Technical Comparison Sony PS4 and Microsoft Xbox

[Rangers]

This hopefully will put an end to many rumors.

Not really, I kind of disagree with his conclusion anyway the more I thought about it (once you consider they dont have CU's, power consumption on a 2ghz 8 core jag in the consoles would not be extreme in terms of raw numbers it seems).

I mean 8 cores with 4 CU's@2ghz would be 50 watts. It's likely without the CU's you could be at 30-40.

I dont think either vendor will upclock the CPU tho.

 

[Arwin]

I'm thinking that perhaps for timing of CPU/GPU integration, it would be more efficient to have clocks that are closely related, like 0.8 and 1.6 or 1.0 and 2.0.

I also doubt either of them will change the clock though.

 

[Pozer]

Only people who had hope was tge fanboys. Trusting that vgleaks was correct was being a realist.

A weak Durango hurts the entire generation as it may well become the baseline which every multiplatform is designed around. Sony fans may gain online bragging rights, but will never know what could have been held back from say the nextgen GTA as an example, to accommodate weaker hardware. I personally gravitate toward Xbox brand because the online seems to be better handled. And basically everyone I game with uses Live. Most of my Sony friends whom game rarely go online. So this brings up lots of questions going into this new gen.

 

[Scott_Arm]

A weak Durango hurts the entire generation as it may well become the baseline which every multiplatform is designed around. Sony fans may gain online bragging rights, but will never know what could have been held back from say the nextgen GTA as an example, to accommodate weaker hardware.

I don't agree with this at all. They are both essentially running the same architecture with minor differences. Writing a game engine to scale should be easier than ever. If anything, you'll see the PS4 pushed to the max as much as possible with the Xbox running a scaled down version of the same thing.

 

[DJ12]

And with the vita supposedly having the best dev environment people have ever worked with and ps4 continuing in the same vein according to twitter it's likely to be the dev platform of choice anyway.

But games will look the same anyway I feel. One will be higher resolution or be pushing more frames per second but they will look the same.

If someone shots for 720p/30 on ps4 though theres nowhere for easy tradeoffs so thats not likely to happen with multiplatform games.

 

[Gubbi]

I don't agree with this at all. They are both essentially running the same architecture with minor differences. Writing a game engine to scale should be easier than ever. If anything, you'll see the PS4 pushed to the max as much as possible with the Xbox running a scaled down version of the same thing.

Exactly. If a game is completely shader bound it means the XB1 game will run at 1600x900 and PS4 at 1920x1080.

Cheers

 

[tunafish]

Exactly. If a game is completely shader bound it means the XB1 game will run at 1600x900 and PS4 at 1920x1080.

Cheers

That's assuming the load on shaders scales completely smoothly with resolution. Which is not true, as, for example, doing geometry is essentially independent of screen real estate, meaning that you get to scale the resolution with whatever you have left after the constant parts.

Or, let's assume that you spend 200GF on compute, 400GF on geometry, leaving 1.2GF for pixel shading on PS4 and 0.6GF on XBox One, or 1080p vs 720p, with the XBox likely running better AA to make use of the local pool.

That's more than a bit of a strawman, as I don't expect people to spend quite *that* much on geometry, but the point stands -- PS4 running will be able to do more than 50% more pixels.

But overall, I agree with you that this is the ideal situation for multiplat development from the point of view of both devs and Sony. Given the identical CPUs and almost identical graphics architecture, scaling to get full use of hardware really is just about changing render resolution.

 

[Gradthrawn]

Exactly. If a game is completely shader bound it means the XB1 game will run at 1600x900 and PS4 at 1920x1080.

Cheers

That's it?!? You can't plaster that on the front a game cover! Sony wasted their silicon budget.

"Only on PlayStation: Exclusive 44% More Pixels"

 

[Gubbi]

That's assuming the load on shaders scales completely smoothly with resolution. Which is not true, as, for example, doing geometry is essentially independent of screen real estate, meaning that you get to scale the resolution with whatever you have left after the constant parts.

You can scale geometry as well, - in fact you should to keep average tris/pixel the same.

Scaling back physics (compute) has even less of a visual impact since you simulate objects in three dimensions, but project them onto a two dimensional screen.

Cheers

 

[jonabbey]

I apologize in advance for making such a lame point, but it does amuse me that XBox One technically has more memory than the PS4, considering the SRAM. If Microsoft was willing to tout their transistor count, it seems like they could have claimed to have "more than 8 GB" of RAM in their box.. ;-)

 

[DJ12]

Which sony would reposte with devs can use 6~7 gb for games not 5.

Now who has more memory in the eyes of the consumer?

 

[jonabbey]

Certainly. I said it was a lame point. ;-)

In any case, it appears that Microsoft has gone for the cloud as being their talking point.

 

[Wynix]

Certainly. I said it was a lame point. ;-)

In any case, it appears that Microsoft has gone for the cloud as being their talking point.

Which is pretty sad as Sony can most likely just add that "feature" in if they desire, they already own Gaikai.

 

[astrograd]

Wtf? Did you bother to read?

Anand:

Ummm...did you? I said those sites are assuming a given clock speed and running with it. I was asking what their basis was for doing so. Your quote only highlights the fact they are making those assumptions.

 

[warb]

Which sony would reposte with devs can use 6~7 gb for games not 5.

Now who has more memory in the eyes of the consumer?

Unless it's also 5gb for PS4, which would be sensible if they are planning or need to match features of the MS system. Isn't some japanese developer claiming 3gb and 2 CPU cores for PS4 also?

 

[bagofsuck]

it is there any confirmation that PS4 can use 7Gigs of RAM just for games?

 

[patsu]

Nope !

 

[bagofsuck]

Nope !

Hmm that doesn't stop people in other forums saying is 7gigs just for games..

 

[ERP]

Hmm that doesn't stop people in other forums saying is 7gigs just for games..

People on forums turning speculation into fact..... never happens.
I don't believe there has ever been an official statement by Sony about the OS footprint, and I haven't seen any confirmed developers state it either.

 

[Gradthrawn]

I don't believe there has ever been an official statement by Sony about the OS footprint, and I haven't seen any confirmed developers state it either.

The GG KZ:SF demo postmortem does provide a pretty official "snapshot" look at the state of things during the time of the demo, however. Based on that, I'd say the safe money is on parity with the XBO on the memory and CPU split between games and OS (5 GB to 3 GB / 6 cores to 2 cores for both consoles). Not sure about GPU (looks like a 10% reservation for the One's Apps OS). Things can of course change, but that goes for both.