More rumors just emerged - sauce
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The cycle of current-gen hardware is coming to an end, which inevitably means the cycle of rumors about the specs of the next generation must begin. Right on cue, an unnamed insider has released a hefty amount of detail regarding the specs of the PS4 and Xbox 720. Be warned, these are only rumors, but they do give us some interesting scenarios to ponder.
Spec rumors of prominent pieces of tech must be taken with a grain of salt, but they almost always pose some interesting questions. Toward the latter years of the PS3 and Xbox 360 generation, games have ended up relatively on par, from both graphical and technical standpoint. This was largely because the machines are similar in power, and because many popular franchises are multiplatform Call of Duty,Mass Effect,Assassins Creed, etc. and if youre a developer, theres really no need to make one version of a product technically superior compared to the others.
PlayStation 4
The insider noted the name of the console will be the Omni, and Sony chose that name to show the unit can do everything. Itll be interesting to know if itll simply be called Omni, or something like PlayStation Omni. If Sony does drop the PlayStation brand from the name, it would be a first for the companys gaming systems and a huge marketing move.
More notable than the naming is the rumor that the Omni wont be capable of displaying in a native4K resolution, which is most likely going to be the next significant upgrade from HDTV (though ExtremeTechs Joel Hruskasuggests OLED TVsare going to be the next big thing). Instead, the Omni will upscale to 4K, and as most of us know a large enough upscale can significantly reduce image quality.
The insider also says that he has heard from other testers that the Omni dev kits are experiencing heating problems. This is said to be a result of Sony not having enoughmoney
to devote to research and development, like they did with the PS3s Cell processor. He also claimed that Omni dev kits have quietly been available since December of 2012, as Sony is attempting to launch the Omni before Microsofts NextBox. Furthermore, the Omnis chipset, dubbed Starsha, is supposedly going into production on January 23 of this year.
Of course, previous rumors stated that the PS4 would launch in September of 2013, so if the chipset is going into production just a few days from now, the units could easily be ready by then.
The supposed tech specs of the Omni:
- CPU is an x86 system with a 256-bit bus
- An APU with a fast GPU
- 4GB of DDR3 RAM
- 4GB of GDDR3 RAM
- Capable of 3.2TFLOPS of data
- An off-the-shelf design, more reminiscent of a PC than a next-gen gaming console
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X720
Supposedly, the Xbox 720 is designed to employray tracing, a method of graphics rendering that yields very pretty results, but requires much more computational power than the current system. Because of this, ray tracing isnt ideal for graphics that need to be generated on-the-fly, such as those found in video games, and is better suited for imagery that can be created beforehand, such as movies. Pixar films are generated using ray tracing so compare those to a standard modern-day video game and youll get some idea of the difference.
The console will supposedly contain threeSoCs, one Mars model used for the system, and two Venus models used for applications. The insiders specs of the Xbox 720 are a lot more detailed and specific than those of the Omni:
- Mars SOC: AMD 8850 spec GPU clocked at 600MHz,x86 1.8GHz quad-core CPU,Audiodigital signal processing
- Venus SOC: AMD 8900 spec GPU clocked at 800MHz, quad-core CPU clocked at 2.5GHz, 1.5GB GDDR3 RAM on each SOC clocked at 1.2GHz
- Power brick of 300 watts
- Console has 8GB of RAM, but 1GB is dedicated to the operating system
- Capable of 4.2Tflops of data
Whether or not all this information is true,most of the information the insider releasedabout the PS4 was presented in a somewhat negative spin, whereas the information released about the Xbox 720 was put forth in a positive way. Again, none of this information could be true, but if it is, either the PS4 is looking like the inferior unit, or the insider has a noticeable bias.
Conversely,VG247 spoke with developer sourcesafter CES 2013, and were told that the PS4 will have a run-capability of 1.84Tflops, whereas the Xbox 720 will only have a run-capability of 1.23Tflops. VG247 pointed out that iftheserumors are true, then the PS4 will be 50% more computationally powerful than the NextBox. As for the conflicting RAM, the CES sources claimed that the PS4 will have 4GB of RAM, and use 1GB of it strictly for the operating system, whereas the Xbox 720 will have 8GB of RAM, but will have 3GB dedicated to the operating system. TheCESsources also stated that both consoles will play 100GB Blu-ray discs.
Previous rumors suggested that the PS4 is built on AMDs A10 APU, but Joel Hruska swooped in to note that AMDs A10-5800K is not possible of generating the aforementioned 1.84Tflops, and can only manage about 736Gflops. That delta, he noted, would not be able to be made up with a simple variant of the chip, it would require a different design.
So, while both variations of the console specs that have been recently leaked seem to be very different from each other, one common thread is that the PS4 and Xbox 720 will have some sort of significant gap in power between one another, whereas the PS3 and Xbox 360 are comparatively similar. If you dont want to start arguing on the internet about which console is rumored to be more capable, at least you can all agree that both consoles willblow the Wii U out of the water.
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