd party titles are pushing 2x more pixels on a XB1X than on a PS4 Pro?
Assuming we're talking about the same framerate, of course.

^^ This is 4K vs 1080p at 60fps. (4x more pixels)
They aren't common, but yea. It happens from time to time.
Indie titles tend to follow this trend more.

1440p vs 2160p. That's about ~2x more pixels
But off the top of my head:
Hitman, Hitman 2, Battlefront II, I think AC:O was like ~ 1.45x more on X1X
Fallout 4, Fallout 76, Fortnite, Doom, I recall Hellblade being a discussion peice,
Just cause 4

 

[Deleted member 13524]

They aren't common, but yea. It happens from time to time.
Indie titles tend to follow this trend more.

In Dirt 2.0 it doesn't seem to be what's happening at all.

To begin with, the PS4 Pro runs at 1080p and targets 60 frames per second but with a range of improved quality options. The Xbox One X, on the other hand offers two modes, a mode in which you can switch off 4K mode and the other one which supports 4K. According to Gowing, for the Xbox One X, DiRT Rally 2.0 supports either 1080p/60fps with a range of improved quality options, or running at 4k with the standard quality options.

On the 1X you get the 1080p + High IQ or 4K + low IQ options, on the PS4 Pro you only get the 1080p + High IQ. Codemasters simply removed the option on the PS4.




Unless there's a serious lack of optimization happening, claiming the XB1X is getting twice the performance of the PS4Pro seems empirically preposterous.
There's nothing in the XB1X that's working at twice the speed of the PS4Pro. Unless you're willing to believe in magic sauces from Microsoft.

 

[iroboto]

In Dirt 2.0 it doesn't seem to be what's happening at all.


On the 1X you get the 1080p + High IQ or 4K + low IQ options, on the PS4 Pro you only get the 1080p + High IQ. Codemasters simply removed the option on the PS4.




Unless there's a serious lack of optimization happening, claiming the XB1X is getting twice the performance of the PS4Pro seems empirically preposterous.
There's nothing in the XB1X that's working at twice the speed of the PS4Pro. Unless you're willing to believe in magic sauces from Microsoft.

It's not a point i"m trying to pursue, you can continue to look at the other titles if you'd like. That was a video of 4x the difference. I don't care if it's not optimized well or not offered, you're talking about what the consumer takes home. 4Pro has been out longer than X1X by a full year - you'll need to ask the developers why they didn't offer it.
Here's another 4K vs 1080p. I don't care if they didn't spend the time to optimize it. The discussion was about customization; so what you've got it all customized but no one uses it, or cares to optimize for it. We stopped the discussion because it wasn't worth anyone's time to continue to report on X1X being higher performance over 4Pro. That doesn't mean titles like these didn't stop slipping through the cracks just because we no longer care to discuss it. One should ask why there are so many 1080p titles on 4Pro.

Here's another: Dead or Alive 6
https://wccftech.com/dead-or-alive-6-1080p-ps4-pro-4k-xb1x/

 

[Deleted member 13524]

It's not a point i"m trying to pursue

I merely asked to provide proof of your claim.
Since you couldn't deliver, should we consider the claim invalid?

you can continue to look at the other titles if you'd like.

I did look for other titles in DF comparisons and from other sites.
I couldn't find any case confirming your highlighted claim of many games running at 1440p in the Pro vs. 4K in the 1X. Hence my question.
What I do see often is the Pro getting 1800p + reconstruction vs. 4K on the 1X, or both using resolution ranges + reconstruction where the resolution in the 1X is ~20-40% higher. It's within what we should expect given the consoles' difference in bandwidth and compute power at very similar architectures.

The Pro does have RPM, though I don't think many 3rd party devs outside id software bothered to implement it, seeing how the feature never really spilled into PC ports.

That was a video of 4x the difference.

No, it was a video showing a game where the low-quality + high-resolution mode was absent in the PS4 Pro.
4x difference would be if the IQ settings present in the Pro's 1080p mode were also available in the 1X's 4K mode, but they are not.

you'll need to ask the developers why they didn't offer it.

I didn't ask that.

Jump Force is simply a game without Pro support. It's running the same game between PS4 and PS4 Pro.

 

[Jay]

For the sake of staying on RT discussion, I can only expect MS to do with what they did on X1X; profile code and make adjustments where necessary to improve performance. Since DXR code has been out for over a year, they can already run DXR titles on their new console; flip the switch and it should go. They should know what resolutions they can target, how much DXR they can handle etc.

It would be interesting how much they consider that.
X1X needed to run XO games/engines as best as possible.
DXR games are optimized for RTX at the moment.
If the implementation is very different then the implementation & optimization for RDNA could be different and you would possibly be making a mistake trying to tweek the design for the RTX implementations.

 

[iroboto]

No, it was a video showing a game where the low-quality + high-resolution mode was absent in the PS4 Pro.
4x difference would be if the IQ settings present in the Pro's 1080p mode were also available in the 1X's 4K mode, but they are not.

Okay, so not 400% more performance but it's greater than 2x right? As you say below it's only supposed to be 20 ~ 40% higher

What I do see often is the Pro getting 1800p + reconstruction vs. 4K on the 1X, or both using resolution ranges + reconstruction where the resolution in the 1X is ~20-40% higher. It's within what we should expect given the consoles' difference in bandwidth and compute power at very similar architectures.

I disagree with this claim. Below is a fairly exhaustive list of all 4Pro titles, but it's still yet to be updated.

There are 454 titles listed as enhanced for 4Pro; that makes 45 titles 10% of the population, or 22 for 5%.
I'm willing to bet you're going to find over 10% of the population at 1080p
and over 10% at 1440p

I got to 20% of the titles (90) are below 1800p as an output display, which means I give checkerboarding and reconstruction the benefit to you and I stopped at Hitman. Still a lot of titles from H to Z.
https://www.resetera.com/threads/all-games-with-ps4-pro-enhancements.3101/

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Okay, so not 400% more performance but it's greater than 2x right? As you say below it's only supposed to be 20 ~ 40% higher

How can you measure greater than 2x if the game is running with different IQ settings and you don't know their impact on frametimes?

 

[iroboto]

How can you measure greater than 2x if the game is running with different IQ settings and you don't know their impact on frametimes?

Because we they're running the same framerate.
You're interested in defending 4Pro, I'm not interested in downing it.
I'm trying to prove a point that customizations shouldn't be put on the pedestal as being this performance enhancer.

Btw, finished counting, but there are 200 out of 454 titles that are below 1800p. That's nearly 50%.
On the discussion of customizations, and whether it matters of placing them on the pedastal, perhaps Sony would have done better hitting their 4K target by including 4GB of more memory or something. Oh but that might impact their ability to do backwards compatibility with their non patched 4Pro titles.

Right back to my original discussion point; X1X didn't just BC XBO titles, and X360 tiles, and OG Xbox titles, but they even went ahead and 4K some of them and 16xAF them with better textures and such.

Off the shelf components rule. Not sure why anyone would bother with customization.

 

[Tkumpathenurple]

It's not a point i"m trying to pursue, you can continue to look at the other titles if you'd like. That was a video of 4x the difference. I don't care if it's not optimized well or not offered, you're talking about what the consumer takes home. 4Pro has been out longer than X1X by a full year - you'll need to ask the developers why they didn't offer it.
Here's another 4K vs 1080p. I don't care if they didn't spend the time to optimize it. The discussion was about customization; so what you've got it all customized but no one uses it, or cares to optimize for it. We stopped the discussion because it wasn't worth anyone's time to continue to report on X1X being higher performance over 4Pro. That doesn't mean titles like these didn't stop slipping through the cracks just because we no longer care to discuss it. One should ask why there are so many 1080p titles on 4Pro.

Here's another: Dead or Alive 6
https://wccftech.com/dead-or-alive-6-1080p-ps4-pro-4k-xb1x/

I'm curious to what extent Microsoft's customisations to architecture helped their consistent lead in performance. The extra 4GB of memory has probably been a factor in it outperforming the Pro by more than 33%. Or to put it another way, Sony's poor decision to insufficiently increase bandwidth for the Pro has likely impeded its ability to hit the kind of resolutions of which it would otherwise be capable.

I know Microsoft talked a fair bit about customisations to the CPU, just as Sony talked a fair bit about RPM and the edge buffer. But they would, wouldn't they?

 

[iroboto]

The extra 4GB of memory has probably been a factor in it outperforming the Pro by more than 33%.

Yes, absolutely. But they took this path instead.

 

[Tkumpathenurple]

Yes, absolutely. But they took this path instead.

Who took which path, sorry?

Sony took the path of insufficient bandwidth, or Microsoft took the path of customisations?