The Weakness of the PS4's and X1's CPUs

The CPUs in the Playstation 4 and XBOX ONE are weak laptop/ mobile CPUs. According to the source at the end of this post, each core on the CPUs of the PS4 and X1 has less than 25% of the power on a core of an i5-3570K, which is pathetic. Why did SONY and MS put such weak CPUs in these machines? In regard to the PS4, there is the possibility that its CPU is weaker than the Cell Micro Processor of the PS3. Tisk, tisk, tisk. What have you done, SONY and MS?

Source: http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/ps4-and-xbox-one-s-amd-jaguar-cpu-examined/0116297

Because it would cost much more otherwise.

*cough* PS3 *cough*

hardware costs and consolites are not willing to pay for decent hardware, else they would play on pc.

Less is more.

probably due to financial limitations. or guesses at what a consumer is likely to afford etcetera.

hopefully the steambox SKUs head into 'ultra-hardcore' territory.

because they have to balance things like cost, size, power draw, and heat

Dat balance. Getting more powerful hardware would tip the balance of Cloud and Bonaire.

who cares if they can pump out game graphics like ryse I for one can care less on fancy talk.

Sony/MS are too poor to sell consoles for $300 losses like last gen.

@I_can_haz: 8 Gb of RAM on some weak-ass hardware.

Yep, dat balance.

you'd have 800 dollar systems otherwise

why make the consoles so weak? i don't know.

for all the strength the ps4 has, i wish they'd gone for the $500 price point and included a bit more powerful CPU/GPU on the APU. made a real killer of a console.

then again what's the point of doing that? it's already the most powerful console anyway. anyone who really likes good graphics games on the pc.

maybe this is why i don't game on consoles.

Is the snapdragon 800 in my phone more powerful than the jaguar cores? And is the adreno 330 more powerful than the 360 and ps3 gpu?

FYI - those Jaguars are rated up to 2.75ghz. Technically, we're not even getting the XB1/PS4 at full potential. Probably for heat concerns, but who knows... all it takes is a firmware update (or a hack and some custom cooling) to find out!

I'm curious if anyone will attempt to mod a PS4 or XB1 with a custom-cooler and overclock the CPU to 2.75ghz? Or more if they're unlocked?

At 2.75ghz, you're probably pushing around 2.5 TFLOPS on the PS4. But you'd probably have to open the case and stick another HSF in there.

PS4's so small that I bet that if the CPU were more powerful + the medium end GPU it would cause a fire with these 2 pieces so close to each other. And is not just a CPU but a cluster of 2 APUs, that's why it has 8 cores instead of the usual 4 on PC. And the theory is that because they are so close + the unified ram the ALU is supposed to perform at a level we have never seen.

The difference between the PS4 and Xbox's APUs is that Sony used the additional space to include 4 more CUs for ALU while MS used it for the esRam (to bandage the DDR3 bandwidth bottleneck). So the XB1 doesn't have any CUs to spare on ALU and that's most likely why they had to increase the clock-speeds in order to perform "closer" to the level of the PS4's advantage on ALU/GPGPU.

As of now it has been confirmed that Killzone is only using 14 CUs, all for render. Which mean that this is only the beginning of the graphical evolution we'll see as time goes on and developers start coding more stuff at low level.

It's not like MS is going to leave OC'ing open for end users. We're tlkaing some serious modding, which would likely mena no online as it would be flagged as a box capable of piracy.

To keep the price down and as you're better of putting the budget into areas like the GPU. GPGPU compute will help too. Just how necessary is a really strong CPU anyway? There are still PC games unoptimised in this area and even a fraction of a CPUs power, Rome 2 isn't even using 2 cores of my CPU at the moment and Planetside 2 for example is only getting the optimisations for Quad Cores because of the console release.

PS4 is still better than 99% of the hermits PC's, so, there's that.

We already know the PS4 and Xbox One CPU's are low power (meaning their TDP), efficient CPU's, pretty much designed for laptops. But they're still powerful CPU's, not top of range (or even mid range for a desktop) i5 or i7 monsters. Having an i5 or i7 in a console, purely for gaming would be overkill, you simply wouldn't use that extra headroom. If anything the hardware that's really restricting the new consoles is their focus on using APUs (read: Integrated graphics) rather than dedicated GPU tech with their own die and heatsinks etc. But they're still much more powerful than the 360 or PS3 specs.

With a bit of luck it'll remove any chance of the same overheating problems that plagued the early units from this generation for years though.

lolno

The CPU is acceptable but the speed is ridiculous in my opinion. If they overclocked it to 2.75 GHZ that would be more realistic. I myself may try to see about overclocking if there is a way. If I have to add a fan that's fine but then again with it being so small there may not be room in there.

They are weak but they aren't that weak. A 6 year old dual core processor can run Planetside 2. Puts things in perspective. They are good enough for the total amount of power the system has. It's not like they are bottlenecking the GPU. Also consoles don't have a slight CPU bottleneck that PCs get with high level graphics APIs.

@RimacBugatti: Having processors clocked at 3.2 gHZ is a direct reason why the PS3/360 had a lot of overheating issues. Higher clocks speeds paired with dust (and consoles get really dusty as nobody takes theirs apart to clean it) means bigger fans that are loud and a lot of heat. Even clocking them at 2.75 gHZ would result in a lot more heat. It's not worth the risk.

The PS4 and Xbox One have much faster and more RAM which helps eliminate a lot of the real bottlenecks of the PS3/360.

The PS4 has its GPU to fall back on... apparently its very good with GPU compute, so at least that can help the CPU if it becomes a bottleneck.

@GTSaiyanjin2: That's not really an option. That would radically alter how you program the game. Splitting the processing between the GPU and CPU for general processing tasks would mean a lot of waiting time and would bog down performance in general.

Stuff like physics could probably be pushed to the GPUs, but then you're sapping precious GPU power away. I believe the PS4 and Xbox One are using APUs so they have that for doing larger, math heavy equations like physics.

I dont really understand the tech side of this GPU compute stuff, but I'm sure sony put it in the PS4 for a reason. I know the xbox one does not have the same GPU compute power, so maybe in the future this could be an advantage. But yeah I would imagine it would cripple the GPU if its asked to do too many CPU task's.

haha dream on, but just for the lolz i have a 7970 and core i7, is ps4 better than mine? get on my level peasant

About half that guys post count is spewing what you quoted. :P Davekeeh 2.0 is what i think.

My pc already beats both though

I highly doubt that.

Cost, obviously. If you are going to keep the costs down in a console, that would be the place to do it.

EDIT: Just read the article. Another stupid comparison. So 4 of the 8 cores in the consoles are reserved for system applications, leaving only 4 cores for the games. The author states "“In raw processing terms, these four Jaguar cores have slightly less than a quarter the grunt of a Core i5-3570K."

>Implying any games use all 4 cores of a 3570k in the first place

>implying that on the cores that the games do use, they max out the CPU

The consoles will be fine and the CPU is not a bottleneck, there just isn't a whole lot of GPU power you can put into the console for $4-500 relative to a PC

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Sony did alright, Microsoft didn't mostly due to kinect

When compared to AMD Jaguar, CELL's PPE or SPU is weaker in branching type workloads.

In terms of chip size, You could fit four AMD Jaguar cores into one Intel Haswell core.

No.

Consolites don't care about hardware power, so this point is moot.

Now it's time to leave this thread, and read all the threads about power comparisons between the two consoles.

I bid thee farewell.

Yes they are weak. But they have to be.

These are consoles, a small form factor box, heat is a major factor.

This is wrong. PS4 would not have 2.5 TFLOPS with 8 core AMD Jaguar CPUs at 2.75 Ghz.

They use those cores because you can't stick a big, hot monster CPU on a chip right next to a big, hot GPU.

Filthy console peasants are used to this type of things, so they don't care.

get down on your knees peasanet and worship the master race

@ronvalencia: I dont see snapdragon 800 in that graph

both companies went with the bare minimum for gaming that's why.

honestly give it all a rest. weak CPU's i mean what are you comparing it to??? because the last time i check the ps3 and the 360 have produced some of the best looking games ever.

Taking high end pc builds which cost more than 800/900 out of the equation ,

both the ps3/360 have been using the same tech for 7years, and the ram of both is around 256mb, this time around they both have 8gb of ram and alot better graphics card, how can you say it's weak when the only comparison you can compare them to is ps3/360.

The whole point of a console is that it is a plug in and play games machine, it's cheap and affordable and we get to play games.

Unless you have a load of money and are always bringing in that money, you won't be able to get the best gaming pc which will play the latest games at the top of it's level for 7years they last around 4years if not less when you start having to bring the settings down.

so it's either spend a 1000 or more for the top end gaming pc which will allow you to play games maxed out for a couple of years and then have to play it in downgraded settings or spend more money to keep up with graphics, or spend 399/499 which guarantee's you the top games at the top graphics for 7years and the only thing you may need to change is a bigger hard drive.

Are all you consolites so devoid of logic?

Or do you actually think that playing PC games at high settings is the same as console settings? 'cause it's not. You get what you pay for.

And it looks like this next gen is goign to be filled with your 720p, 30 fps tears as games continue to get more demanding :P

I'll be enjoying the same games at 1440p, Gsync, and 144 FPS and way better graphics settings.

I dont buy consoles for their hardware, I but them for their exclusives. I have a gaming PC for when I actually care about pushing gfx.

@bezza2011: consoles don't play games at top settings. The **** you talking about..

That doesn't actually matter if you yourself have a good PC.

@bezza2011: Even the most graphically impressive titles on console are works of technical mediocrity sprinkled with tons of post processing effects to hide it.

Literally. Had they went with better CPU's, that would eat into GPU space and RAM wouldn't be as good. Those CPU's won't create any bottlenecks whatsoever, It's all about memory and graphics for game development these days.

And besides, they're still leagues better than the Xenon CPU in xbox 360, so they aren't weak in the first place.

Lol. Keep telling yourself that.

It's true. You don't need a strong CPU to get the most out of mid-low range GPU's like the ones in the consoles... There's no bottleneck

wow this article is so old. they compare a 4core 1.5ghz jaguar xDDDD

good thing PS4 has a 8core 1.6-2.0ghz jaguar.

so when will PC beat Shadow Fall?