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

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It's another Unreal Engine game so no surprises here.

All Unreal Engine 3 API games on PS4 had AF reduced compared to XB1. All.
 
Unreal engine is to much Windows/DirectX compliant and is as usual not fine working with linux OS?

Keep in mind that Xone is windows8 based and PS4 *NIX
 
Unreal engine is to much Windows/DirectX compliant and is as usual not fine working with linux OS?

Keep in mind that Xone is windows8 based and PS4 *NIX

or they let AF go for reaching 60 fps. But I don't understand why. Even PC is limited to 30fps. There is absolute no Point of not locking PS4 at 30fps with lower quality and tearing. it seems that also some shadows are missing.
 
or they let AF go for reaching 60 fps. But I don't understand why. Even PC is limited to 30fps. There is absolute no Point of not locking PS4 at 30fps with lower quality and tearing. it seems that also some shadows are missing.

But the SSAO (more expensive than AF?) is still better on PS4 on Murdered Soul Suspect and Thief was only 30fps too on PS4. Also PS4 had for instance more parallax occlusion mapping (POM) applied on Thief versus no POM on some levels on XB1 which is also like SSAO probably more expensive than AF, on top of the 44% resolution advantage.

AF, even at 4xAF, has better cost/graphics improvement ratio than the GPU expensive and often useless/invisible SSAO, POM or even higher resolution on a dark game with low resolutions of assets like Thief.

And it can't be a coincidence than ALL those UE3 games, done by different developers exhibit the same problem.

No. It makes no sense whatsover except if it's an Unreal Engine 3 PS4 API specific bug.
 
I think AF is pretty bandwidth heavy even though people think its "free" or costs a few frames. PC GPUs have plenty of free bandwidth on most games to crank it to 16x compared to these consoles

If the Xbox One versions is not totally broken trying to run PS4 version with 2x framerate seems bold when the GPU is not even 50% faster. They probably ran out of BW for AF
 
Also I seriously doubt it is a UE3 specific bug considering titles like Batman Arkham Knight and MKX are using this engine. They have Unreal running on almost every platform that exists. MSS also suffers from texture streaming issues on the Ps4 as well as screen tearing. Im pretty sure if they would have capped the framerate at 30 fps they would have solved most of the texture streaming issues. More frames means more bandwidth if AF does need bandwidth than the cap would have helped here also.
The problem is since the Ps4 version is missing the 16x AF while having streaming and tearing issues it seems like they sacraficed these things to achieve a higher unlocked framerate. Is that really the right choice for this games gameplay? Or was the choice made to please a certain crowd with being able to claim 1080p 60fps. Which the game doesnt maintain.
 
A guerrila games dev said kzsf was using 1 to 16x depending on the scene. We can assume it is still a demanding feature, if not.it would always be set to 16x.
 
Speaking of AF, I noticed in Watch Dogs the PC edition it's terrible. I have it set to 16x, the highest internal game setting for it, yet it looks like garbage at medium distances across certain textures. The docks wooden flanks being one of them, looks awful (nasty blur).

I checked all the external settings, everything is set correctly. It's perfect with other games such as Crysis 3, Battlefield series, and so on... not so much Watch Dogs.

Is there a possibility that Watch Dogs (PC edition) is using adaptive AF? And is there a possibility certain PS4 games are using adaptive AF as well? Either by developer choice or maybe something at the API level Sony has chosen or borked?
 
I recall in other areas such as Anti Aliasing, one engine to the next is never the same.

I think the discussion of MSAA on deferred, FXAA on deferred the results are drastically different than vs forward rendering engines - and on top of that there are other factors into play as well.

That being said, the impacts and performance (IQ) could be different for each engine and game when concerning AF and comparing different games won't help you isolate a particular problem. Perhaps the combination of other features is causing AF to look worse than it should be.

I think your best bet is to keep your search isolated to the one title alter the settings and look for anomalies there.
 
Seems to be an Unreal 3 problem

So no AF for future UE3 titles on Ps4?
Batman AK, MkX ? You really think that is the problem?
Also Strider is running on the Hex engine and lacks AF.
Unreal 3 has been in use on consoles since 2006 and Epic nor any of the devs using it have been able to fix a bug related to AF on the Ps3. Now this same problem is still occuring on the Ps4 which uses a brand new SDK and a completely different system arch. Im not sure what the reason is. I have no clue about the cost of it's use either computational or bandwidth wise. I do find it hard to blame it on a 3rd party engine because Im sure it would have been fixed in the 8 years or more it has existed. It cant be a gpu hardware issue being that the Ps4 has quite a few more TMUs than the competition. It could be bandwidth related in some situations and it seems that is the likely reason it isnt present in MSS.
 
So no AF for future UE3 titles on Ps4?
Batman AK, MkX ? You really think that is the problem?
Also Strider is running on the Hex engine and lacks AF.
Unreal 3 has been in use on consoles since 2006 and Epic nor any of the devs using it have been able to fix a bug related to AF on the Ps3. Now this same problem is still occuring on the Ps4 which uses a brand new SDK and a completely different system arch. Im not sure what the reason is. I have no clue about the cost of it's use either computational or bandwidth wise. I do find it hard to blame it on a 3rd party engine because Im sure it would have been fixed in the 8 years or more it has existed. It cant be a gpu hardware issue being that the Ps4 has quite a few more TMUs than the competition. It could be bandwidth related in some situations and it seems that is the likely reason it isnt present in MSS.

Err, that's because noone used AF on PS3 games. Those machines were bandwidth starved to the max. The best you ever saw was trilinear.
 
Is there a possibility that Watch Dogs (PC edition) is using adaptive AF?
AF is always, inherently, adaptive... That's the whole point of it. :)

The game might not correctly flag certain surfaces for the level of AF you have selected in-game though, and instead use a simpler form of filtering; have you tried using your GPU's control panel override function to check if it makes any visible difference?
 
Did anyone ever figure out what the mystery chip in the PS4 was for?



This is the most information that I have seen on it but there still isn't any information as to what it's for.

PS4 Mystery Chip (SCEI 1327KM449 A01-C0L)

So, in case anyone is wondering... I've been doing some PS4 research for fun. I ended up obtaining a spare motherboard so I had some extra components to look at. That gave me the opportunity to do things such as decap the chips and analyze their silicon die's. I decided to specifically look at this mystery chip that people were unsure about what it actually was, the SCEI 1327KM449.

It turns out that Sony actually purchased a Renesas plant and this is a new sony branded version of an original Renesas die, the 118 specifically. Here is the data sheet. I'm still not sure what they're specifically using this chip for... time will tell. Here are some images of the chip dies and block diagram.
renesas_118_blockdiagram.tiff



renasas_118_chipnum_proof_resize.jpg
renesas_118_comp_proof_resize.jpg
renasas_118_fulldye_resize.jpg

http://blog.droogie.net/2014/03/ps4-mystery-chip-scei-1327km449-a01-c0l.html
 
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