PlayStation 4 (codename Orbis) technical hardware investigation (news and rumours)

The 1.843 teraflops spec (which was announced publicly in February) says the GPU is 800mhz. That's pretty well established and has even been reiterated in presentations recently I believe.

For CPU, the last we have is the Shadowfall dev diary slides, at which time it was 1.6 ghz.

I'd think the hurdle for PS4 might be the cooling. Praise that small form factor all you like, but it might have had a price.

I'd think the other issue might be Sony's lack of want. When you already have a good deal more flops than the competitor, 1.8 vs 1.2, you still have a large cushion after they go to 1.3, so they likely just may not care. MS is the one in the position of needing to be aggressive here from a purely competitive standpoint, because as I often state they need to stay in decent porting range.

 

GPU - Yes that is the advertised speed, although obviously still can change. But less likely.
CPU - Speed not advertised, and so that's the current speed that we know of. If you asked a XB1 developer yesterday they may have said 1.6, as their machines haven't been updated yet. So change possible but we have no reason to believe it has.

Your right about the cooling, but their priorities may be different than MS. They may be willing to have more noise for a bump in performance for example.

I'm not disagreeing with you at all, just adding my thoughts on top of yours.

I also agree with you that they feel they have mind share about power anyway.
So if there is _any_ cost to upclocks, be it yields, or noise, etc, they probably would have no reason to.
Every upclock MS has made are probably essentially free.

 

I'm thinking maybe the GPU was set in stone and disclosed early because it was chosen for heat management, regardless of yield it would be 800 so they knew that long in advance. While the CPU wasn't decided yet and they might have been waiting for enough yield data to decide, and the wattage increase is negligible. OTOH, MS would have been waiting for yield data to decide both.

 

I knew I had posted something like this so I looked it up, this was a slide from Sony at GDC Europe, which Google tells me was August 19-21 http://i.imgur.com/GQ60CyZ.jpg (this slide spawned the whole DX11.2+ thread/argument)

So that's pretty recent on the GPU clock.

 

Forgot about that recent slide.
But yea, my point was they could easily say that, but then say, we've given it a performance boost because it's all going so well. Bit like MS.

Not saying I think it's likely though. Just not impossible.
If anything was to get a boost it would likely be the CPU, imo.

 

One problem with that theory. Microsoft never announced nor promoted a GPU or CPU clock until they said the GPU clock was now 853 Mhz. And then just recently that the CPU clock was now 1.75 Ghz. That's the only times that a clock has been stated by MS. The only numbers we had prior to that was leaks by individuals other than MS.

That's in stark contrast to Sony who have been publicizing their GPU clock in public for quite a few months now.

Regards,
SB

 

It's not actually a problem as they haven't announced the CPU speed, just a leak.
Regarding the GPU, it would just mean they could say it's gone even better than expected.
Specs change all the time, if it's not for the worse then it's ok. You just get more for the same price.
It's really not as uncommon as people think.

I'm not saying I think that's going to happen though.

 

Yeah, and we should know that once specs are announced, they cant be changed upwards lest the SEC hammer them for investor fraud.

Just kidding, but that was an argument used on me why 12Gb XBO wasn't possible.

And actually I guess since the (announced) GPU clock probably is unchanged in PS3, it hasn't really been disproven here Wouldn't apply to the CPU in theory. Not that I believe it for a second anyway.

 

In the official PS4 page/PDF there's no mention of the GPU or CPU clock speed.
The only figure Sony officially mentioned is 1.84 TFLOPS.

 

Erm, did you miss the slide that Rangers linked to where Sony states the GPU is 800 Mhz?

Regards,
SB

 

Yes, the 800Mhz gets the 1.84GFLOPS. I wonder why no CPU clock though?

 

Apparently I have...sorry!

 

Sony would be able to upclock the GPU, although it would affect a larger GPU that has a lead in most directly comparable metrics, regardless.

Sony has said very little about the CPU section or the surrounding hardware that touches it. Whether that means there's some additional work they don't want to talk about or nothing to talk about is another matter.
The ability to tweak speeds exists, but we don't have the necessary information to judge what they may be gunning for.

If we choose believe certain rumors, a design that was "ready" earlier, it might have been locked in at an earlier point in the improvement curve, whereas a "delayed" would get a few more spins in the fab.

The only bit of leaked data we do have is the succession of Orbis designs from VGleaks, and those showed a downgrade in uncore bandwidth after a downgrade in memory bandwidth.
Since the various clocks can be varied so freely, it's not definitive of anything as much as a somewhat dimmed light in a data constellation we can see very little of.

 

not sure if this is the right thread. but the entire presentation on pssl is available
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1019252/PlayStation-Shading-Language-for

 

This is not directly realted with the CPU talk, but...
During the last conferences have someone see the retail PS4 working?
I mean not the dev-kit, or the display with hidden the dev kit with on top the fake PS4, but just the real retail version?

 

Why do we need to see a working retail PS4?

 

... because obviously this could be a Potemkin Village of a launch by Sony with empty boxes piled high to fool everyone !!!

/s

 

Seeing it might be a tad boring, but I think some people are genuinely interested in hearing how quiet it is.

 

Just curious about the noise of and about the vent work of PS4, no more no less.

 

I am also looking forward to see the motherboard and the UI.

The original PS3 motherboard is a work of art.

XMB has its flaws but the minimalist style appeals to many.

The PS4 interface should be slower since HTML5 rendering is more expensive. Would love to see how everything ties in together.