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

[Sweepr]

Trying to put together two news in a single post.

1: Sony confirms PS4's CPU clockspeed -> 8 Jaguar cores running @ 1.6GHz (as a side note, XB1 has 8 Jaguar cores @ 1.75GHz).

The PS4, with a clock speed of 8 x 1.6 GHz (or 43X the PS2).

2 + 2 doesn't always = 4


https://plus.google.com/+sonyuk/posts/eiA6sDQvWwQ

2: The rumoured OS reservation was finally (indirectly) confirmed by developer Naughty Dog this week. Game devs have access to 6 out of the 8 Jaguar cores, and 5GB of RAM. There you go. 60% more CPU power than our netbooks/small notebooks A4-5000's.

Even in the PlayStation 4 you have 5 gigs, which seems like a lot but you’ll be amazed by how quickly it fills up.

www.dualshockers.com/2014/03/11/nau...il-and-how-they-can-make-them-run-really-fast

 

[witeken]

What do they do with the other 3GB?

 

[jacktesterson]

what do they do with the other 3gb?

gpu + os

 

[Sweepr]

6 Jaguar cores @ 1.6GHz would score around ~2.35-2.4 pts @ Cinebench 11.5 (here's A4-5000).

 

[SPBHM]

that's around a $50 Celeron (g1820 = 2.32)

 

[jpiniero]

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

 

[SPBHM]

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

I don't think so, they would need to sacrifice visual quality potentially, it's not like they have 3000sps

and... consoles have fixed spec, they can optimize the code really well for that slow CPU and they don't have the same waste of resources the PC have with DX+driver I think.... so this level of CPU should be a lot more powerful in a console in reality than it would running a PC game.

 

[jhu]

What do they do with the other 3GB?

NSA spying

*puts on tin foil hat*

 

[lagokc]

NSA spying

*puts on tin foil hat*

You're thinking of the XBox One. The PS4 just spies for the Yakuza or something.:whiste:

 

[Arkaign]

This gen of consoles is pretty terrible. I know what they were thinking, which was to cut back as much as possible so that the costs were low and make them low power/low heat/low noise/low RMA, but feel that this might be the weakest gen yet in contemporary terms.

The big display/TV makers are really starting to push 4K, and that makes sense financially since most people have bought at least one if not several 1080p displays already, and they need something new to get moar profits and raise the ASPs back up. HDMI 2.0 and the new Displayport stuff will mean 4K @ 60hz and even 4K @ 120hz before long as a standard. For a long time I thought this would be further off, like 2016, but it looks like it's more like 2015.

Content will take a bit longer, they're still bouncing the details on how BD 4K discs will be released (I'm thinking we'll see BD double-packs like the current DVD+BD packs, so that 1080P BD people can still watch with no problem). IIRC, the BD Roms in at least the PS4 should be 4K capable. It's just a matter of standardizing the encode/decode and disc mastering, as the largest current BD Rom media would have to have a higher compression than current 1080P releases get.

But that's all sort of besides the point. The point comes back to gaming enthusiasts, and 4K is going to become a feasible thing for ultra-high-end PCs this year, high end PCs in 2015, and upper-midrange to midrange solutions in 2016.

2016 should prove to be the real killer year though. Imagine this :

32" 4K 60hz display $349
6GB GTX960 $299 (about 1.6x-2x the performance of current Titan Black)
5Ghz 8-Core/16-Thread Skymont-K 10nm $379
32GB DDR4-3333 $199
1TB SSD $179

So for an enthusiast system, they'll be able to play a release like Titanfall 2 @ 3840x2160 with fantastic details, as well as games like Witcher 3, Fallout 4, BF5, etc, while the consoles struggle to hit 1080p, so we're talking a detail difference of at least 4X. Factor in the easy cross-platform development offered by x86-64+GCN, and we'll probably see a lot more PC-oriented tailoring like higher-detail textures (extremely large game sizes and online-requirements are big anti-piracy aids for devs/distributors).

And by 2017, roughly 3 years later, we should see a combo of :

$150 GPU, $100 CPU, $60 RAM, $80 SSD, etc, that should make for a 4K-capable midrange gaming system. Hell, today you can get something like a $149 750ti and play Battlefield 4 and Titanfall better than the XB1 version, and that's using fossilized 28nm tech.

 

[monstercameron]

SNIP

I don't know about all that because if it is this easy why aren't more people -if not all- pc gamers? there is more to console gaming than hardware capability but even setting that aside, we all know that console gaming still has the advantage of low level access and platform specific optimizations.

on another note, the greatest thing about the architecture is how scalable it is, maybe 8 cpu cores is max amount for the interconnect but the gpu can scale for quite some time, and so can the memory bandwidth. Most if not all of the console apus could be upgraded without any breakage. Maybe the assumption that the consoles will stay static throughout it's lifetime is a fair one, doesn't make it a fact nor does it preclude MS or Sony from modifying/upgrading them.

 

[Arkaign]

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.

 

[Haserath]

What do they do with the other 3GB?

Cryptocoin mining. Explains the extemely high idle power.

 

[Rezist]

With the mention of 4k.... I've yet to see any satallite streaming/internet streaming/cable/local tv at 4k let alone 1080, a ton is still at 720, beyond BR what's the point of 4k? I only see PC's and BR movie only TV's being the point. Seems like a niche market.

 

[Arkaign]

With the mention of 4k.... I've yet to see any satallite streaming/internet streaming/cable/local tv at 4k let alone 1080, a ton is still at 720, beyond BR what's the point of 4k? I only see PC's and BR movie only TV's being the point. Seems like a niche market.

That indeed is the niche. For most people it will be a waste due to lack of content. Netflix did House of Cards at Super 4K, but with compression I think the results probably weren't nearly as good as BD 4K will be.

So yeah, 4K PC Gaming, and 4K Bluray home theatre will be the primary uses for years to come outside of 4K professional workstations (photo/video work, even more niche).

On the flip side, the makers of TVs, GPUs, etc, will be salivating at the sales opportunities. 1080P pricing has hit the floor, 65" 1080P are well under a grand now, so profits are harder to come by. It will be easier on them if they have a 65" 4K model that's $1600, but looks ridiculously awesome playing 4K movies on it.

 

[Rezist]

That indeed is the niche. For most people it will be a waste due to lack of content. Netflix did House of Cards at Super 4K, but with compression I think the results probably weren't nearly as good as BD 4K will be.

So yeah, 4K PC Gaming, and 4K Bluray home theatre will be the primary uses for years to come outside of 4K professional workstations (photo/video work, even more niche).

On the flip side, the makers of TVs, GPUs, etc, will be salivating at the sales opportunities. 1080P pricing has hit the floor, 65" 1080P are well under a grand now, so profits are harder to come by. It will be easier on them if they have a 65" 4K model that's $1600, but looks ridiculously awesome playing 4K movies on it.

Well tough to design consoles for niche markets, they work on large sales for profits.

 

[Arkaign]

Well tough to design consoles for niche markets, they work on large sales for profits.

True, it really depends on how much they can influence buyers with marketing and merchandising to push the (admittedly thin in content) benefits.

Think of how common this is in US society, the me-too mentality, or checkboxing features that people never use.

 

[BSim500]

6 Jaguar cores @ 1.6GHz would score around ~2.35-2.4 pts @ Cinebench 11.5

Indeed. Even 8-cores @ 2GHz would be something like 3.9 - no better than a Haswell i3-4340. So much for the "8-core next gen consoles are going to DESTROY the i5 - quad-cores are DEAD!" fanboys. :biggrin:

 

[AtenRa]

What Cinebench has to do with gaming ???

 

[Deders]

"Memory fragmentation is one of the worst enemies, because it causes a game to run out of memory a lot faster than it normally would. Naughty Dog solves that by custom-tailoring memory allocators to match the software’s allocation patterns."

Is memory fragmentation actually an issue with fast DDR3? it's not as if there are any moving parts.

 

[sm625]

2016 should prove to be the real killer year though. Imagine this :

32" 4K 60hz display $349
6GB GTX960 $299 (about 1.6x-2x the performance of current Titan Black)
5Ghz 8-Core/16-Thread Skymont-K 10nm $379
32GB DDR4-3333 $199
1TB SSD $179

Haha... pass me some of that stuff....

First of all the 1TB SSD will not fall by more than 50% in two years. That's been the trend.

On black friday 2017 you would be lucky to find a 1TB SSD for maybe $200.

As for the intel 8 core 16 thread 10nm monster.... I'd really have to see that to believe it. If they did release such a chip, that would probably be the right price, except it would only be 4GHz.

 

[SlowSpyder]

The PS2 and Xbox weren't really enough for HD when it was the' next big thing', too. I wouldn't expect the PS4 or Xbox One to be up to the task of 4K.

 

[BrightCandle]

"Memory fragmentation is one of the worst enemies, because it causes a game to run out of memory a lot faster than it normally would. Naughty Dog solves that by custom-tailoring memory allocators to match the software’s allocation patterns."

Is memory fragmentation actually an issue with fast DDR3? it's not as if there are any moving parts.

Its a different but related problem. The issue isn't really performance to defrag (although that is certainly a concern) its that the program has an open connection to the bytes in question and requires them not to move because its pointing to them. Only highly abstracted memory models like Java's allow for defragging the memory space of a program.

Unlike on hard drives the problem isn't that files get split in multiple locations causing extra seeks. Instead its a problem of space wastage as small gaps between groups of objects appear and those gaps aren't reusable by the program as they are too small. Its called a similar thing to HDD fragmentation but it manifests and behaves very differently - its mostly a concern for programmers.

 

[BrightCandle]

The PS2 and Xbox weren't really enough for HD when it was the' next big thing', too. I wouldn't expect the PS4 or Xbox One to be up to the task of 4K.

They aren't up to HD on todays games at 30 fps, they certainly aren't going to cope with 4k!

 

[SlowSpyder]

They aren't up to HD on todays games at 30 fps, they certainly aren't going to cope with 4k!

You may be right (especially with the Xbox One with it's weaker graphics side of the APU). But I don't think we should try and say based on titles that have only come out within the first ~four months since the consoles launched.