Will PS4/Xbox One increase the need of Cores?

[jacktesterson]

Sorry if this questionhas been pounded to death...I do not have a great understanding on the developement side of PC's and how they work... but I have a quick question.

Since the PS4/Xbox One will be using 8 core AMD CPU's, does this translate to AMD CPU's being utilized better for future gaming? (multi-threading) Or can we expect the PC Version of games to be still designed to utilize 2-4 cores, thus giving Intel the advantage still due to Single Threaded performance being greater? I imagine this will be the case, and my question may be silly, but was just wondering. Crysis 3 is an example that runs very well on Vishera.

I do not want this to be another AMD vs Intel thread - I'm not biased to either, although right now I wanted to change things up and am using all AMD hardware. (Which explains my curiosity for this question)

 

[SiliconWars]

The short answer is clearly yes, more games will utilise 8 cores in the not-too-distant future.

Would I buy an 8350 instead of a 4570K for gaming right now? Probably not. It might be worth holding out for another year just to see exactly where the industry has gone.

 

[cbrunny]

This has been pounded to death... and the answer is no one really knows for sure but probably more cores will be more desirable.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2304345

There are probably other threads on this somewhere too.

 

[ShintaiDK]

I doubt it will change much. Xbox360 supported 6 threads, PS3 supported..8?

The cores in the consoles are extremely weak. (Equal to a fast dualcore or slow quadcore.) And atleast 1 core will be reserved for the OS. I doubt any game will actually use more than 6 on the consoles in the best case. Not to mention Amdahls law regarding scaling on those cores.

AMD is also going from 8 threads to 4 threads on the desktop with its next uarch.

Remember the Crysis 1.3 patch:
http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Crysis-3-PC-235317/Tests/Crysis-3-CPU-Test-1068140/

So the short answer from me would be no.

 

[jacktesterson]

I doubt it will change much. Xbox360 supported 6 threads, PS3 supported..8?

The cores in the consoles are extremely weak. (Equal to a fast dualcore or slow quadcore.) And atleast 1 core will be reserved for the OS. I doubt any game will actually use more than 6 on the consoles in the best case. Not to mention Amdahls law.

Remember the Crysis 1.3 patch:
http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Crysis-3-PC-235317/Tests/Crysis-3-CPU-Test-1068140/

So the short answer from me would be no.

Thanks - I never did a search - just a quick skim down page 1 of the CPU thread.

Makes sense. I understand the 360/PS4 had multiple threads but it wasn't X86.


One of my builds has a FX 4300 @ 4.5 GHz - Its used for some TV gaming mostly. Wondering if the going to a 8320 would benefit it at all with the new consoles coming. Sounds of things, probably not - Both will meet the end of there life cycle at similar times.

 

[NostaSeronx]

And atleast 1 core will be reserved for the OS.

 

[laputan machine]

I'd expect 1 or 2 of the cores on the next gen consoles to be more or less completely devoted to the OS and other non gaming tasks, so I doubt we'll see many games that utilize 8 cores. Up to 6 core utilization in games I see as probable.
This would mean the 3 and 4 module cpus will completely outshine the 2 module ones (which is already true for a lot of games), and the i3s may start to fall more behind. The 4 strong cores on the i5s should truck on very well.

Edit: Or I may be completely wrong given the post above

 

[NostaSeronx]

The operating system for both consoles only use the 32-bit memory space. Which leads to some oddities, I guess as the games are 64-bit.

 

[SlowSpyder]

I doubt it will change much. Xbox360 supported 6 threads, PS3 supported..8?

The cores in the consoles are extremely weak. (Equal to a fast dualcore or slow quadcore.) And atleast 1 core will be reserved for the OS. I doubt any game will actually use more than 6 on the consoles in the best case. Not to mention Amdahls law regarding scaling on those cores.

AMD is also going from 8 threads to 4 threads on the desktop with its next uarch.

Remember the Crysis 1.3 patch:
http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Crysis-3-PC-235317/Tests/Crysis-3-CPU-Test-1068140/

So the short answer from me would be no.

I'm not sure we can use history as much of a guide here. The consoles that matter to PC gaming will use lower (compared to Intel) IPC, multicore designs. If developers want a next gen experience, they'll probably be forced to code for multiple threads as the Jaguar cores aren't real powerhouses. Of course we're all just taking semi-educated guesses here, only time will tell how it all unfolds.

I'd like to think having x86 multicore CPU's in the upcoming consoles should at least make for quicker and better quality ports, if nothing else.

 

[Dribble]

I doubt it will change much. Xbox360 supported 6 threads, PS3 supported..8?

The cores in the consoles are extremely weak. (Equal to a fast dualcore or slow quadcore.) And atleast 1 core will be reserved for the OS. I doubt any game will actually use more than 6 on the consoles in the best case. Not to mention Amdahls law regarding scaling on those cores.

AMD is also going from 8 threads to 4 threads on the desktop with its next uarch.

Remember the Crysis 1.3 patch:
http://www.pcgameshardware.de/Crysis-3-PC-235317/Tests/Crysis-3-CPU-Test-1068140/

So the short answer from me would be no.

They may have supported more threads but there was only 3 real cores in the 360 and really 1 core in the PS3 (and a lot of maths co-processors). Now they have 8 real cores games will be optimised for 8 cores. Obviously PC's are faster, but they are much faster then xbox 360 too and it's still advantageous to have 3 cores in most xbox 360 PC ports.

Hence in a year or two it might start to be worth it having an 8 core PC, or at least 4 cores with hyperthreading.

 

[Sweepr]

http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/IMG_3023.jpg

So what? PS4 is rumoured to have 1 core and 1Gb RAM reserved & Xbox One 2 cores and 3Gb RAM reserved to OS/background tasks. So, 6 Jaguar cores running at 1.6GHz is your lowest common denominator for multi-platform titles.

 

[chernobog]

So what? PS4 is rumoured to have 1 core and 1Gb RAM reserved & Xbox One 2 cores and 3Gb RAM reserved to OS/background tasks. So, 6 Jaguar cores running at 1.6GHz is your lowest common denominator for multi-platform titles.

Oh the rumors, they are just rumors and nothing else.

All cores are dedicated for games, secondary chips take the OS not the CPU its self from what I understand while 1Gb of RAM if so for the OS, as for Xbox One... Well thats a different story.

 

[NostaSeronx]

Just so you guys know.

An eight core Jaguar at 2 GHz which would consume around 28 watts. Would score 4 pts in Cinebench, beating Phenom II 975 X4 BE and A8-3850 with fractions of the power consumption. If Sony/Microsoft/AMD up'ed that clock to 3.2 GHz, it would beat the FX-8350 in Cinebench r11.5 MT. Beating the FX-8350, would probably place the possible TDP around 65 Watts.

So what? PS4 is rumoured to have 1 core and 1Gb RAM reserved & Xbox One 2 cores and 3Gb RAM reserved to OS/background tasks.

1 GB and 3 GB.
1 Gigabit is 128 MB, 3 Gigabits is 384 MB.

Also, the Playstation 4 and Xbox One both have special purpose units dedicated for the operating system. Which in turn I hear is ARM Cortex-A9s.

 

[chernobog]

Just so you guys know.

An eight core Jaguar at 2 GHz which would consume around 28 watts. Would score 4 pts in Cinebench, beating Phenom II 975 X4 BE and A8-3850 with fractions of the power consumption. If Sony/Microsoft/AMD up'ed that clock to 3.2 GHz, it would beat the FX-8350.

That is correct even thought Jaguar can't go above 2ghz because its a low power chip, this is just the CPU its self.

Bay Trail most likely won't have the same single threaded performance as Jaguar since Intel does not want to damage its ULV products and Bay Trail GPU(the best one) would be comparable to A4-1200's GPU.

 

[NostaSeronx]

That is correct even thought Jaguar can't go above 2ghz because its a low power chip, this is just the CPU its self.

Jaguar can go way above 2 GHz, it isn't a hard limit. It is a soft limit imposed by AMD, to appeal to said market.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Also, the Playstation 4 and Xbox One both have special purpose units dedicated for the operating system. Which in turn I hear is ARM Cortex-A9s.

Care to provide a link to back this up because there is nothing regarding this statement in any spec sheet for the consoles posted after their unveilings.

 

[chernobog]

Care to provide a link to back this up because there is nothing regarding this statement in any spec sheet for the consoles posted after their unveilings.

Kaveri and Steamroller is have ARM CPU inside for security and I think Jaguar also has ARM CPU for security also. So I don't see why Xbox One and PlayStation4 chip would not have ARM chips..

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Kaveri and Steamroller is have ARM CPU inside for security and I think Jaguar also has ARM CPU for security also. So I don't see why Xbox One and PlayStation4 chip would not have ARM chips..

Please provide a link to that information also because Google can't find that either.

For the op I'm positive the new consoles will drive multithreading in future titles. Games on consoles/PC's are like porn for video formats, they drive the entire industry forward.

 

[Sweepr]

They might have an ARM security chip (I heard X1 has one) and it has nothing to do with OS tasks. Current X360/PS3 have 3C/6T and 1C+7 SPEs (6 SPEs available for games), next-gen multi-platform titles have six 1.6GHz Jaguar cores to play with. So there you have it, multi-threading (+4 threads) is not exactly new.

 

[Schmide]

The operating system for both consoles only use the 32-bit memory space. Which leads to some oddities, I guess as the games are 64-bit.

This makes no sense!

On a x86-64 os there are basically 2 address spaces. Long Mode 64bit and Long Mode Compatibility Mode (32bit). Most processes will use the latter and thunk calls to the drivers. There are some caveats to inter-process communication especially between the above spaces, but the OS sees and controls all!!!

 

[Namira Fang]

I'm not sure we can use history as much of a guide here. The consoles that matter to PC gaming will use lower (compared to Intel) IPC, multicore designs. If developers want a next gen experience, they'll probably be forced to code for multiple threads as the Jaguar cores aren't real powerhouses. Of course we're all just taking semi-educated guesses here, only time will tell how it all unfolds.

I'd like to think having x86 multicore CPU's in the upcoming consoles should at least make for quicker and better quality ports, if nothing else.

Agreed. Having 8 "weak" cores kinda forces developers to load level the workload amongst as many cores as is reasonable. Can you imagine Skyrim trying to run on two or three of these cores? I think not. The game would choke as many would. This is actually great news for us PC gamers. x86 and "weak" cores to boot.

 

[ShintaiDK]

The operating system for both consoles only use the 32-bit memory space.

Utter nonsense.

 

[NostaSeronx]

On a x86-64 os there are basically 2 address spaces.

The operating system is based on ARMv7, while the games are based on x86-64.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Thats secondary chip is simply a DSP for the streaming feature (Encoding/decoding). Since the CPU is too weak to handle that.

 

[zlatan]

Since the PS4/Xbox One will be using 8 core AMD CPU's, does this translate to AMD CPU's being utilized better for future gaming? (multi-threading) Or can we expect the PC Version of games to be still designed to utilize 2-4 cores, thus giving Intel the advantage still due to Single Threaded performance being greater? I imagine this will be the case, and my question may be silly, but was just wondering. Crysis 3 is an example that runs very well on Vishera.

Pretty sure that the nextgen games will utilize 8 or more threads, but this doesn't necessary mean that you need an 8 core CPU. 8 Jaguar cores won't be better than today's 4 core CPUs.

The real question is the integration. On the the nextgen consoles there are won't be enough resources to calculate everything on the CPU cores, so the developers will offload mosty all parallelizable workload to the iGPU. In this case a Kaveri APU will be a better gaming solution then any multi-core CPU.