Are next-gen consoles gonna be gimped by their weak cpu's?

futurefields

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2012
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The CPU's in the next gen consoles are 8 cores of tablet CPU welded with the GPU to form the APU that powers these things. Single thread performance is likely to be very low while forcing developers to come up with creative ways to multithread the engine so they can get decent performance out of 8 weak cores.

What do you guys think about that?



"At the Ubisoft E3 event, the PC version of The Crew was running at 30 frames per second, but the first working compilation of the PS4 codebase wasn't quite so hot, operating at around 10fps."

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-how-the-crew-was-ported-to-playstation-4
 

cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
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"First working compilation" and you use that as a claim that the CPU is weak? Get out of here.

No it's not breaking speed records, and my 4.5Ghz 3570k is faster for sure. That said, it does have the capability of using multiple cores which will be the real strength.

Also 30fps on a modern PC being considered good is utterly disgusting anyway. This game is hardly close to being ready to show off.

Here's what I think, quit trolling when you obviously don't have the first clue about the hardware.
 

BrightCandle

Diamond Member
Mar 15, 2007
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We have had plenty of PC exclusives that despite being very limited by the CPU failed to utilise the 6 core and above CPUs. When the devs talk about the process of multithreading their game its clear its very difficult for them to do so and that they are struggling to extract the additional threading for their games.

With consoles developers will genuinely have no choice, the CPUs are as you said very weak and there are a lot of them. Even then the 8 cores in the consoles is going to be rather pathetic compared to the average quad core PC despite having twice as many cores. This is potentially a recipe for disaster in terms of the quality for games, it could increase the production cost while most of the performance lays unused. Or it might finally get games to use more cores. The evidence so far suggests more cores is going to be near impossible, so in practice its likely to hurt the performance on offer for games on next gen consoles.
 

Sonikku

Lifer
Jun 23, 2005
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Ah yes, the "quantity over quality" cpu approach, just like with the Saturn. I'm sure it will pan out just as well.
 

cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
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Developers will use multithreading, to think they won't or cant is just being in denial. It might not be easy at first but it'll be done.

Besides, if you look at some of the games we have coming on Day 1, I don't see anything unsatisfactory about them even if you think they aren't using more than two CPU cores. Not everything needs to be compared to an overclocked PC.
 

Arkaign

Lifer
Oct 27, 2006
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Developers will be forced to use heavy MT, lol. The CPU portion of Kabini is incredibly weak. It is very accurately described as a super-wide netbook CPU. IPC is quite low. How low? Well let's just say that core for core, a 2006-era Core 2 Duo is faster clock for clock, proven by the benches.

However, I don't think it's going to be a gigantic problem. Gaming doesn't need heavy CPU for most types of gaming, and the kinds of gaming that is very CPU intensive (simulations, massive war games, RTS with hundreds/thousands of units, turn-based games with many thousands of variables, etc) are just not popular or even available most of the time on consoles.

Would faster have been better? Sure. However, both Sony and Microsoft obviously decided this time around NOT to push the boundaries at all in terms of spec. In 2005, the 360 was very hot, power hungry, and chock full of cutting edge tech for the time. 99% of PCs at the time were a joke compared to the 360. Ditto the PS3.

What happened though was that reliability was terrible on the 360 (RROD), and only average for the PS3 (YLOD/BD drive failures), along with massive costs and losses getting the things out there. That meant that they couldn't lower prices very fast to get people to scoop them up, which is really how they make their money : install base and attachment rate.
 
Oct 19, 2000
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Consoles are gimped by design, that's why they work. One standard for its life-cycle, it will not change. Either you accept that and know every game released will work without hassle or you game on the PC.
 

futurefields

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2012
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Consoles are gimped by design, that's why they work. One standard for its life-cycle, it will not change. Either you accept that and know every game released will work without hassle or you game on the PC.

Right.

I'm wondering about the impact on game design mostly. Things like physics, LOD scaling, AI, environment interactivity etc... these are all heavily impacted by cpu performance are they not?

I was hoping next-gen open world games would be heavily more interactive and with a lot more "permanence" to them but with the lack of raw CPU on tap next-gen are we in store for more of the same? (for example, cars disappearing in open world games, totally static environments etc...)
 

Subyman

Moderator <br> VC&G Forum
Mar 18, 2005
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AI can be threaded and typically doesn't take much processing power. Only the most advanced games even use weighing mechanisms, most are simple logic flow charts, which any CPU can tear through. Pathfinding is an exercise in lookup tables, the navigation grid is pre-baked. It is actually surprising how little compute it takes to make a decent AI system.

LOD scaling seems like a task that can easily be multi-threaded since one object isn't based on the completion of another and many objects need to be computed. Anything that is finite difference based such as real-time smoke/fire/water/fluid simulations will not run well since they can not be run in parallel (solving systems of equations or iterative loops.)

Most "interactive and alive" worlds only simulate the objects directly in front of the player. The other objects are put to sleep and brought up to speed once they are in the player's area of influence. Writing numerically stable models is very important for gaming due to these large time deltas between calculations.
 

Subyman

Moderator <br> VC&G Forum
Mar 18, 2005
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Absolutely it is because there's no reason to come here and post about a game's first build not running at a good franerate and equating that to "console are gimp compared to PC"



yeah right...you defend the guy purposely trolling the console board?

Regardless of the article, its a good discussion to have (the effect of low IPC, high core CPUs.) No need to muddy this thread with accusations.
 

cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
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Regardless of the article, its a good discussion to have (the effect of low IPC, high core CPUs.) No need to muddy this thread with accusations.

Good information presented in a bias fashion.

We've already had these discussions in the CPU and VC&G boards anyway.
 

futurefields

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2012
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Bias how? I am simply telling the truth as I see it - these CPU's were not designed first and foremost with getting the best game performance possible. They are designed to handle multiple apps simultaneously and within that paradigm I think it's relevant to discuss the actual game performance these things are truly capable of.

You are seriously bottlenecking the conversation and adding nothing, so please leave.
 

cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
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Bias how? I am simply telling the truth as I see it - these CPU's were not designed first and foremost with getting the best game performance possible. They are designed to handle multiple apps simultaneously and within that paradigm I think it's relevant to discuss the actual game performance these things are truly capable of.

You are seriously bottlenecking the conversation and adding nothing, so please leave.

I know all about that, but re-read your OP. Specifically when you quote something about the first build of a game running at 10fps and seemingly equate that to being gimp.

When you have games like Forza 5 running 60fps @ 1080p and games that look as good as Killzone releasing on day one of a console. I don't see the gimp part. Yeah a PC will almost always have more raw power, but I don't think it's fair to compare the two because as blurredvision said they are designed this way. They need to come in at low power and low cost when compared to a PC built specifically with gaming in mind.
 

futurefields

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2012
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I understand the gimping process. Wow. You explained it to me again though. "They do it to save power, cost, etc..."

The point of this discussion is -

How will this effect next gen game development? Will we not have big improvements in environment interactivity, physics, AI, etc... because the CPU's generally won't be powerful enough? I want open world games to feel more alive, more interactive, more "permanent" in the way I can change them. These are largely CPU related things, rather than GPU, which only draws the pretty picture after all is said and done with the CPU side of things.
 

ImpulsE69

Lifer
Jan 8, 2010
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Why has no one mentioned that power creates heat and consoles are known for having heat issues as of late. It's not like a PC where you can watercool it or add 20 fans to the case. They still need to be able to operate in peoples cabinets.

With today's technology you can only make consoles so fast and tolerate so much heat. They already learned from last gen the issues.

As stated, these weren't designed for games to maximize all cores, they were designed for multitasking (hell even PC's are designed that way). They were also designed to be as cheap as possible. Really I don't see a problem with it (other than the marketing speak that they are as good as top of the line computers). The advantage they have is what has been stated repeatedly (and every gen). They are a single hardware spec that can be optimized for over the life of the console. They don't need to hit a moving target to get the best out of it which in turn can give them some performance boosts.
 
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cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
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As I said, they will use multithreading. They have to, and as Subyman said AI and things like that don't take a ton of processing power on their own.

It won't be super easy for developers right away, but looking at Watch Dogs I think that is a pretty big and interactive environment.
 

purbeast0

No Lifer
Sep 13, 2001
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"gimped" is all relative. it just depends what the devs want to do with their games.

as stated, forza 5 hardly looks gimped at all. but it would probably look gimped if they wanted to run it at double the resolution at 120fps.
 

futurefields

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2012
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Racing games like Forza have got to be the easiest type of game to deal with CPU wise. Almost nothing going on really, that's a GPU-dependant game through and through
 

cmdrdredd

Lifer
Dec 12, 2001
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Racing games like Forza have got to be the easiest type of game to deal with CPU wise. Almost nothing going on really, that's a GPU-dependant game through and through

The car physics calculations, the suspension modeling, the AI probably use some CPU, undoubtedly when you go online it also eats more cpu. I dunno how much though and we'll never know.

Still just saying "the CPU is gimped" doesn't mean the games will be.
 

mmntech

Lifer
Sep 20, 2007
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Games aren't as CPU dependent as they once were. Especially as powerful GPUs take more of the load off for calculating things like physics. It's a lot easier to optimize code for embedded systems because you're always dealing with the same hardware constraints.

PC gaming has sort of been slow to really fully utilize multi-threading and 64-bit architecture. Not to mention hardware fragmentation. Especially when the majority of PC gamers are only rocking dual core systems and Intel HD 3000 graphics.
 

Staples

Diamond Member
Oct 28, 2001
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They will be ok today but I am surprised that the CPU/GPU in these things are so weak for systems that will probably be around at least 6 years before we see a refresh.