How powerfull are the CPUs on current gen consoles?

How powerfull are the CPUs on current gen consoles?

for hermits its a tablet CPU, for console fans its a might 8 core CPU, the truth is that consoles have low power CPUs that have no straight comparison on PCs or tablets, but CPUs with the same jaguar cores have been released with the same clocks and a very close comparison is possible

the closest thing to a PS4 CPU is the Athlon 5150, it has the same jaguar cores and runs at the same 1,6ghz, it also has the same amount of L2 cache for each 4 cores, the PS4 CPU is a perfect double of the Athlon 5150, and all points to a performance exactly double of this CPU

but 25% of the PS4 CPU is dedicated to the OS, unlike PCs where might occour performance drops if the user let windows tasks active, the PS4 have dedicated resources to prevent it, but it loses 25% of potential performance

the perfect comparison for PS4 CPU in games is 1,5 the performance of the Athlon 5150, equivalent to 6 cores as seen below

first we compare the Athlon 5150 with the Sempron 2650 used in low performance notebooks, this Sempron uses the same jaguar cores at 1,45ghz, and it shows that the number of jaguar cores scale well but not perfectly with performance, it also shows that the PS4 CPU is way above tablet level CPU processing power

now the Athlon 5150 vs the A6-5200 with 4 jaguar cores at 2,0ghz, that shows jaguar core scale near perfectly with clock speeds, again PS4 CPU is far above tablets or cheap low power notebooks

now the Athlon 5150 and expected PS4 performance compared to some popular but aged CPUS

2008's Core 2 quad q9650

2009's Phenom X4 955

2012's i5-2500

PS4 performance is closer to the 2008's handcaped Phenom X3 720

and probably the oldest and cheapest i3 you can still find on the market is far above current consoles CPU performance, that might explain why near every game tested by Digital Foundry performs better on a cheap PC with a combination of a 750ti and a cheap i3 CPU

to prove the point we must find this on real life, its very hard to find people still using those old CPUs but i could find some videos on youtube to show that its possible to get PS4 level performance with an 7 years old handcaped Phenom X3, at least when the developer dont get lazy on the PC version or add features to be processed by the CPU that are not present on the console version

here is a Phenom x4 running GTA V much better than the PS4 with a 750ti

Dying Light (that on PC low settings sometimes looks better than PS4) running on a 2008's Phenom X3 on 25-30fps

and Witcher 3 1080p high settings on a 750ti with a almost 8 years old core 2 quad q9550 @40fps

sure its not recomended to use such a weak CPU to play modern PC games, but the fact that its possible to run the same games/settings on a cheap 2008's CPU shows how limited the resources are on current consoles and how developers already have to downgrade to run multiplatform games on console

If only it actually used 8 cores for games, it uses 6 and just how well it threads in games is unknown.

And water is wet.

Something something potato

A potato is inside my ps4. I never asked for this but that is what i received

So they are in par with those calculator watches that were popular in the 90's.

Yeah we get it, PCs are more powerful... whatever.

From what I understand, the CPUs are the primary bottleneck on all three consoles of this generation.

Where's Captain Obvious when you need him?

Yeah, we get it, PCs are way, way stronger than consoles.

I'm the first person to trumpet the obvious superiority of PCs over consoles, but I usually just mention it in threads. We don't need ANOTHER thread dedicated to "PCs have better CPUs."

Nice comparison. Probably took a bit of time to come up with graphs.

I also share this understanding.

Which is probably why we aren't seeing any real advances in anything outside of fancier graphics. Since the CPU is the main source of power for things like AI and physics.

that consoles have weaker hardware is obvious, i just wanted to check exactly how much

then people your understanding is not very good.

PS4 and Xbone don't really have any bottlenecks, they just lack raw power in general. They are very balanced machines, a first for a console. You could say they both are the very best consoles that have ever been built.

And on a side note, devs still aren't really using GPGPU. I think Tomb Raider for the Xbone will be the first game to truly harness gpu computing. And then pretty much every AAA game next year is following suit.

Gamecube and Dreamcast

Thats kind of a lie, they are balanced in such a way to keep the GPU fed but that doesn't mean CPU is powerful enough to do everything that devs will want to do, the hardware is just weak so there is no clear bottlenecks.

Hell yeah, most efficient designs ever. Also Gue is just wrong here.

the weak CPU is responsible for terrible framerates even in games that were first released as PS4 exclusives like Oddworld New and Tasty, and its a 2d platformer, not even that demanding, CPU also responsible for this https://i.imgur.com/r6b6xZg.gif

Current gen CPUs and powerful should never be used in the same sentence (except this sentence of course).

no damage control from consolites?

Physics have advanced over last gen. The difference between FM4 and FM5 is vast.

Ai will always be the slowest, but that's down to research.

We aren't seeing anything outside of graphics because these consoles need a selling point. The graphics are weak, so they have to sacrifice most of the resources to push them as hard as they can. Otherwise if they used the resources for next gen gameplay, these consoles would look more like the gen 7.5 they are.

It's sad, when I heard they had so much RAM, I didn't think they'd waste it all on textures and OS. But that's console gaming, it's mainstream, it's all graphics and 30fps and their gamers are happy.

Gamecube wasn't balanced. It was held back by the storage media size. Maybe RAM could have been a bit bigger as well.

The Xbox was more balanced although the CPU wasn't great. But if the weak CPUs we have now are okay, maybe it was too for its time.

The point of consoles is to get an acceptable gaming package for a reasonable price. The games are optimized for that specific hardware, which is a huge advantage over budget PC's.
No one is going to build a computer for the same price that can run games as well, even if you somehow find hardware in that price range that is equivalent to current gen consoles.

Why is this still an argument? Of course an overpowered, or even mildly powerful CPU will smoke a console's CPU. A decent gaming processor like Intel's 6th gen i5 will cost you more than half the price of a console though.

What factors are you using to adjust the PS4's projected single threaded performance? If the 5150 is identical to the PS4's cpu at the same clock the single threaded performance would not change.

The i5-2500k was a Jan 2011 cpu.

Funny how a 2008 cpu is still better than the PS4's projected performance.

about as powerful as my phone

oh wait my phone is actually more powerful

these consoles are pathetic

This was removed from a ps4 earlier, looks like the CPU

@leandrro:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5058/amds-opteron-interlagos-6200/10

Cinebench R11.5 doesn't support 256bit AVXv1, AVXv2 and FMAC/FMA.

AMD Jaguar only has 128bit AVX(executes 256bit AVX in 2 cycles) and doesn't support FMA hardware.

So far all I see is speculation as to what could be causing the issues... i haven't seen any one run any actual tests because you can't. They are just as likely to be writing really bad multithreaded code. Look at the single player of uncharted 4... you can't tell me that ND did such amazing work on ps4 and a 2d platformer is being held back by the same cpu. Also isn't LOD and draw distance a GPU thing.

Make a thread about consoles CPU.

Make a whole wall of text + several graphs.

Don't mention the xbox one even by mistake..lol

Yeah you are not a lemm in a hermit suit right.?

Hahahaaaaaaaaaa

Mooaar powahful than a locomotive and able to leap tall building in a single bound. :P

lol wut?

everybody knows that the potato box is 1,75ghz vs PS4's 1,6ghz, just make the math, xbox is irrelevant anyways...

It's Captain System Wars (Dur dur durrrrrrr)

Back on topic. Sigh people comparing PCs to consoles for the millionth time. PC will be and forever be stronger than consoles. The difference is consoles will majority of the time set the limits of what game is going to be like. If I were a developer I would make game for a console because I know what the specs are for a console. Meanwhile if you create a game for the PC well prepare to send people a survey and see what the median results are and then you have an idea of what your shooting for.

Every one knows both consoles have weaks CPU but you made a parade about it didn't you.? Worse you don't even mention the xbox one and completely make the thread about the PS4..

Why put consoles on the main title you just talked about the ps4 lemming..lol

I remember the xbox one has a i7...lol

the low frames in oddworld and the short draw distance in bf4 is surely a CPU thing, my old i5 gets almost 2x the PS4 framerate with a gtx660 that is not better thjan the GPU inside the PS4, draw distance is related to the CPU drawing the mesh

i doubt they are that balanced. A 7870 gpu paired with a low end cpu the 7870 will be bottlenecked quite a bit in cpu bound scenarios, Sure there is more overhead on consoles but still that is a low end cpu and that is the reason when in some games settings like draw distance that are primarily cpu bound are turned down on consoles ( a prime example is dying light where draw distance is even lower that pc's lowest setting )

Underwhelming.

Well PS4 is the world's most powerful video game console.

ps4/xbox1 have been out around 2years now and you still need ask this?

@leandrro:

Again, its not real evidence atm. Games like UC4 contradict this theory especially when it has huge streaming areas with great graphics and virtually no pop in from LOD. Everything that gets drawn is related to the cpu in some way because its what tells the gpu to draw it. When the games can barely manage 60fps (uc4 is 30 sp) and not always hitting 1080p... What does it mean if they can't hit 1080p all the time? The GPU is hitting its limit as well. Its pretty obvious that the system is pretty well balanced but not very powerful, it probably needs a bit more care because it lacks raw power to pummel through inefficient code.

i still wonder how much of the performance boils down to a crap CPU and how much boils down to still using unsuitable last gen tech and thinking.

there is no doubt that a shift in thinking is required. last gen it was a lot more CPU heavy (especially on the PS3) where as now its all about getting the GPU to do non graphical things to really make it shine. is even more important now to get your game running effectively accross multile CPU cores to keep the GPU fed and to offload some of what would have been CPU work last gen to the GPU.

we are quite a bit into the gen now though and i would imagine a lot of the work would have been well under way....yet games are still having issues. how is creed syndicate? from what i have seen it does seem to be more stable and better performing but the crowds also seem a lot smaller. thats optimisation by the axe and, really, we should still be at the optimisation by the agorithm phase.

maybe they should have gone with a straonger dual core setup :P.

so powerful.

can barely run falllout 4 on low-med with 25 fps

sad day for gaming

Eh no, It's SW President and Master in Chief SP and don't you forget it. lol :P

Well, I guess you could say that since the bottles are so small, it's hard to tell where the neck is. 8)

AMD Jaguar will beat ARM A15, but not against ARM A57. At 28 nm process technology, both AMD Jaguar's chip size is close to ARM A15.

Both R7-260 (~XBO) and R7-265 (~PS4) smashes your phone's GPU or any Samsung S6 or any latest Apple mobile devices.

AMD ZEN (includes at least Intel 256bit AVXv2 SIMD +FMA3 support) replaces both AMD Jaguar and AMD Streamroller/Excavator(includes Intel 256bit AVXv2 SIMD +FMA3 support).