Technical Comparison Sony PS4 and Microsoft Xbox
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Everything is in press release www.scei.co.jp/corporate/release/pdf/130611a_e.pdf
Camera not included, HDD 500GB.
Camera not included, HDD 500GB.
D
Deleted member 7537
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I would have personally preferred if they included the camera... that sucks a lot. As silly as Kinect is I know my wife would love it for games like just dance and all.
Ah well. I have both preordered at Amazon, will likely the cancel the Xbox One preorder, but holding onto it since Amazon doesn't charge me for it and it guarantees me a console at launch if I want it.
Ah well. I have both preordered at Amazon, will likely the cancel the Xbox One preorder, but holding onto it since Amazon doesn't charge me for it and it guarantees me a console at launch if I want it.
I'd assume that Microsoft, in retrospect, simply bet on the wrong horse when they went with the eDRAM + DDR3 solution. Given their dual OS approach, they were probably shooting for lots of RAM right from the start of their technical design process - and neither 8GB of GDDR5 nor some fancy hybrid memory cube stuff was viable / within an acceptable risk margin back then.
SONY, on the other hand, apparantly seemed OK with less RAM when they started off their PS4 project. That's presumably why they decided to go with the "true unified memory GDDR5 solution" instead of the DDR3 + fast embedded RAM approach (Mark Cerny even stated that they actually considered this somewhere). In the course of the development process (if the leaks are to be believed), they simply upped the RAM amount to ultimately match Microsoft's 8GB as they realized more GDDR5 RAM became not only technically possible, but also (more and more) financially feasible.
Given that background, labelling Microsoft's decisions as being "wrong" seems somewhat harsh to me - especially given that we still don't know enough to render a final judgement, nor would such a retrospective judgement be fair. If anything, I'd say they've been rather unfortunate with some of their decisions - but I wouldn't doubt they had very good and well-founded reasons to take the specific design-road they chose at the time the respective decisions had to be made.
Bad luck, it seems at this point of time. Though they still might benefit heavily from future die shrinks. Maybe we'll gain a completely different angle on the whole story a few years from now.
HollovVpo1nt
Newcomer
Somebody over at GAF made this:
Honestly, we can't tell right or wrong with the information we have available right now. There isn't enough of it to go around. When we're at launch and shelves gape empty where xbone units were supposed to sit, ready and waiting for customers, then we would have a datapoint that maybe banking on 32MB SRAM in a mass-production device wasn't the wisest of moves, but if there's plenty of units available in all territories just like with PS4, then we don't get any additional data. We're back at speculating over wether 32MB SRAM is worth giving up 600Gflops of compute power over.
Sony can have AMD stick in DDR4 controllers in two or three years' time or whenever, it's not going to affect software one bit. Name one piece of PC software that broke because we changed RAM sticks from DRAM to FP, EDO, SD, DDR1-2-3. This is a red herring.
Inquisitive_Idiot
Regular
I can't really understand what Microsoft was thinking when designing the Xbox One? Like others have suggested, it seems like the whole process was just one big failure from beginning to end! How do you end up $100 more expensive, with considerably less computational power while launching at the same time? This has to be about one of the most poorly designed pieces of consumer electronics I have ever seen, and when combined with the laughably bad PR the console has faced due to it's horrible anti-consumer policies it really just looks like a total failure to me. There isn't really much technical comparison to make, the Playstation 4 is considerably more powerful than the Xbox One. I can only imagine how this will take shape over the course of a generation, but by the time its done the gap will be noticeable to consumers, if the price disparity and anti-consumer policies haven't already killed the Xbone.
I saw a PS4 BOM at ~$275 yesterday, though I cannot remember where. Too much info flying around.
I didn't see a 360 BOM anywhere.
Because on PC you are not so close to the metal. In a console, to change RAM solution you will need to have some hardware to map 1:1 the signaling, the latency etc. etc.
Possible, but expensive. They will use, down the road, some Wide/IO interface probably, or HMC, but we are talking still of few years where they will have to stick with 8 GB of GDDR5.
I still think Sony is losing way more money than Microsoft on this.
I don't believe that's true for a second. There's so many clients talking to main memory in a UMA system at any one time that you can't guarantee cycle accuracy anyway. Just the GPU will have hundreds of data transactions going on at any one time, add audio with potentially a hundred or more streams, disk I/O, main processor accesses, video scanout, various DMA (bluetooth, USB, ethernet and more) and so on. No need for 1:1 accuracy, it won't be noticed and in fact COULDN'T be noticed, on a software level unless perhaps you wrote specific test apps to detect it.
You're just speculating based on nothing, IE, worthless.
A lot of (internal) resources where poured in the development of Kinect 2 and the SHAPE audio. Both of these pieces of hardware are state-of-art level technology. Maybe down the road this two pieces of hardware will have a bigger impact on the overall "look" of games than what 50% more GPU resources can provide. I think it way too early to call it dead.
There is another side to "costs": the R&D.
Xbox one has been hint as a +3billions Dollars project (what AMD), I'm really curious about how much Sony gave to AMD, I would think less as Orbis looks like a more straight forward piece of hardware.
Whatever Sony saved on R&D sort of cover some of the expenses of doubling the amount of RAM.
Say there is 100$ of RAM in a PS4, doubling the RAM costs 50$ every million $ saved sort of subsidize for 20 thousand PS4. Not much in the long run but still.
At 399$ people may think that MSFT offer looks bad but what to says about Nintendo...
Anyway, that thread is going to get more interesting once we get the first comparisons of third party games from DF and likes.
Xbox one has been hint as a +3billions Dollars project (what AMD), I'm really curious about how much Sony gave to AMD, I would think less as Orbis looks like a more straight forward piece of hardware.
Whatever Sony saved on R&D sort of cover some of the expenses of doubling the amount of RAM.
Say there is 100$ of RAM in a PS4, doubling the RAM costs 50$ every million $ saved sort of subsidize for 20 thousand PS4. Not much in the long run but still.
At 399$ people may think that MSFT offer looks bad but what to says about Nintendo...
Anyway, that thread is going to get more interesting once we get the first comparisons of third party games from DF and likes.
I don't believe that's true for a second. There's so many clients talking to main memory in a UMA system at any one time that you can't guarantee cycle accuracy anyway. Just the GPU will have hundreds of data transactions going on at any one time, add audio with potentially a hundred or more streams, disk I/O, main processor accesses, video scanout, various DMA (bluetooth, USB, ethernet and more) and so on. No need for 1:1 accuracy, it won't be noticed and in fact COULDN'T be noticed, on a software level unless perhaps you wrote specific test apps to detect it.
You're just speculating based on nothing, IE, worthless.
That's why i wrote i think
. But still, the main difference between console is 8 GB of GDDR5 on one side, and the integration of Kinect in the other. The APU size should be similar. So I'm speculating, as always was done here , that their BOM should be similarsteveOrino
Regular
Internal Politics. It happens.
MS really really wants that content platform money they just cant quite get in the mobile market. For their interests the television/game all in one made sense for them in the long run. X1 in my eyes really an extension of the HTPC with Windows Media Center.
However, I really question their planning since the market is saturated with TV/movie streaming devices (not to mention built in to the displays themselves) and much much cheaper than Microsoft's solution. I don't see the value behind what they are selling (at that price) for non interactive content. Consumers interested in stuff like that aren't going to think of Xbox, they will have to market it hard as that kind of device (which I am sure they will) but that comes with its own set of problems. IMO the X1 is on an island at the moment.
Hum with durango in the ~400mm^2, I have to disagree. How can the PS4 chip be that big?That's why i wrote i think
Pitcairn (20 CUs vs 18) is 212mm^2 then you have the CPU cores, there are die shots of kabini out in the web. I would think that the ps4 APU is max 300mm^2.
steveOrino
Regular
Sony IS an electronics device manufacture with tons of IP/patents and years and years of experience. AMD is going to use certain technology in the PS4 APU in PCs in the future so there is probably some savings in there. GDDR5 doesn't need matched trace lengths like DDR3 does saving PCB area and costs. ETC.
I am very curious myself about the hardware and cost of these hardware designs but sadly we will have to wait for tear downs and postmortem.
This is a really stupid question, so forgive me guys..
How can the PS4 have superior specs (which we know it does) yet be so much smaller than the Xbox One? I mean, it's literally tiny by comparison.
How can this possibly work due to thermals and power?
Are the move engines, ESRAM and Shape Audio Processor really that enormous in Xbox One?
I'm pretty confused..
How can the PS4 have superior specs (which we know it does) yet be so much smaller than the Xbox One? I mean, it's literally tiny by comparison.
How can this possibly work due to thermals and power?
Are the move engines, ESRAM and Shape Audio Processor really that enormous in Xbox One?
I'm pretty confused..
They aren't going to be miles apart in power, and it may be that Sony was willing to put more complexity/money into cooling. They may have also been willing to accept a higher noise level.
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