Sony reveals PS4's CPU clock (1.6GHz) - 6 cores available to developers

[Mondozei]

I'm no expert on CPUs but I would nevertheless say that their "PS4 is 43 times faster than PS2 on a CPU-basis" is really misleading, totally different architecture etc.

Also, do people expect that we'll really see true 8-core optimization this time around, when games 1-2 years from now are coming out on XB1 and PS4?
We're likely to see less of a single-core performance focus, of course, but the technical challenges of having full 8 core implementation haven't gone away even if the incentives to develop games for it has increased substantially.

 

[Makaveli]

Heh, a poky tablet CPU (6 cores usable) with 8GB RAM (5GB usable) - and that lasting for 8yrs? The horror! Look how crippled games are now with these old ass consoles with 512MB RAM - tiny levels, checkpoints, constant loading screens (I'm looking at you thief), low res everything. In less than 3yrs, once again, games will be held back. Again. "Next-gen" [barely] should have been packed with 16GB RAM out the box and with a way beefier CPU.

Would you like to pay $800 for that console ?

They would not released that console for the same price point that is for sure.

 

[escrow4]

Would you like to pay $800 for that console ?

They would not released that console for the same price point that is for sure.

It wouldn't come close to that for a major manufacturer. The specs, once again, are middling to pffft.

 

[stockwiz]

regardless of what videophiles think I don't see 4K taking off for awhile. It's mostly a gimmick and won't be perceivable at the distances people typically watch their screens at... if you have a 70-80 inch screen and sit 4-6 feet away maybe it will make a difference but I'd worry about them properly mastering bluray movies and putting out good releases before I'd worry about how they might look in 4K. In most cases you'll have to pause, get up to the screen, and look closely to see a meaningful difference.

Most people are content to stream movies from netflix and half of them don't even seem to know how to choose the HD version of a channel over the SD version so this idea that 4K is going to take off and become mainstream within a year or two.. I just don't see it. They are still expensive, unless I get a Seiki, but I'm not buying a Seiki.

With that said I wish they had given these consoles a bit more horsepower. They can always charge an extra $100-200 the first year and it doesn't matter since there are no games out yet anyways... let the games come and the system mature and they can bring down the price after 12 months... but they went a bit cheaper spec than they should have.

 

[tential]

More people aren't PC gamers because of a number of factors :

#1 - Exclusive games. This is far and away the best reason to have a console, and why I have mine. This is not going to change, but at the same time, I'm not giving up PC gaming either.

#2 - Price. If you don't know how to build your own system, the pre-builts ARE indisputably more expensive than a current console for similar results.

#3 - Fear & Misunderstandings. 'It's too hard', 'I don't know how to install drivers', 'I can't use a controller', 'I can't hook it up to my big screen'. All of this is really silly to people that know what they're doing, but at the same time we can understand why not everyone knows this stuff.

Optimization and the lower-overhead of consoles is of course a factor, but not nearly as much as it used to be. Previous consoles almost always launch with oddball (in terms of development process) hardware, which took a good while to get a handle on and use to its fullest. This is dramatically less relevant to the new consoles which are basically stripped gaming PCs at their hearts. And another thing which has given a flawed perception is the combination of PS3/360 launching with AMAZING hardware for the time (not true this time) and them running titles at less than 720p and upscaling. If you take even a low end GPU from the past few years and run a game at 1280x720 or less, with medium details and no AA (console settings IOW), then you DO actually get similar results even with a gimpy PC.

I'm not suggesting that everyone will jump to PC gaming, but that it will continue to grow. I'm also not suggesting that people will abandon console gaming at all, in fact that would be stupid considering the many games that are and will only be available there.

All that said, the quality gap that's already there with even today's midrange gaming PCs > consoles is going to turn into a staggering chasm. And many people once they experience 4K ultra-high-detail gaming on familiar titles, and find out that it doesn't cost an insane amount of money to do it, will want to get in on that action. Not all people, and probably not even most people, but a considerable number for sure over time. This is all a fair ways off, as the price tag right now to do so is simply too high for most to justify. By 2017-2018 though? It will be stuff you can buy in Walmart and Bestbuy at basic pricing.

I can attest to all of this. I can't tell you how many times people have said "Oh I don't PC game because I don't want to use a mouse/keyboard."

I had guests at my house this past weekend and have my HTPC setup on my 70 inch LED HDTV. I had BF4 loaded up and was showing it to a friend saying how "The graphics are better than a console!" This of course brought confusion because we were using an Xbox 360 controller. Tabbing out also showed windows which also confused people. People couldn't wrap their head around the fact that you could hook a PC up to a HDTV. I have had countless family members/guests be confused at this concept and saying how "complicated" it is to use and setup.

The average consumer just simply can't wrap their head around this type of thing.

In fact, when I told my friend I built PCs and know a ton about them he just looked at me like a liar. The concept of being able to put together your own PC was reserved for people who didn't see the light of day and are basement dwellers with no social skills. It was unbelievable to him that I could figure out how to do such a complex task.


I am in agreement though with you that this generation basically screwed me over as an HTPC user. I wanted to upgrade to a 4K HDTV display for 4K gaming and other things and due to next gen consoles moving so slow it's going to prolong 4K content from coming out/being playable.

 

[witeken]

It wouldn't come close to that for a major manufacturer. The specs, once again, are middling to pffft.

Consoles aren't aimed at people who demand the best specs.

 

[krumme]

I'm no expert on CPUs but I would nevertheless say that their "PS4 is 43 times faster than PS2 on a CPU-basis" is really misleading, totally different architecture etc.

Also, do people expect that we'll really see true 8-core optimization this time around, when games 1-2 years from now are coming out on XB1 and PS4?
We're likely to see less of a single-core performance focus, of course, but the technical challenges of having full 8 core implementation haven't gone away even if the incentives to develop games for it has increased substantially.

You can be pretty sure all 6 cores is used to the max at bf4 on the ps4 otherwise it would simply not work. So yes its already there.

And some of this level of cpu utilisation is on the pc also using mantle. Gives cpu performance a huge kick in bf4.

 

[krumme]

Yeah, devs are definitely going to need to use the GPU's compute power to get full usage out of it.

But if they are lazy they can just use the strong fpu power. And 6 of those is solid. Its the integer side its difficult i imagine? But the hsa like implememtation can perhaps come to usage also.

 

[SlowSpyder]

It wouldn't come close to that for a major manufacturer. The specs, once again, are middling to pffft.

Whoops, misunderstood. Never mind.

 

[swilli89]

The best perspective can be gleaned from looking at where things stood when last generation released.

Playstation 3 (nVidia RSX) Released: November 17, 2006
Price: $499

RSX had:
24 parallel pixel-shader ALU pipes @ 550 mhz
8 paralell vertex-shaders @ 550 mhz
Memory: 512MB - 128 bit
ROPs: 8

Lets compare that to an nVidia card that was released at about the same time.

Geforce 7950GT Released: September 16, 2006
Price: $300

24 parallel pixel-shader ALU pipes @ 550 mhz
8 paralell vertex-shaders @ 550 mhz
Memory: 512MB - 256 bit
ROPs: 16

This card was $300 and the PS3 started at $500 so you get 60% of the final price of the PS3 would go towards an equivalent graphics card.

PS4 AMD GPU Released November, 2013
Price: $400
1,152 cores @ 800 MHz


Radeon 270 Released: 11/13/13
Price: $179
1,280 cores @ 900 MHz

$179/400 = 45%

So it seems Sony dipped in how much they spend on GPU at least. But factor in the BR drive in the PS3 and they really saved a lot this generation.

I'm no dev but I am fairly impressed with the GPU considering their power budget. However I would think the netbook cores are rather anemic. Why not go with dual module 4 core Vishera?

 

[Makaveli]

It wouldn't come close to that for a major manufacturer. The specs, once again, are middling to pffft.

I honestly don't think it would be much less.

Lets say it has a real 8 core x86 cpu in it, 16GB of ram and a 280x/770 class Gpu.

And came with an 256GB ssd instead of a 500GB SATA drive.

Plus the markups once they retailers sell it over MSRP.

What price do you think it would sell for?

 

[Jodell88]

I honestly don't think it would be much less.

Lets say it has a real 8 core x86 cpu in it, 16GB of ram and a 280x/770 class Gpu.

And came with an 256GB ssd instead of a 500GB SATA drive.

Plus the markups once they retailers sell it over MSRP.

What price do you think it would sell for?

$1500

 

[SPBHM]

The best perspective can be gleaned from looking at where things stood when last generation released.

PS3 was was released at the same time as DX10, the 8800GTX
1 year after the Xbox 360 (which uses a superior GPU)

also your specs are wrong, the PS3 GPU had access to 256MB only, the other 256 were controlled by the CPU "Cell",

the PS3 GPU is probably slower or closer to a 7900GS, which was a sub $200 card by that time,

excluding the CPU potential and blu ray I think the PS3 was less impressive, overpriced, 1 year to late, using a "DX9C" GPU when the DX10 era just started.

 

[Rezist]

I honestly don't think it would be much less.

Lets say it has a real 8 core x86 cpu in it, 16GB of ram and a 280x/770 class Gpu.

And came with an 256GB ssd instead of a 500GB SATA drive.

Plus the markups once they retailers sell it over MSRP.

What price do you think it would sell for?

People don't understand these need cheap assembly and need to turn profits quick, also be virtually silent and the size of 2-1/2 dvd players, and be purchasable on a Christmas budget.

Too much losses at launch and generally a poor ROI for the 360/PS3 killed the high performance consoles.

These consoles should be profitable after 2 years and be ready to be replaced in 5-6 years when the general public tends to get bored with them.

 

[Deders]

So if games are coded for 6 cores on the consoles, then a quad without HT would be ideal still?

A decent quad will still be more than enough, those Jaguar cores are half the clockspeed of most i5's.

 

[2is]

I honestly don't think it would be much less.

Lets say it has a real 8 core x86 cpu in it, 16GB of ram and a 280x/770 class Gpu.

And came with an 256GB ssd instead of a 500GB SATA drive.

Plus the markups once they retailers sell it over MSRP.

What price do you think it would sell for?

The SSD and 770 alone already adds to to well over $100 more than an entire PS4 console costs. That's before you also factor in the power, packaging and cooling requirements which are going to drive costs way up there and we haven't even added the CPU or RAM to the mix.

 

[Headfoot]

All I want is that they would have gone with Piledriver cores instead of Jaguar cores. I can't imagine it would have cost much more given that it's already custom silicon and the economies of scale involved in producing it. I bet it was because they didn't have the Piledriver design ready for TSMC fabrication in time. Still, that one corner-cut is going to hold back gaming yet again. I just don't see the sense in shipping a CPU with 1/3 the single thread performance of a Celeron...

 

[monstercameron]

All I want is that they would have gone with Piledriver cores instead of Jaguar cores. I can't imagine it would have cost much more given that it's already custom silicon and the economies of scale involved in producing it. I bet it was because they didn't have the Piledriver design ready for TSMC fabrication in time. Still, that one corner-cut is going to hold back gaming yet again. I just don't see the sense in shipping a CPU with 1/3 the single thread performance of a Celeron...

this is the best possible situation -especially for AMD- because now we have software engineers designing game engines that are better threaded.

Who cares about single threaded performance if it is faster than the previous gen but slower than current gen pc parts if the tasks can be now multithreaded and use more than 2 -sometimes more than 4- threads.

 

[moonbogg]

And here I thought I'd NEED an 8 core Haswell-E for "next gen titles". lol? Call me silly, cause eye am!

 

[Roland00Address]

All I want is that they would have gone with Piledriver cores instead of Jaguar cores. I can't imagine it would have cost much more given that it's already custom silicon and the economies of scale involved in producing it. I bet it was because they didn't have the Piledriver design ready for TSMC fabrication in time. Still, that one corner-cut is going to hold back gaming yet again. I just don't see the sense in shipping a CPU with 1/3 the single thread performance of a Celeron...

Piledriver and Jaguar are similar IPC per clock, Piledriver clocks higher but it needs more energy and die space to achieve that. The extra 20 to 30 watts tdp is a big deal when your goal is trying to make something a little larger than a ceral box.

 

[Makaveli]

$1500

I was gonna say closer to $1000 but $1500 sounds about right for the newegg price

People don't understand these need cheap assembly and need to turn profits quick, also be virtually silent and the size of 2-1/2 dvd players, and be purchasable on a Christmas budget.

Too much losses at launch and generally a poor ROI for the 360/PS3 killed the high performance consoles.

These consoles should be profitable after 2 years and be ready to be replaced in 5-6 years when the general public tends to get bored with them.

Also a very good point.

The SSD and 770 alone already adds to to well over $100 more than an entire PS4 console costs. That's before you also factor in the power, packaging and cooling requirements which are going to drive costs way up there and we haven't even added the CPU or RAM to the mix.

Agreed.

 

[Enigmoid]

Piledriver and Jaguar are similar IPC per clock, Piledriver clocks higher but it needs more energy and die space to achieve that. The extra 20 to 30 watts tdp is a big deal when your goal is trying to make something a little larger than a ceral box.

Cooling makes little sense other than cost. It not hard to cool that amount of heat. Just look at the amount of notebooks out there with a 45w CPU and two 100w gpus in a 17.3 inch chassis of less volume than a console.

 

[Roland00Address]

Cooling makes little sense other than cost. It not hard to cool that amount of heat. Just look at the amount of notebooks out there with a 45w CPU and two 100w gpus in a 17.3 inch chassis of less volume than a console.

Cost and noise were preferred by Sony and Microsoft vs absolute performance.

If you had Sony and Microsoft priorities, their decision made sense.

 

[el etro]

PS4 specs could allow a bigger GPU like a HD-7950(or a GTX 680M) if it was not by chip size matters.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I think the console hardware is about the best compromise they could come up with.
Amd's big core apus use too much power, while an Intel solution would have required a discrete card.

The only problem I have with the consoles is that they were very over hyped during the development phase. Realistically, they are low/mid range hardware at a good price that give midrange performance because of less overhead than a PC. Note: I an talking about ps4. Xbone missed the mark, IMO performance wise.