I am comparing it to a Titan or Amd 9970. My understanding is that both of these chips are at least around four or five times more powerful than a 7850. Also, the difference with the ps4 is that when it launches the titan will have been out for at least a year, and another generation of gpus will be arriving. By the time the ps4 launches, the gpu is going to be far less advanced than what the rsx was. For stylized or cartoonish games it will be great, but for pushing realism it wont be up to date.
PlayStation 4 (codename Orbis) technical hardware investigation (news and rumours)
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I am comparing it to a Titan or Amd 9970. My understanding is that both of these chips are at least around four or five times more powerful than a 7850. Also, the difference with the ps4 is that when it launches the titan will have been out for at least a year, and another generation of gpus will be arriving. By the time the ps4 launches, the gpu is going to be far less advanced than what the rsx was. For stylized or cartoonish games it will be great, but for pushing realism it wont be up to date.
The APU is going to have graphics capability somewhere near the top end of what can be done in that power envelope.
Today's high-end graphics solutions exist in a totally different power band, and what can be added to a GPU that's already at the top of what's acceptable without adding more power?
Today's high-end graphics solutions exist in a totally different power band, and what can be added to a GPU that's already at the top of what's acceptable without adding more power?
I personally dont care about cooler and quieter. I dont care much about sound, and usually my AC is making five times the sound any computer could. Cheaper is good, but at the same time people are paying high prices for cell phones and ipads. I dont think a console needs to be cheap to sell well. I think staying on the bleeding edge is what makes consoles capable of competing with PCs.
Also, the problem is that I think a lot of game devs will push for 1080p when 480p is good enough for me. Right now, we dont have a single game that could pass for a tv show like star trek voyager. If Sony is going to put less than cutting edge hardware in the ps4 I hope they dont push devs to go for 1080p. Unless of course they mandate that such games have a 480p mode with enhanced graphics.
Which is utterly ridiculous. Sony can't get that performance in an affordable console no matter what combination of GPU and CPU they use. Sony have selected a performance target and picked a very capable GPU to enable that, meaning they can go with a simple CPU that isn't going to be required to pick up the graphics slack. The system seems well balanced to me on the whole, as much as we can know without particular details, and that's basically what a console needs to aim for - ideal balance at a given pricepoint. Your incessant More Power wishes are completely misplaced. If that's what your after, get a PC and be done with it. Please stop being unrealistic in your evaluations of the console designs; it's counterproductive.
So you are saying consoles can evolve and grow in terms of power, and they are locked forever in place at around 200 watts and lets say less than 400 dollars? I like to think that as technology advances, console technology can advance too. They may not evolve much this generation -- the rate of technical advancement seems less than the leap from ps2 to ps3 -- but I hope they will at some point in the future. If they don't, then I eventually see them fading out after a couple more generations. The main issue I see about PCs is that the game selection seems minimal, or at least less than in the 1990s. I fear that game systems like the PS4 will seem good enough for most people, and the push for powerful console hardware that we have seen for decades will slow dramatically.
The price is what the market will pay for the product. Based on that price, Sony and everyone else needs to put the best they can to stay in budget.
Remember what happened to the overpriced PS3 at launch? Which was still sold at a massive loss?
Not sustainable. Sony simply cannot launch a console that will be priced obscenely more than MS's product. They tried and almost failed.
The reality is that gamers want a cheap console. The end. Although they're happy to buy a $700 ipad or phone. Question that, perhaps, but not Sony's decision to put a certain CPU/GPU in a box with limited budgets.
It's not just money.
A top-end GPU at 250-300W is in a system that adds 150-200W+ on top of that. That's not going to play nice with everything else in the varied living rooms and media center power strips.
A game console is part computer, part appliance. It has neighbors on the shelf it has to play nice with.
A top-end GPU at 250-300W is in a system that adds 150-200W+ on top of that. That's not going to play nice with everything else in the varied living rooms and media center power strips.
A game console is part computer, part appliance. It has neighbors on the shelf it has to play nice with.
And that! 
Then Sony needs to invest in new process nodes so they can stay cutting edge while using less power.
I do not remember Sony having foundries...
The lack of a time machine is another mistake they've made.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Not really comparable. A modern smartphone replaces or can replace.
A portable MP3 player.
A portable movie player.
A GPS.
A PDA (which include appointment book, address book, calendar, etc.)
A portable web browser.
A calculator.
A portable game machine.
A portable way to pay your bills and check your banking account.
Many other utilities
...
Oh and a Phone.
The utility provided by a console just doesn't compare.
While it certainly plays games much better than a smartphone. And plays media in a living room better than a smartphone, the value proposition for a console versus a smartphone is much lower.
Regards,
SB
I don't see what the big deal is with the PS4 set up. The CPU won't be backing up the GPU like the CELL did with the PS3. And that's because the GPU is powerful enough to not need it. Unlike the PS3. The whole system is geared towards a compute heavy graphics system, and it will outperform any PC in the same price bracket given the same TDP.
I'd love to have a DP 4.5GHz CELL with a Tri SLI Titan setup sitting on a 1Tb SSD with 16Gb DDR4. But I'm not sure I'd like to pay the £5k it'd cost. Not to mention using it as a replacement for the central heating and keeping the energy supplier in the black...
I'd love to have a DP 4.5GHz CELL with a Tri SLI Titan setup sitting on a 1Tb SSD with 16Gb DDR4. But I'm not sure I'd like to pay the £5k it'd cost. Not to mention using it as a replacement for the central heating and keeping the energy supplier in the black...
I do not remember Sony having foundries...
Sony could make a deal with intel. They could offer so many investment dollars in exchange for good prices on a smaller process.
Betanumerical
Veteran
I do not remember Sony having foundries...
http://www.sony.net/Products/SC-HP/memswld/
Seems to be it.
I thought they'd sold all their foundries and chemical businesses off at the end of the 90's. But trust Sony to hang onto the most esoteric of the silicon industries! Bring on the cyberpunk style micro mechanical playstation complete with a singing toad and a troupe of mechanical mice!
At best Titan is less than 3 times as powerful than a 7850 (on the alu side). Effective performance is more like a factor of 2, as ROPs, memory, etc. aren't that much higher (that is unless you're looking at DP performance or something like that). I can't compare it to 9970 since I have yet to see something even resembling a good guess what it might look like, but in any case I don't expect a miracle there...
No crap the CPU isn't designed to help with graphics. But that's not going to stop devs from taking advantage of whatever resource they have to them to help in graphics. We've yet to see what an APU is truly capable of with the communication links that the APU in PS4 will provide. Time will tell and I'm looking forward to reading dev comment and interviews regarding all the different tricks they learn to optimize their games throughout the years. You may think the GPU is weak, I happen to think it's a massive upgrade compared to PS360. It may not be the top of the line and comparable to midrange, but given that I nor you know what a 7850 can produce visually in a controlled environment, I look forward to what a new closed platform will provide.
My dream machine of a quad core Power 7 with 4 SPE's per Power core and 64 PowerVR Rogue cores didn't come to fruition for the PS4, but I'm not as disappointed as you.
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