Creator of FXAA gives thoughts on Orbis and Durango specs

Sounds pretty good.

PS4

''The real reason to get excited about a PS4 is what Sony as a company does with the OS and system libraries as a platform, and what this enables 1st party studios to do, when they make PS4-only games. If PS4 has a real-time OS, with a libGCM style low level access to the GPU, then the PS4 1st party games will be years ahead of the PC simply because it opens up what is possible on the GPU. Note this won't happen right away on launch, but once developers tool up for the platform, this will be the case. As a PC guy who knows hardware to the metal, I spend most of my days in frustration knowing damn well what I could do with the hardware, but what I cannot do because Microsoft and IHVs wont provide low-level GPU access in PC APIs. One simple example, drawcalls on PC have easily 10x to 100x the overhead of a console with a libGCM style API.''

720

''On this platform I'd be concerned with memory bandwidth. Only DDR3 for system/GPU memory pared with 32MB of "ESRAM" sounds troubling. 32MB of ESRAM is only really enough to do forward shading with MSAA using only 32-bits/pixel color with 2xMSAA at 1080p or 4xMSAA at 720p. Anything else to ESRAM would require tiling and resolves like on the Xbox360 (which would likely be a DMA copy on 720) or attempting to use the slow DDR3 as a render target. I'd bet most titles attempting deferred shading will be stuck at 720p with only poor post process AA (like FXAA). If this GPU is pre-GCN with a serious performance gap to PS4, then this next Xbox will act like a boat anchor, dragging down the min-spec target for cross-platform next-generation games.''

http://timothylottes.blogspot.fr/2013/01/orbis-and-durango.html

When he says ahead of the PC he means in terms of what they can do on the back end interfacing with the hardware and getting the most out of the hardware. PCs are horribly inefficent due to their OS and their grpahic APIs.

If these specs are true, and PS4 gets full third party support (just like 360 got this gen), then i may get it instead of the next Xbox. I'm waiting for something official.

Lol!The PS4 won't be stronger then PC's. He's probably talking about something else.

good read but i don't think MS will be stupid enough to release a weak ass system when they have money to release a powerful system. If they do release some outdated sh!t like Nintendo is doing then lol. Keep hearing good things about ps4, now make a controller that doesn't suck for shooters and im getting it day one.

When he says ahead of the PC he means in terms of what they can do on the back end interfacing with the hardware and getting the most out of the hardware. PCs are horribly inefficent due to their OS and their grpahic APIs.

Wasdie

[QUOTE="Wasdie"]

When he says ahead of the PC he means in terms of what they can do on the back end interfacing with the hardware and getting the most out of the hardware. PCs are horribly inefficent due to their OS and their grpahic APIs.

killzowned24

It's a constant struggle between optimization and flexibility/compatibility.

DX and OpenGL cannot afford to be as optimized as the APIs on consoles.

You should make clear that hes talking about the eurogamer rumours and not any personal knowledge in the OP though ...blue_hazy_basic

[QUOTE="blue_hazy_basic"]You should make clear that hes talking about the eurogamer rumours and not any personal knowledge in the OP though ...killzowned24

When he says ahead of the PC he means in terms of what they can do on the back end interfacing with the hardware and getting the most out of the hardware. PCs are horribly inefficent due to their OS and their grpahic APIs.

Wasdie

Most of the ineffiencey is on the CPU side though.

You will notice this is lousy console to PC ports.

Lol!The PS4 won't be stronger then PC's. He's probably talking about something else.

super600

[QUOTE="super600"]

Lol!The PS4 won't be stronger then PC's. He's probably talking about something else.

danish-death

[QUOTE="Wasdie"]

When he says ahead of the PC he means in terms of what they can do on the back end interfacing with the hardware and getting the most out of the hardware. PCs are horribly inefficent due to their OS and their grpahic APIs.

RyviusARC

Most of the ineffiencey is on the CPU side though.

You will notice this is lousy console to PC ports.

No it's not. There is plenty of inefficiency on the GPU side of things.

Figured as much... Hope the gimped specs rumors arn't true.

Figured as much... Hope the gimped specs rumors arn't true.

Truth_Hurts_U

Gimped specs?

The specs are fine.

Do you know how much of my 3770k CPU games like ArmA 2 and Shougn 2 use? Less than 15%. Honestly your arguments in all of the threads how why the new consoles are so gimped make no sense.

I hope the BD drive has read speeds fast enough to where installs are no longer mandatory.

The technical issue of "texture popping"will hopefully not be an issue in the PS4.

You should make clear that hes talking about the eurogamer rumours and not any personal knowledge in the OP though ...blue_hazy_basic

Lol!The PS4 won't be stronger then PC's. He's probably talking about something else.

super600

[QUOTE="Truth_Hurts_U"]

Figured as much... Hope the gimped specs rumors arn't true.

Wasdie

Gimped specs?

The specs are fine.

Do you know how much of my 3770k CPU games like ArmA 2 and Shougn 2 use? Less than 15%. Honestly your arguments in all of the threads how why the new consoles are so gimped make no sense.

What is the QA requirement that allows people to post in System Wars?

Gimped specs?

The specs are fine.

Do you know how much of my 3770k CPU games like ArmA 2 and Shougn 2 use? Less than 15%. Honestly your arguments in all of the threads how why the new consoles are so gimped make no sense.

Wasdie

You must not play many games. Even with 4.4 GHz I see game use 40%+ of my 3770k. That's at 1080p.

Follow hardware more... It's so easy to see. Sick of people thinking laptop grade CPU's are something good or even tablet grade. Then you drop a low end GPU on it and it just don't make sense.

Were looking at just enough power to run 1080p 60 FPS without all the bells and whistles.

I remember all the specs fighting over the 360. Alot of it turned out to be true. That the buffer wasn't enought and that it would have a hard time running 720p games.

This is all pointing to another repeat.

[QUOTE="Wasdie"]

Gimped specs?

The specs are fine.

Do you know how much of my 3770k CPU games like ArmA 2 and Shougn 2 use? Less than 15%. Honestly your arguments in all of the threads how why the new consoles are so gimped make no sense.

Truth_Hurts_U

You must not play many games. Even with 4.4 GHz I see game use 40%+ of my 3770k. That's at 1080p.

Follow hardware more... It's so easy to see. Sick of people thinking laptop grade CPU's are something good or even tablet grade. Then you drop a low end GPU on it and it just don't make sense.

Were looking at just enough power to run 1080p 60 FPS without all the bells and whistles.

I remember all the specs fighting over the 360. Alot of it turned out to be true. That the buffer wasn't enought and that it would have a hard time running 720p games.

This is all pointing to another repeat.

I follow hardware plenty and I understand things like overhead, which Windows and DirectX have tons. The bottlenecks of the 7th gen consoles will be gone with these new consoles. Their CPUs are more than powerful enough to handle plenty and their GPUs are a massive boost. The biggest thing is RAM. The RAM bottleneck is finally gone and console game developers can finally start opening up their games and not being limited by a lack of RAM.

I follow hardware plenty and I understand things like overhead, which Windows and DirectX have tons. The bottlenecks of the 7th gen consoles will be gone with these new consoles. Their CPUs are more than powerful enough to handle plenty and their GPUs are a massive boost. The biggest thing is RAM. The RAM bottleneck is finally gone and console game developers can finally start opening up their games and not being limited by a lack of RAM.

Wasdie

This is Boarderlands 2 quick run around sanc... Didn't shoot or anything.

40% use on physical cores. Average it out with the fake cores (extra threads) it's around 30% CPU usage just running a circle in a game that looks like a cartoon.

I don't know why 720 is gonna have 8GB of RAM when it's bandwidth is so horrible. I rather have 4GB and way faster memory.

The creator of what¿ neverheard of him which Im sure the majority of system wars wont....and I dont know if he said it or you but how can someone call they're creation poor post processing and then be taken seriously.WilliamRLBaker

He is the guy who helped Halo no longer be a jagfest :lol:

When he says ahead of the PC he means in terms of what they can do on the back end interfacing with the hardware and getting the most out of the hardware. PCs are horribly inefficent due to their OS and their grpahic APIs.

Wasdie

Wasdie is wrong on this one.

Most of the bottleneck from GPU API calls IS bound to the CPU. THAT is the main issue. Calls to the GPU are never free on PC, they NEED to hit up the CPU due to the nature of the stack. it is mostly CPU overhead that has to be designed around or brute forced through with a powerful CPU.

However, DX 11 coupled with modern DX 11 hardware, alleviates this with things like command buffers,instancing and multi-threaded rendering. Modern engines too use things like draw call batching and being meticulous about performance efficiency in all steps of the rendering chain to help.

So yes, if you can bypass the CPU and go direclty to the GPU X amount of work will be performed faster - how much faster depends on just how much of X relies on expensive CPU bound calls to the GPU.

It's entirely possible to build a game that performs almost identically on a console and a PC. It's also entirely possible to build one that performs horribly on PC and runs much better on console, but you'll have to essentialyl purposely be tryign to do so, or completley ignoring the requirements of the PC pipeline.

Bottom line: a modern engine, running on modern DX 11 hardware via a DX 11 renderer that is properly optimized on the PC will perform about as well as the same engine on the consoles. Worst case scenerio, such an engine might run into a 10-40% performance drop on the PC in certian areas or when doing certina things.

Of course, the thing about PC hardware and modern rendering API's is that everything renders the same on all hardware, it's only speed that differs. So you throw in a bigger GPU and BAM, you've not only got that 10-40% performance back, but you also gained some too. In other words, by the time the developers are consistently getting that extra 10-40% improvement on their end, Pc ahrdware is already considerably more powerful than what the consoles have.

Of course, since the CPU and GPU are so dependant on each other on the PC, you probably also need a beefy CPU in order to get the most out of that new GPU.

[QUOTE="Wasdie"]

When he says ahead of the PC he means in terms of what they can do on the back end interfacing with the hardware and getting the most out of the hardware. PCs are horribly inefficent due to their OS and their grpahic APIs.

cryemocry

Software rendering is a term used to describe 3D rendering on the CPU. That ain't goign to solve anything, it just ciompounds the issue by a thousand fold. The WHOLE point is to try and reduce the dependency on the CPU, so that you can freely acess the GPU.

On PC the OS can't let you do that. It's not safe from a security angle, and from a usability angle.

This is only for PS4 first party games the majority of games will be multiplatform releasing also on 360 or PC whats he saying could happen would make a devs game unportable and not to many thirdparty would want to give up sales of the other platforms nor will they spend time and money coding 2 diffrent versions of the game to fully maximize ps4 performance. PC will brute force it way to superiority regardless of any overhead inefficieny there's already going to be a new revision of gpu in the next few months that should give a 30%-40% increase and no new console is worth buying at launch barely any games to play need need at least a year preferably two by then there will be another new revision with another 30%-40% increase.

He says current highend gpu are around 16 times stronger then current consoles but you don't need modern highend single gpu to beat out consoles in performance and graphics in games the 4+ year old 4870 1gb is enough even the slightly weaker 5770 1gb can do it. It can run Battlefield 3 at 1920x1080 with AA 0ff at 30fps(cap it there for consistancy) all high settings mp with 64 players. While the consoles can only do 1280x720 low settings with 24 players and same 30fps. So only takes a gpu around 4 times as strong to surpass consoles despite pc inefficany and even less if you game at lower resolutions. PC Hardware already surpasses the next gen specs by double and the gap will only get bigger in time.

But regardless of how they compare to pc next gen console will be a big jump from current ones and gaming as a whole will benefit as we will have less restirctions and bottlenecks in hardware for multiplatform devs to make the game they want and everything will look better graphically as well :D.

If these specs are true, and PS4 gets full third party support (just like 360 got this gen), then i may get it instead of the next Xbox. I'm waiting for something official.

PAL360

I will get both as usual, it is about the games for me and both have games i want

WiiU too

But if MS sustem is far weaker, then i can see them losing every bit of an edge they had this generation

Wasdie is wrong on this one.

Most of the bottleneck from GPU API calls IS bound to the CPU. THAT is the main issue. Calls to the GPU are never free on PC, they NEED to hit up the CPU due to the nature of the stack. it is mostly CPU overhead that has to be designed around or brute forced through with a powerful CPU.

However, DX 11 coupled with modern DX 11 hardware, alleviates this with things like command buffers,instancing and multi-threaded rendering. Modern engines too use things like draw call batching and being meticulous about performance efficiency in all steps of the rendering chain to help.

So yes, if you can bypass the CPU and go direclty to the GPU X amount of work will be performed faster - how much faster depends on just how much of X relies on expensive CPU bound calls to the GPU.

It's entirely possible to build a game that performs almost identically on a console and a PC. It's also entirely possible to build one that performs horribly on PC and runs much better on console, but you'll have to essentialyl purposely be tryign to do so, or completley ignoring the requirements of the PC pipeline.

Bottom line: a modern engine, running on modern DX 11 hardware via a DX 11 renderer that is properly optimized on the PC will perform about as well as the same engine on the consoles. Worst case scenerio, such an engine might run into a 10-40% performance drop on the PC in certian areas or when doing certina things.

Of course, the thing about PC hardware and modern rendering API's is that everything renders the same on all hardware, it's only speed that differs. So you throw in a bigger GPU and BAM, you've not only got that 10-40% performance back, but you also gained some too. In other words, by the time the developers are consistently getting that extra 10-40% improvement on their end, Pc ahrdware is already considerably more powerful than what the consoles have.

Of course, since the CPU and GPU are so dependant on each other on the PC, you probably also need a beefy CPU in order to get the most out of that new GPU.

Kinthalis

Hmmm the PS4 is really starting to get interesting, I can't wait to see a full spec blowout.

So can someone post what he just said in english? Is he saying good stuff about them?Capitan_Kid

The creator of what¿ neverheard of him which Im sure the majority of system wars wont....and I dont know if he said it or you but how can someone call they're creation poor post processing and then be taken seriously.WilliamRLBaker

You should try thinking before speaking instead of being the usual mouthbreathing neckbeard

Wasdie is wrong on this one.

Most of the bottleneck from GPU API calls IS bound to the CPU. THAT is the main issue. Calls to the GPU are never free on PC, they NEED to hit up the CPU due to the nature of the stack. it is mostly CPU overhead that has to be designed around or brute forced through with a powerful CPU.

However, DX 11 coupled with modern DX 11 hardware, alleviates this with things like command buffers,instancing and multi-threaded rendering. Modern engines too use things like draw call batching and being meticulous about performance efficiency in all steps of the rendering chain to help.

So yes, if you can bypass the CPU and go direclty to the GPU X amount of work will be performed faster - how much faster depends on just how much of X relies on expensive CPU bound calls to the GPU.

It's entirely possible to build a game that performs almost identically on a console and a PC. It's also entirely possible to build one that performs horribly on PC and runs much better on console, but you'll have to essentialyl purposely be tryign to do so, or completley ignoring the requirements of the PC pipeline.

Bottom line: a modern engine, running on modern DX 11 hardware via a DX 11 renderer that is properly optimized on the PC will perform about as well as the same engine on the consoles. Worst case scenerio, such an engine might run into a 10-40% performance drop on the PC in certian areas or when doing certina things.

Of course, the thing about PC hardware and modern rendering API's is that everything renders the same on all hardware, it's only speed that differs. So you throw in a bigger GPU and BAM, you've not only got that 10-40% performance back, but you also gained some too. In other words, by the time the developers are consistently getting that extra 10-40% improvement on their end, Pc ahrdware is already considerably more powerful than what the consoles have.

Of course, since the CPU and GPU are so dependant on each other on the PC, you probably also need a beefy CPU in order to get the most out of that new GPU.

Kinthalis

What I was getting at is that the CPUs for the next gen consoles are fine and are not bottlenecks. This is what tightly controlled hardware that you find in a conosle gets you. It's a major benifit.

Lol!The PS4 won't be stronger then PC's. He's probably talking about something else.

super600

you don't know that

[QUOTE="RyviusARC"]

[QUOTE="Wasdie"]

When he says ahead of the PC he means in terms of what they can do on the back end interfacing with the hardware and getting the most out of the hardware. PCs are horribly inefficent due to their OS and their grpahic APIs.

Wasdie

Most of the ineffiencey is on the CPU side though.

You will notice this is lousy console to PC ports.

No it's not. There is plenty of inefficiency on the GPU side of things.

He's actually right about the inefficiencies being on the CPU side a lot of the time. As pointed out earlier the graphic API's cause a lot of overhead. The catch is that the overhead can be on the CPU as well as the GPU. Back in 2001 a Average PC could do around 700-800 draw calls to the GPU while a console like the gamecube could do 1500 easily. Dynamic batching is a common way to lower the number of draw calls. Anyway the point is that CPU's can also pose a problem because of graphic API overheads. A lot of the time the reason your CPU usage may be low(on a modern game of course) is because of the way the engine is handling the timings for its rendering thread. It's just a matter of bad code vs good code.

Next gen CPU's will be enough. you are right about that, but only because they have little to no api overhead. If the same CPU was put in a PC we would run into a serious problem.

Lol!The PS4 won't be stronger then PC's. He's probably talking about something else.

super600

You're talking as if PC is a closed platform, I mean its a computer for goodness sakes. Any new CPU or GPU is open to it. The correct statement is that PS4 won't be stronger than future CPUs and GPUs. PC isn't a closed or set box, its generic in every way.

Man this is really interesting, this is definitely going to be a beast. I can't wait to see what Naughty Dog, Insomniac, Geurilla and Santa Monica have cooked up for PS4.

The creator of what¿ neverheard of him which Im sure the majority of system wars wont....and I dont know if he said it or you but how can someone call they're creation poor post processing and then be taken seriously.WilliamRLBaker

When he says ahead of the PC he means in terms of what they can do on the back end interfacing with the hardware and getting the most out of the hardware. PCs are horribly inefficent due to their OS and their grpahic APIs.

Wasdie

I'm worried that Durango will not pace well with PS4. Microsoft using 3GB of RAM just for the OS is total bullsh*t. That leaves 5GB of DDR3 left.

They are most likely putting Windows 8 it in it. Ridiculous.

I honestly predicted xbox brand was going downhill after Peter Moore left and Don Mattrick was appointed the interactive media president at MS.

I'm really sad to hear that, as my fav console this gen was X360. I really hope they'll change the specs prior launch.