The Next-gen Situation discussion *spawn

[almighty]

That wouldnt work either in the case of PS4 having 4 Gb of fast 192 Gb/s GDDR5 Ram, of course PCs can use the main PC RAM as an extension if they need to, but the main RAM is very slow and cant handle graphical assets designed to be processed on a fast RAM.

your solution could work in the case of xboxnext having 8 Gb DDR3 as a main RAM, if developers push say 5 Gb of graphical assets, and your PC GPU has only 2 Gb, than 3 Gb of main RAM PC could be used to make up for the difference. But its not the case of ps4 GDDR5 RAM.

I know a lot of people are downplaying the importance and potential implications of ps4 having not only a big amount of RAM but also a fast one, but actually this has serious implications for game development. Give big fast ram to naughty dog and you will see what they will do with it !

My system has 30Gb/s system ram bandwidth and 340Gb/s video bandwidth....

PS4 will have have 192Gb/s total bandwidth..... And have I missed something? Have Sony or developers confirmed 192Gb/s for PS4 or is it purely a number which has been pulled out of someone's arse?

 

[Hornet]

Texture read from memory likely to be no more than several tens of MB per frame even next generation.

Out of curiosity, where did you get that number from? It kind of make sense that texture reads have good temporal and spatial locality, but I never got around any actual figure for texture bandwidth consumption. People in the Wii U discussion thread seemed to imply that even 720p current-generation games need a lot of bandwidth for texture reads.

 

[babybumb]

Pitcarn level is the best any sane person could have hoped for the GPU because its the best TDP/grunt. It is going to perform much better on Orbis than on Windows

Pretty sure Jaguar is "better" core per core than Xenon. GPGPU block is the intresting one..

The more intresting thing for next-gen is when Sony will turn on PS4 GAIKAI for full compatibility on iPads, TVs.. if its at launch they dont care to sell hardware anymore. They make more money selling a dumb streaming terminal and controller for $50 than a full PS4.

 

[almighty]

Pitcarn level is the best any sane person could have hoped for the GPU because its the best TDP/grunt. It is going to perform much better on Orbis than on Windows

Pretty sure Jaguar is "better" core per core than Xenon

A modern Xenon core will pound a Jaguar core.... AMD's IPC throughput is 2-3 generations behind Intels.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Xenon is the CPU in X360...

 

[function]

That wouldnt work either in the case of PS4 having 4 Gb of fast 192 Gb/s GDDR5 Ram, of course PCs can use the main PC RAM as an extension if they need to, but the main RAM is very slow and cant handle graphical assets designed to be processed on a fast RAM.

Data is data. If you only need to fetch a small portion of your texture data from across PCI-E, or if your GPU drivers are carefully altering the contents of the GPUs "fast" ram to contain the most frequently accessed textures, you can successfully run a game with more "graphical assets" in memory than the GPU alone can store. And in the case of some fast 256 / 384 MB cards early this generation, they could do it with higher quality textures than the 360 was able to use while maintaining higher levels of performance.

your solution could work in the case of xboxnext having 8 Gb DDR3 as a main RAM, if developers push say 5 Gb of graphical assets, and your PC GPU has only 2 Gb, than 3 Gb of main RAM PC could be used to make up for the difference. But its not the case of ps4 GDDR5 RAM.

This isn't "my solution", it's something that you flat out denied - repeatedly - that PCs could do. And you were completely wrong.

And why would anyone completely fill the Xbox 4's memory with "graphical assets"? And why would all those assets need to be accessed at 192 GB/s? WTF are "fast memory" textures in comparison to "normal memory" textures? And why are you implying that Xbox next won't be able to run with the same assets as the PS4?

I know a lot of people are downplaying the importance and potential implications of ps4 having not only a big amount of RAM but also a fast one, but actually this has serious implications for game development. Give big fast ram to naughty dog and you will see what they will do with it !

Please stop.

 

[almighty]

Xenon is the CPU in X360...

Ooopppps.... Was thinking Intel Xeons...

 

[patsu]

The more intresting thing for next-gen is when Sony will turn on PS4 GAIKAI for full compatibility on iPads, TVs.. if its at launch they dont care to sell hardware anymore. They make more money selling a dumb streaming terminal and controller for $50 than a full PS4.

I tried to google for how Gaikai works but could only find a not-so-useful whitepaper. What's the best resources on Gaikai ?

I'm interested in using Gaikai for some unconventional use cases. 8^P

 

[Hornet]

A modern Xenon core will pound a Jaguar core....

Except there is no such thing as a modern Xenon core, since IBM did not further develop that kind of processors. Jaguar has much better IPC than Xenon. Most likely a Jaguar core also has better single-thread IPC than a BlueGene/Q core.

AMD's IPC throughput is 2-3 generations behind Intels.

Jaguar is a competitor for Atom and it has better IPC at similar clock frequencies. Of course Ivy Bridge is in a whole other league, but it's much bigger and significantly more power hungry.

 

[Hornet]

Ooopppps.... Was thinking Intel Xeons...

I see, not a fair comparison though. I'm one of the harshest critics of Bulldozer, but Jaguar is a quite good design as a low power core.

 

[DoctorFouad]

Data is data. If you only need to fetch a small portion of your texture data from across PCI-E, or if your GPU drivers are carefully altering the contents of the GPUs "fast" ram to contain the most frequently accessed textures, you can successfully run a game with more "graphical assets" in memory than the GPU alone can store. And in the case of some fast 256 / 384 MB cards early this generation, they could do it with higher quality textures than the 360 was able to use while maintaining higher levels of performance.



This isn't "my solution", it's something that you flat out denied - repeatedly - that PCs could do. And you were completely wrong.

And why would anyone completely fill the Xbox 4's memory with "graphical assets"? And why would all those assets need to be accessed at 192 GB/s? WTF are "fast memory" textures in comparison to "normal memory" textures? And why are you implying that Xbox next won't be able to run with the same assets as the PS4?



Please stop.

bandwidth is important, RAM is not only about quantity but also about bandwidth which determines practically the usable memory per frame.

 

[function]

Out of curiosity, where did you get that number from? It kind of make sense that texture reads have good temporal and spatial locality, but I never got around any actual figure for texture bandwidth consumption. People in the Wii U discussion thread seemed to imply that even 720p current-generation games need a lot of bandwidth for texture reads.

I'm extrapolating (only partially pulling things out of my ass!) based on Sebbi's comments on virtual texturing and on texture BW in general:

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1681325&postcount=3406

I'm assuming, for the sake of argument, that most PS4 games will use a 1920 x 1080 resolution with 8 texture layers using trilinear filtering, and an average of 1 byte per (trilinear) texture layer. Then I'm multiplying that by 2 or 3 or 4 for no other reason that I'm scared that I've massively undershot.

This is completely excluding the need to sample from buffers, which I expect will use far, far more BW than sampling from assets normally would.

 

[almighty]

bandwidth is important, RAM is not only about quantity but also about bandwidth which determines practically the usable memory per frame.

The ability to use that bandwidth efficiently is more importantly.....

Take away texture compression and other compression techniques and that high bandwidth won't meen jack against a GPU with half the bandwidth but with efficient compression techniques.

 

[ERP]

Isn't the whole console vs exotic PC debate kind of pointless?

No one actually targets exotic PC's for development, they just let you turn up exposed engine settings if you want to. It's not the same thing because you would likely approach things differently if you were targeting something that powerful from the outset.

Given the rumored specs there is little doubt that a high end PC will be faster in most ways. There will be some areas where the thin API's, single target consoles still have an advantage, but I doubt they'll hurt ports much.
What might hurt them is what publishers dictate as min spec machines.

When graphics cards started needing power connectors and PC's started needing 600W PSU's consoles were never going to be able to compete on brute force.

I don't think consoles are competing with PC's anyway, and the sales figures generally bear that out.

 

[function]

bandwidth is important, RAM is not only about quantity but also about bandwidth which determines practically the usable memory per frame.

Oh come on, either post a real response or leave the thread. This is just embarrassing and cretinous.

 

[DoctorFouad]

Isn't the whole console vs exotic PC debate kind of pointless?

No one actually targets exotic PC's for development

Thank you for (finally!) a reasonable comment on the subject.

Given the rumored specs there is little doubt that a high end PC will be faster in most ways. There will be some areas where the thin API's, single target consoles still have an advantage, but I doubt they'll hurt ports much.
What might hurt them is what publishers dictate as min spec machines.

thats why a comparison to GTX 680 or 670 or even 660 GT is more relevant to consoles than hypothetical exotic 1000w PCs that no PC developer is gonna target this fall 2013 and for the most part of 2014.

it is not because some PCs would be more powerful than consoles that games on PCs will necessarily look better. you need developers to use the power available. it reminds me of the very common argument : that microsoft is wealthier so it will produce a more powerful console than sony.

I don't think consoles are competing with PC's anyway, and the sales figures generally bear that out.

It is not about competing in commercial sales, its about game graphics, will games on next gen consoles look better than PC games do ? I do believe and I argue that YES they will look better. Not all of them for sure, but many of them will look better (because of higher quality core gaming assets) than anything available on PC for at least 6 months or 1 year. But we will see if my prediction is true. At least in this E3 we will get a glimpse of the answer.

of course PCs can run games at better image quality, 3D multimonitor 4k resolution at 16x FSAA if a gamer has the money, but with better core gaming assets, console games could end up looking better anyway. Arguing the opposit is like arguing that running PS1 games at 1080p via PC emulation will produce better visuals than ps2 480p games...

 

[DoctorFouad]

Oh come on, either post a real response or leave the thread. This is just embarrassing and cretinous.

I posted all my responses, and I didnt get in return any convincing response to my initial question : how the hell a PC game running on a limited 2 Gb GPU could look any better in terms of core gaming assets than a game designed with 4 Gb of GPU RAM in mind ?

Instead I got evasive (and sometimes false like yours) responses to this question (and someone insulting me too as a gift). I will resume :

1- we should not compare PS4 to GTX680, we should compare PS4 to even a higher end future GPU (consuming by itself 500 watt power, costing 700$)...(strangely enough, those same poeple are saying that PS4 specifications are basic, nothing special and no match for even older PC configurations 2 years earlier....but they dont have the courage to admit that 4 Gb of GGDR5 at 192 Gb/s is really something special and was unexpected for nextgen consoles) whatever...

2- PS4 games wont use a higher amount of GPU RAM for graphical assets than a 2 Gb GTX680 would use. really ? developers will just use the other 1.5-2 Gb ramaining for doing AI ? seriously....

3- (your false answer that neglects bandwidth requirements), the GTX 680 would just stream or even better use the shared slow DDR3 RAM of the PC like any low budget PC GPU do...but maybe this answer is just a joke...anyway....

sigh...

 

[DuckThor Evil]

it is not because some PCs would be more powerful than consoles that games on PCs will necessarily look better. you need developers to use the power available. it reminds me of the very common argument : that microsoft is wealthier so it will produce a more powerful console than sony.

It is not about competing in commercial sales, its about game graphics, will games on next gen consoles look better than PC games do ? I do believe and I argue that YES they will look better. Not all of them for sure, but many of them will look better (because of higher quality core gaming assets) than anything available on PC for at least 6 months or 1 year. But we will see if my prediction is true. At least in this E3 we will get a glimpse of the answer.

of course PCs can run games at better image quality, 3D multimonitor 4k resolution at 16x FSAA if a gamer has the money, but with better core gaming assets, console games could end up looking better anyway. Arguing the opposit is like arguing that running PS1 games at 1080p via PC emulation will produce better visuals than ps2 480p games...

But most games are multiplatform releases and there is no point in not including the best assets in the PC-versions as well and at that point the PC-version will look and perform better if you have the hardware to run them. There might be few console exclusives that can perhaps initially offer something more, but that is debatable. Imo even in current gen the best multiplatform games are not less impressive to any meaningful degree compared to the best exclusive games on each console platform.

 

[AlphaWolf]

how the hell a PC game running on a limited 2 Gb GPU could look any better in terms of core gaming assets than a game designed with 4 Gb of GPU RAM in mind ?

Cuz the pc has twice the cpu and gpu grunt? You're trying to make graphics memory space the key because that's all you've got. Considering a current laptop covers most of the specs of the rumored orbis (which doesn't ship for 10months) It's not going to take long to surpass these consoles if someone tries(targeting min specs can hold pc back). It's not going to take as long as it took to surpass the 360 which was very cutting edge.

 

[DoctorFouad]

But most games are multiplatform releases and there is no point in not including the best assets in the PC-versions as well and at that point the PC-version will look and perform better if you have the hardware to run them. There might be few console exclusives that can perhaps initially offer something more, but that is debatable. Imo even in current gen the best multiplatform games are not less impressive to any meaningful degree compared to the best exclusive games on each console platform.

this scenario pointed out first by Shifty Geezers (credit where credit is due), seems less and less plausible over time now that we have rumors suggesting PS4 being a more powerful console than xboxnext. Multiplatform developers will target (as always) the common denominator, it means the specifications of the less powerful console (we have seen this before with ps2 vs xbox1), in this new scenario that is being drawn, multiplatform games will no longer be able to compete graphically with sony exclusive games. So PCs getting xboxnext multiplatform ports, will end up initially with a lesser quality core gaming assets.