How XBone graphics will surpass PS4 graphics.

[Mushkins]

EDIT: Even in the unlikely event they do, for some reason, make the PS4 version look slightly better, nobody will care except PS4 fanboys. The games will look good (for console games) and will play at a smooth framerate. The fact that the PS4 has slightly farther draw distances is irrelevant to anyone except people trying to make themselves feel better about their brand identity.

I'm immediately going to regret jumping into this thread, but I have to disagree with this. I frequently check sites like lensoftruth.com when debating whether or not to buy a multiplatform game for 360 or PS3. I own both consoles, both editions of the game typically cost exactly the same price, and I dont really have a controller preference outside of specific genres. I buy whichever copy of the game looks/runs better, why *wouldnt* I buy the better product for the same price? If they all fall on the side of the PS4 this time around, buying them all for the PS4 doesn't make me a "fanboy," i'm just being a smart consumer and choosing to buy the better product. In the next generation, more and more of those games are either going to be tied (in which case the decision is made by other factors such as whether one is on sale or which controller works better for that game) or in the PS4's favor. Has little to do with being a fanboy at all, it's just the facts of Sony having a legitimately more powerful piece of hardware.

 

[slayernine]

I predict the Wii-U will blow them both away then.

Run every game at 640x480 and get 120FPS and be all like "IN YUR FACE SONY AND MICRO$SOFT!!!"

 

[smackababy]

I'm immediately going to regret jumping into this thread, but I have to disagree with this. I frequently check sites like lensoftruth.com when debating whether or not to buy a multiplatform game for 360 or PS3. I own both consoles, both editions of the game typically cost exactly the same price, and I dont really have a controller preference outside of specific genres. I buy whichever copy of the game looks/runs better, why *wouldnt* I buy the better product for the same price? If they all fall on the side of the PS4 this time around, buying them all for the PS4 doesn't make me a "fanboy," i'm just being a smart consumer and choosing to buy the better product. In the next generation, more and more of those games are either going to be tied (in which case the decision is made by other factors such as whether one is on sale or which controller works better for that game) or in the PS4's favor. Has little to do with being a fanboy at all, it's just the facts of Sony having a legitimately more powerful piece of hardware.

I wouldn't label you a fanboy in that case. However, you are in the most obscure subsection of console owners though. The amount of people who do probably don't number in the million.

The fanboys I am talking about are the same ones that came out of the woodworks crying about the Xbox 360's graphics comparing Oblivion's launch graphics to MGS3 and claiming the PS2 was graphically the superior console.

And still, I highly doubt the PS4 will have graphically superior cross platform games. First party titles will eventually harness more of the PS4s power and can loosely be compared to the Xbox One's first party titles, but even then, it will be hard to compare the two. If they are the same type of game and released at the same time, it would be valid. Otherwise, it is just nonsense. I fully expect GT7 to look better than Forza 5, simply because GT7 will come out in 2020.

 

[BrightCandle]

In the current generation there is certainly a difference between the two. Eurogamer goes through each major release and shows significant frame rate and graphical quality differences. The next generation also has a clear disparity in hardware performance just like the current gen. We will again see a similar trend where games both look and run better on the superior hardware. Lazy ports don't sell as well, on PC or on the other consoles, the game needs to be tailored and so far they have been doing exactly that for pretty much all of them.

The APIs are going to be significantly different between the two, so there will be porting effort between the consoles still so they will need to spend significant time just making it for the other consoles. These are compatible devices with slightly lower performance (like say two PCs) these are different operating systems and APIs requiring complete recompiles of the code and rewrites of parts of the source code. The porting will not only account for the API differences but also the hardware differences. They will have to tweak the resolution and features of the engine and reduce them to fit on the less powerful hardware as best as possible. All the evidence from the current generation tells us they will be doing this, most games are targeted to come out on both.

 

[Krakn3Dfx]

I'll put this here without getting into specifics because I don't want to get anyone in trouble. I'm also not a developer, so most of what he talks about goes over my head, so it's better for me to keep to the basics.

I have an IRC buddy (I've known him for around a decade) that has worked for the same development studio for going on probably 4 years. Based on what he's seen, the potential for the PS4 to be substantially more powerful is there, but there's a lot of stuff the system is capable of that's not currently in the SDK, and won't be until sometime next year, probably summer or later of next year even. We will definitely see a ramp up of the system's potential over time, as we always do with game consoles, because the silicon is new enough that the software built to access it still needs to catch up.

When Cerny talked about a "super powered PC", he's not making that up, and the fact that you don't have the bulky OS and bloated drivers limiting resources like on a PC (this is not a new thing, Carmack has mentioned the inherent issues developing games on even the most beefed up PC, it's always the operating system and drivers holding back performance) means as the tool sets mature, we'll see pretty substantial jumps in games.


He also said similar things about the XB1. Clearly, on paper, it's not as powerful as the PS4, but is does have a lot of specialized processors that help to offload processes from the CPU/GPU, as well as the augmented ESRAM boost to the DDR3 in the system. The problem is, the more specialized chips you have in the system, the more work developers have to do to utilize those additional processors. If these are accounted for in the SDK itself, that takes some of the additional work off of the developer, but as of around a month ago, he said the XB1's SDK is still a little rough, while Sony's PS4 toolset is launch finalized and games using it right now can be certified for launch day if they're complete. That doesn't really mean anything for either system though, since tool sets will never be "final" final really until the next-next generation of consoles has been out for awhile.

He's said in probably 3+ years, the gap between the 2 systems could become more noticeable, but for now, they're both very capable of putting out what they need to and showing a substantial jump over current gen systems. He's excited for both systems, because they both represent a substantial ease in development than the current generation has on both sides.

Like I said, a lot of basic information. He did say their emphasis based on requests from MS and Sony is 1080p with a minimum of 30fps locked if at all possible. That will likely shift to 60fps for a lot of games in late 2014/early 2015 on at least one system. That doesn't mean every game is going to be 1080p, it just means that's what MS and Sony would both like to see for obvious reasons.

 

[Arkaign]

Nah.

"Super powered PC" "top of the line PC" and all that jazz is just marketing speak. At best, you're only talking in relative comparison to run of the mill garbage they sell at WalMart and Best Buy (to be fair, 99% or so of "PC"s in existence obviously). If they call a PS4 or XB1 a 'super powered PC', I'd hate to see what they called an I7 w/780SLI? God's own computer?

Compared to even midrange PCs, and even taking into account limitations with Windows and APIs, the PS4 and XB1 aren't "super powered". In point of fact, they were judiciously designed NOT to be.

360 and PS3 upon launch used top end or nearly top end hardware compared to PCs. This caused a TON of heat and power requirements, added to the cost (losses per unit, etc), and made reliability a challenge. 360 was infamous for early failure, and even PS3 wasn't immune to YLOD.

This gen, they're strictly midrange. The proof is already there : BF4 is cut down simply to run at 720 adequately. 'Optimization'? Well what do they want? They only have so much horsepower to work with, and this time around they're in x86/GCN world. There's no 'secret' chips or other magic-work they can really do. Fillrate is fillrate, shader capacity is shader capacity, memory bandwidth is memory bandwidth. Max it out, and you're at the wall.

Does any of this really matter? Nah, it's meaningless to 99.9% of console players anyway. I'll buy one regardless. But I have no illusions that a PS4 or XB1 is magically a 'super powered PC' just because some marketing hack says so. It's a game console with power akin to a midrange PC. It has a wide netbook CPU with pathetic IPC and low clocks. It has a strictly midrange GPU. Due to lower system overhead they will punch a bit above their weight, but miracles won't happen.

 

[Saylick]

Nah.

"Super powered PC" "top of the line PC" and all that jazz is just marketing speak. At best, you're only talking in relative comparison to run of the mill garbage they sell at WalMart and Best Buy (to be fair, 99% or so of "PC"s in existence obviously). If they call a PS4 or XB1 a 'super powered PC', I'd hate to see what they called an I7 w/780SLI? God's own computer?

Compared to even midrange PCs, and even taking into account limitations with Windows and APIs, the PS4 and XB1 aren't "super powered". In point of fact, they were judiciously designed NOT to be.

360 and PS3 upon launch used top end or nearly top end hardware compared to PCs. This caused a TON of heat and power requirements, added to the cost (losses per unit, etc), and made reliability a challenge. 360 was infamous for early failure, and even PS3 wasn't immune to YLOD.

This gen, they're strictly midrange. The proof is already there : BF4 is cut down simply to run at 720 adequately. 'Optimization'? Well what do they want? They only have so much horsepower to work with, and this time around they're in x86/GCN world. There's no 'secret' chips or other magic-work they can really do. Fillrate is fillrate, shader capacity is shader capacity, memory bandwidth is memory bandwidth. Max it out, and you're at the wall.

Does any of this really matter? Nah, it's meaningless to 99.9% of console players anyway. I'll buy one regardless. But I have no illusions that a PS4 or XB1 is magically a 'super powered PC' just because some marketing hack says so. It's a game console with power akin to a midrange PC. It has a wide netbook CPU with pathetic IPC and low clocks. It has a strictly midrange GPU. Due to lower system overhead they will punch a bit above their weight, but miracles won't happen.

And they won't, but I don't think that was the point. When Cerny says "super powered PC", I'm quite sure we all doubt he means it will outpace every PC out there on the market for years to come; he simply means it is the same as what the comparable PC hardware would be, but without some of the overhead bloat. I'll admit, "super powered" is pretty gimmicky as far as marketing goes, so "optimized" is probably the better word. How "optimized"? Well, we will all have to wait and see...

 

[Arkaign]

And they won't, but I don't think that was the point. When Cerny says "super powered PC", I'm quite sure we all doubt he means it will outpace every PC out there on the market for years to come; he simply means it is the same as what the comparable PC hardware would be, but without some of the overhead bloat. I'll admit, "super powered" is pretty gimmicky as far as marketing goes, so "optimized" is probably the better word. How "optimized"? Well, we will all have to wait and see...

Yep, after being around the industry so long, we should have a marketing-speak translator resident in our brains at all times.

It's not that it's pure FUD, it's just stuff taken out of context by many people, similar to Carmack's sincere comments about how close the 'capabilities' of the PS4 and XB1 are. Something can be factual with caveats, but those caveats are ignored by many either by ignorance or intentionally obtuse fanboys/trolls.

Take pretty much any system off the shelf at a big box store for $1000 or less. 95% of those will have integrated graphics that are pure crap. The other 5% usually has something idiotic like a 6570 DDR3 card at best. Compared to those, the XB1 and PS4 are definitely 'super charged'. Now turn around and look at well-build purpose-oriented gaming boxes, stuff with 7970 / 780GTX, and those will be able to run BF4 @ 1080p like a boss and a half. PS4/XB1? Doubtful.

However, many games will run at 1080p on the next-gen consoles, just with the right combination of optimization and detail settings. And an absolute ton of games will be on console that will never see the light of day on PC. And $ for $, getting started with a console will still be far more affordable and plug-and-play compared to trying to get the same thing going with a PC. Maybe in a few years that will change, but I sort of doubt it. Tech has really slowed down a lot, and more and more focus is on low-power/mobile, so price drops and performance increases on the PC side will just slow down more and more. We'll be very lucky to hit GTX780 performance at the $150 price point in 4-5 years.

 

[Malak]

It's simple, Microsoft isn't planning on chasing higher resolution. They are going to stick with 720p which will open up lots of room for more graphical effects. The XBone GPU is a 16 ROP unit with 768 shaders whereas the PS4 is 32 ROP and 1156 shaders.

For a 16 ROP GPU to pull off true 1080p with solid framerates and next gen graphics will be pretty much impossible.

So I am expecting XBone games to run at a lower native resolution in order to keep up with the graphical effects of PS4 games.

So wait wait wait. Your argument for "xbone graphics will SURPASS PS4 graphics" is that they won't even be able to keep up? This is the dumbest thread I have ever seen in the history of my time on Anandtech.

Even in the unlikely event they do, for some reason, make the PS4 version look slightly better, nobody will care except PS4 fanboys. The fact that the PS4 has slightly farther draw distances is irrelevant to anyone except people trying to make themselves feel better about their brand identity.

Are you sleeping with futurefields? What you just said is so incredibly retarded I honestly can only assume you are intentionally trolling. Is there some sarcasm going on here? An inside joke I'm not getting?