Why isn't anyone talking about Next Gen? (1 Viewer)

[zeetes]

so yeah, last night i decided to watch a few episodes of seinfeld and an episode of family guy.

peaceful evening. wife made cookies. all in all, a good night.

 

[buzd]

peaceful evening. wife made cookies. all in all, a good night.

I love cookies.

 

[zeetes]

 

[Saint_Ward]

I'll probably wait a year or two and see who remains after the world ends.

 

[zeetes]

i have seen the future and it has a big red wheel

 

[The Mongoose]

That thing is a piece of work Zeetes. Bought one for my kid thinking it would be like my big wheel from back in the day. It wasn't. Cheap plastic junk, unlike my big wheel which was thicker plastic junk.

It didn't even has a sweet brake to skid out with.

 

[antipop]

why do i have no trouble picturing wdf riding that thing?

 

[zeetes]

That thing is a piece of work Zeetes. Bought one for my kid thinking it would be like my big wheel from back in the day. It wasn't. Cheap plastic junk, unlike my big wheel which was thicker plastic junk.

It didn't even has a sweet brake to skid out with.

aww dammit. i already bought one. you think maybe gamestop will give me a decent trade in credit?

why do i have no trouble picturing wdf riding that thing?

well, he does have a trike.

 

[coldseat]

That thing is a piece of work Zeetes. Bought one for my kid thinking it would be like my big wheel from back in the day. It wasn't. Cheap plastic junk, unlike my big wheel which was thicker plastic junk.

It didn't even has a sweet brake to skid out with.

You should have bought your kid this.

 

[zeetes]

You should have bought your kid this.

sweeeeeet! it doesn't have any kind of drm though does it?

 

[St. Widge]

Not sure. Should we start again?

Yes, please.

 

[buzd]

#1. Both system employ the AMD 8 core Jaguar chipset
#2. PS4 uses 8gb of GDDR5 Ram/Xbox One Uses DDR3 Ram(which is slower)
#3. Correct
#4. Mostly correct, especially after MS just came off the DRM issue.
#5. Ok, whatever.

Hardware

Technically, they are hugely similar: eight-core processors (both reported to be running at a frequency of 1.6GHz), custom AMD graphics processors, Blu-ray drives. But there are some fundamental differences. The two GPUs employ AMD's latest Graphics Core Next architecture, which is divided into working blocks known as Compute Units. The PS4 version has 18 CUs generating 1.84 teraflops of processing power, while the Xbox one has only 12 CUs; which, in theory , gives Sony's machine a 50% advantage in terms of raw shader performance (for example, lighting and other graphics effects). It's never quite this simple because other design and technical elements of the SoC can affect performance, but it's certainly an indication that there is more graphics grunt there for PS4.

Sony's machine also uses 8GB of GDDR5 memory with a bandwidth of 176GB/sec as opposed to the Xbox One with its 8GB of DDR3 RAM. GDDR5 memory is optimised for high bandwidth, which is perfect for use in graphics calculations, but also has higher latency than DDR3 RAM, which would be a problem for a general purpose CPU. However, because the PS4 architecture places the GPU and CPU on the same die, the latency between the two may be minimalised. In short, the adoption of a graphics-friendly form of memory may work to PS4's advantage as a games-targeted machine – even though GDDR5 is more expensive to implement. There's a thorough summing up of the system design here.

It's also worth reading the detailed overview of the technologies at AnandTech, though. The exhaustive article points out that the Xbox One architecture is designed with a variety of considerations beyond gaming – especially implementation with other MS platforms – and this shows in the tech specs.

A developer's view
We asked an experienced games coder about the differences between Xbox One and PS4's approach to system memory. He has asked to remain anonymous, but this is what he wrote...

"Memory-wise there are really deep areas you can get into on how Sony has optimised certain paths to access the RAM. Microsoft will hopefully be doing similar stuff to that, I imagine – we're only disclosed on PS4 so I don't know for sure, they're not dumb though.

"Regarding the RAM type, however, GDDR5 equals 176gb/sec, DDR3 equals 68gb/sec – I don't know the exact numbers for the Xbox One RAM but it'll be around that. GDDR5 is slightly higher latency, which means the time between requesting a piece of data and getting it to the CPU/GPU to work with can be slightly longer than with DDR3. This latency can be hidden by well-written code on CPU and normally is hidden well by GPUs due to how their pipelines work (which is why GDDR is normally found on GPU's).

"Ultimately though, that 2.5x faster bandwidth number means that a larger amount of data can be taken from RAM, processed by the CPU (or more importantly on these new architectures, the Compute Units on the GPU) and spat back out to RAM to either process again or render. At the end of the day, everything in games comes down to: 'grab information'; 'transform that data somehow'; 'spit it back out' – so being faster at this is a very good thing.

"Microsoft is winning bandwidth back for the GPU through the 32MB ESRAM (102gb/sec I believe, and assuming you're using this RAM a lot, it means that the total Microsoft bandwidth is 168gb/sec); this will even things back out a bit but require a bit of extra management by developers and it is only 32MB which limits the amount of uses.

"This kind of architecture with faster RAM for the GPU to use for framebuffers (the block of data storing the image being rendererd out or nowadays temporary graphic buffers storing lighting/material information) is something developers are used to working with, but it's more complex than the approach needed on the PS4."

As posted from: Xbox One v PS4: the complete comparison | Technology | guardian.co.uk

Which just updated 4 hours ago.

The tears will be extra sweet when 20 is proven right.

 

[zeetes]

The tears will be extra sweet when 20 is proven right.

i like mine salty.

 

[buzd]

i like mine salty.

Call wdf.

 

[zeetes]

Call wdf.

no no, salty, not hairy.