pc gaming after nextgen consoles

[3dilettante]

I don't get the impression Intel cares to really leverage its GPU for that kind of work.
The inconsistent results derived from GPU compute from Nvidia and AMD are the best-case, where they at least seem to want the GPU to be used.

Maybe future software will goad further progress, but I'm keeping my eye on Broadwell and the next gen to see if Intel is going to change the makeup of the GPU slice. That might make investing more time in Intel's GPU a short-term win.

 

[pjbliverpool]

I don't get the impression Intel cares to really leverage its GPU for that kind of work.
The inconsistent results derived from GPU compute from Nvidia and AMD are the best-case, where they at least seem to want the GPU to be used.

Maybe future software will goad further progress, but I'm keeping my eye on Broadwell and the next gen to see if Intel is going to change the makeup of the GPU slice. That might make investing more time in Intel's GPU a short-term win.

Thanks for the insight. Obviously Intel are putting a lot more focus on the SIMD throughput of the CPU's themselves when compared to AMD's APU parts. Do you think that could be a a driver behind the lack of interest in farming GPGPU off to the onboard GPU? i.e. Intel would rather a monster SIMD CPU and do it all there while AMD are preferring the fusion approach?

 

[Squilliam]

Any chance Intel will use a big/little core arrangement for graphics, aka larrabee?

 

[Arwin]

It was specifically a PC configured like a PS4 though. So unlikely to be particularly high end. They also said Killzone was running on prototype PS4 hardware which could simply mean a PC based alpha or beta kit (which in fact could be what everything was running on).

For the other things they said PS4 Prototype/actual hardware, if I remember correctly.

Anyway, people forget that DirectX 11.1 is still a bottleneck, and that the consoles, and PS4 at the very least confirmed, are allowed to go to the metal. This is a difference that is still underestimated by many.

But PC gaming will definitely benefit, I'm sure, at the very least from higher assets being created, not just textures (which are relatively easy to retrofit in hi-res as currently already happens for many PC titles), but meshes this time, and physics effects.

Just want to remind you that consoles need less hardware to achieve the same thing. It took a while for PC games to genuinely pull ahead of the consoles last gen, and don't let games that were bad ports from PC using a single CPU core to a single in-order console core fool you too much about that one.

 

[3dilettante]

Thanks for the insight. Obviously Intel are putting a lot more focus on the SIMD throughput of the CPU's themselves when compared to AMD's APU parts. Do you think that could be a a driver behind the lack of interest in farming GPGPU off to the onboard GPU? i.e. Intel would rather a monster SIMD CPU and do it all there while AMD are preferring the fusion approach?

Intel's cores are already leading, so the impetus is not as great as it is with AMD and to a greater extent Nvidia.
As far as where Intel stands on the GPU, there's been signs of a back and forth within Intel on where its graphics portion will go. I'm not sure from the outside, but there are different possibilities on where Intel can go, and different groups want different things.

Larrabee may have vied against the current GPU architecture on the most recent generation and Haswell. It hasn't won so far, but Intel's support for its GPU doesn't stand out.
This is why I'm curious what directions may be shown with Broadwell, and that may point to what to expect from Skylake, which may be the more significant change.

 

[MrSpiggott]

Hasn't the upgrade of GDDR5 to 8GB suddenly made console to PC conversions a bit tricky?
You may have recently gone out and bought a high performance card, with multiple times the performance of anything that's going to be fitted to a PS4, but how are you going to squeeze in say 6GB worth of assets?

If the console game is designed to use texture streaming then perhaps that wont be a problem, but if the game just dumps all the levels assets down in one go, which may well happen for rushed launch games, then will the performance hit of streaming data from CPU RAM to you're video card out way any processing advantages?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The most amount of assets you are going to use at any time is determined by maximum BW. Everything else has to be swapped in. A PC with 4 GB card will have all the 'current' assets on hand and will load in other assets from system RAM. PS4's BW isn't mahoosive (what a shame 500GB Rambus tech ever happened ) so it shouldn't be a challenge, especially if some of that RAM is used for acceleration structure that PC's higher computer can calculate on the lfly.

 

[3dilettante]

A single, relatively large, unified, and high-bandwidth pool is going to have fewer corner cases than a system that inserts two non-coherent memory pools with disparate bandwidth capabilities and a slow expansion bus in the middle.
The growth in consumer memory capacity demand is modest enough that 8GB is going to be considered a good or decent amount of memory for a number of years, which will negate the traditional massive advantage PCs have had versus consoles in terms of total RAM for quite some time.

It's going to depend on the software implementation, but anything that is coded so that it does not work well if the PCIe bus get involved is going to show degradation on even high-end setups.
Odds are a port would take measures to avoid that as much as possible.

 

[ERP]

I'd have thought the bigger issue on PC would be the prevalence of 32 bit OS', and the insistence on game developers of not releasing 64 bit binaries.

 

[3dilettante]

The 32-bit address space is one of the reasons why PC RAM growth has slowed for consumers.
I'm not sure how many high-end rigs haven't made the jump.
A large installed base of the next-gen consoles may be enough to push PC devs to support 64 bits more.

Even with x64, however, if a console dev for some reason creates a system that heavily trades data between the GPU and CPU, it's going to be noticed.

 

[ERP]

Yeah my high end PC with 580 SLI only has 6GB in it, and I'm running a 64 bit OS, just no point having more when the games are 32 bit applications anyway.
Console ports might be the thing to push PC's to 64 bit apps, wouldn't be a bad thing, but I wonder how much of the PC market has a lot of RAM?

 

[MrSpiggott]

The most amount of assets you are going to use at any time is determined by maximum BW. Everything else has to be swapped in. A PC with 4 GB card will have all the 'current' assets on hand and will load in other assets from system RAM. PS4's BW isn't mahoosive (what a shame 500GB Rambus tech ever happened ) so it shouldn't be a challenge, especially if some of that RAM is used for acceleration structure that PC's higher computer can calculate on the lfly.

I take your point about 4GB cards, but I was thinking more about the powerful £300 2GB graphics cards that are still selling well, according to Amazons popularity data anyway.

 

[pjbliverpool]

The 32-bit address space is one of the reasons why PC RAM growth has slowed for consumers.
I'm not sure how many high-end rigs haven't made the jump.
A large installed base of the next-gen consoles may be enough to push PC devs to support 64 bits more.

I'd have though they won't even have a choice. Surely trying to port a game from an 8GB console to a 32bit PC which can address only 4GB of memory (total?) just isn't going to be possible?

As you say though, I'm not sure how many high end systems aren't there already. We're obviously going to be looking at a DX11 minimum requirement for next generation games as well so as with that it's going to be a case of PC gamers upgrading or missing out.

Incidentally, are there any planned upgrades to the PCI-E interface on the horizon or is there pretty much nothing that can be done with that general system architecture to bring it on par with APU type CPU/GPU communciation?

 

[Arwin]

I think there's been some work on that area, and I would expect new motherboards that improve CPU GPU communications to bring them up to par within a year, from both Intel and AMD.

 

[pjbliverpool]

I take your point about 4GB cards, but I was thinking more about the powerful £300 2GB graphics cards that are still selling well, according to Amazons popularity data anyway.

I must admit, despite having no doubt enough core power in my 670 to match or exceed the new consoles (even given the PC overheads) I'm likely going to struggle beyond the first year of the next generation consoles due to only having 2GB. It's times like these you wish you could just upgrade the amount of video memory on your PC

That still gives me at least another year and half with this card though by which time I'm sure I'll have the upgrade itch again!

 

[3dilettante]

I think there's been some work on that area, and I would expect new motherboards that improve CPU GPU communications to bring them up to par within a year, from both Intel and AMD.

This would depend on how loosely the definition of up to par is, since saying the motherboard is involved admits to there being an expansion slot in the way with all the physical penalties this implies.

 

[ERP]

I'd have though they won't even have a choice. Surely trying to port a game from an 8GB console to a 32bit PC which can address only 4GB of memory (total?) just isn't going to be possible?

As you say though, I'm not sure how many high end systems aren't there already. We're obviously going to be looking at a DX11 minimum requirement for next generation games as well so as with that it's going to be a case of PC gamers upgrading or missing out.

Incidentally, are there any planned upgrades to the PCI-E interface on the horizon or is there pretty much nothing that can be done with that general system architecture to bring it on par with APU type CPU/GPU communciation?

FWIW I don't think so, I think it's likely PC ports will add DX9 paths and cater to reasonable min specs, even if that means downscaling assets for the min spec.
It might be easier to just cater to DX11 and 64 bit applications requiring 8+GB's of RAM, but I think it reduces the available market too much for publishers to do it.

 

[almighty]

Hasn't the upgrade of GDDR5 to 8GB suddenly made console to PC conversions a bit tricky?
You may have recently gone out and bought a high performance card, with multiple times the performance of anything that's going to be fitted to a PS4, but how are you going to squeeze in say 6GB worth of assets?

If the console game is designed to use texture streaming then perhaps that wont be a problem, but if the game just dumps all the levels assets down in one go, which may well happen for rushed launch games, then will the performance hit of streaming data from CPU RAM to you're video card out way any processing advantages?

Not really, faster HDD's, more system RAM and more bandwidth should more then make up for it.

You have to remember that not all of that 8Gb in PS4 will be for texture data and other assests.

 

[swaaye]

Yeah the catch with PC ports is most people are not running today's hot hardware. It would be interesting to know how things stack on a bell curve right now. I see on the Steam survey that Intel HD graphics are pretty popular. Glorious GPUs like Tahiti and GK104, not so much.

 

[almighty]

It would be interesting to know where the bell curve goes for PCs right now. Among people I know, GT200 and G92 are pretty popular yet, along with Core 2 and Phenom II. The PC hardware spread is as wide as ever.

On the main PC forum I go on ( www.overclock.net )

Hardly anyone runs a Core 2 or even a Phenom 2..

Intel core i5/i7's and AMD FX CPU's are what a large portion of people run.

And it's not very often you'll see anyone with a GPU lower then say an AMD HD 5850.