[Ars][Unconfirmed] PS4 to have an x86 AMD CPU

[Stuka87]

If this proves to be true, I don't find it surprising. AMD takes a trinity based Fusion chip, do a bit of customization to let the GPU have its own faster memory, and now they have a simple, integrated chip that is the CPU and GPU. This should be far cheaper (in console terms) to manufacture than a stand alone CPU with a stand alone GPU.

 

[Mopetar]

Sounds interesting, but I'm interested in where the CPU customization will come in. There's probably a lot of ancient x86 stuff that could be removed in this case as Sony has no need to support legacy code and in some cases probably wouldn't want to as it would make people more interested in buying their subsidized console and not buying games to make up for it.

 

[Olikan]

I don't understand Sony's thinking going with AMD for the CPU. It's going to be weak compared with what Intel could give them.

hard to say, bulldozer have FMA and XOP and is very un-optimazed for todays tasks, game developers can make use of that

 

[MaxPayne63]

I don't understand Sony's thinking going with AMD for the CPU. It's going to be weak compared with what Intel could give them.

Aren't components for consoles typically dogs as far as margins go? It may be that Intel wasn't interested at a price that's acceptable to Sony.

 

[magomago]

PS2: 154 mil sold, profitable right from the start at $300

PS3: 62 mil sold, loss at initial 599 US dollars

PS4: I think I can see where this is going even with the low cost AMD parts.

LOL what a hater; trying to make the past better than it actually was.... the Ps2 was sold at heavy losses when it was first released

 

[magomago]

Fixed that for you.

B.S. you will never get the bugs out of an MMO. Its a game that is always evolving and changing as new content is added. Completely different.

Blizzard's game are almost entirely top notch

 

[magomago]

Aren't components for consoles typically dogs as far as margins go? It may be that Intel wasn't interested at a price that's acceptable to Sony.

yup true....nvidia had a nice deal on the first xbox, and that is why they aren't in the xbox360 LOL.

Its more about the exposure for AMD more than anything

 

[Mopetar]

LOL what a hater; trying to make the past better than it actually was.... the Ps2 was sold at heavy losses when it was first released

Not quite. Sony had a lot of development costs to recoup, but those were largely fixed. The PS2 itself was either always sold at a profit, or was only briefly unprofitable. Here's an article that provides some better explanations and actually examined some of the available financial data to reach its conclusions.

 

[jacktesterson]

Don't mean to sound rude, but hasn't this been known for quite a while? (or at least, rumored, for at least 6 months)

Either way, people expecting a huge HP jump are in for a shocker...

Turns out 8/10 Console gamers are completely happy with the performance they get now. Sony and Microsoft have both heavily hinted they are not willing to take a loss on Hardware to start with, unlike the last generation.

There is no push for Sony/Microsoft to push out high end stuff....

These systems will be able to play 1080p fine, but will still not compare to a PC.

Rumors are floating these will have GPU Power somewhere in the 6770/5830/460/550Ti Range.


And to those saying no to Ports, not going to happen. We will still mostly get ports.

Console gaming will hold PC Gaming back for years to come.

 

[jontech]

crazy

 

[Mopetar]

Rumors are floating these will have GPU Power somewhere in the 6770/5830/460/550Ti Range.


And to those saying no to Ports, not going to happen. We will still mostly get ports.

Console gaming will hold PC Gaming back for years to come.

Those are actually decent cards though and given that console games can be much more heavily optimized for a single hardware configuration, anything at that level will be an incredible performance jump.

Also, if the consoles do use newer hardware, it will at least mean that they're using more modern versions of DirectX/Open GL. Probably the most obvious example of this issue was Crysis 2 which only shipped with DirectX 9 support at launch. Otherwise it's merely a matter of building a robust and scalable engine that can use the extra horsepower found in PCs to increase the resolution or graphics quality.

I think that things will be less of an issue in the immediate future. Eventually we'll get to 2018 and we'll be complaining again because of all the console ports that don't support DirectX 13, or some such nonsense, but that's just part of the vicious cycle.

 

[magomago]

so here is the thing: something around a gtx460 won't be playing at a consistent 30fps/60fps at 1900x1080 unless its a sign that the next generation of console graphics is going to look like, AT BEST, what today can provide.
If you want 3D...don't even think about it at consistently playable frame rates across any and all titles at 1900x1080

I don't think graphics makes the game at all (and disagree with the individuals specfically saying that better graphics = more fun), but its disappointing that a console to be released in 1-2 years will have graphical parity of July 2010 (release of GTX460).

 

[pelov]

so here is the thing: something around a gtx460 won't be playing at a consistent 30fps/60fps at 1900x1080 unless its a sign that the next generation of console graphics is going to look like, AT BEST, what today can provide.
If you want 3D...don't even think about it at consistently playable frame rates across any and all titles at 1900x1080

I don't think graphics makes the game at all (and disagree with the individuals specfically saying that better graphics = more fun), but its disappointing that a console to be released in 1-2 years will have graphical parity of July 2010 (release of GTX460).

But you have to flip that around as well. Consider that years-old consoles were capable of playing games at acceptable frame rates in a manner that's indistinguishable from your PC playing the same game. It's not just about the hardware but also about how close developers are to that hardware, allowing for specialization and the ability to squeeze out every little FPS they can. The fact that we'll be using roughly the same hardware (for the moment) as consoles should provide a healthy stream of games that perform well regardless of the platform (unless AMD decides to screw nVidia like nVidia did AMD AMD-only tesselation or whatever). The console hardware will undoubtedly age and we'll be left in the same situation we're in now but at least for a couple years we'll be happy

 

[jacktesterson]

Those are actually decent cards though and given that console games can be much more heavily optimized for a single hardware configuration, anything at that level will be an incredible performance jump.

Also, if the consoles do use newer hardware, it will at least mean that they're using more modern versions of DirectX/Open GL. Probably the most obvious example of this issue was Crysis 2 which only shipped with DirectX 9 support at launch. Otherwise it's merely a matter of building a robust and scalable engine that can use the extra horsepower found in PCs to increase the resolution or graphics quality.

I think that things will be less of an issue in the immediate future. Eventually we'll get to 2018 and we'll be complaining again because of all the console ports that don't support DirectX 13, or some such nonsense, but that's just part of the vicious cycle.

I totally agree.

We honestly don't have a clue what the final product will be, but if its using a Video Card that performs around a 6770, with proper Optimization 1080p should be fine. I suspect it will once again target 30FPS for the majority of titles though. A 6770 is a capable card, our games are just not optimized properly due to the vast differences in hardware used to run games.

Just seems disappointing this is 2 years away though. (Where will PC performance be by that time? My laptops 6970m is already at 6770 levels in performance, with a stronger CPU.)

 

[Tuna-Fish]

I don't understand Sony's thinking going with AMD for the CPU. It's going to be weak compared with what Intel could give them.

Intel wouldn't give them anything. Sony wants to purchase IP, and produce the chips themselves. Intel would want to sell them complete products.

It just seems like the PS4 will be quite weak compared to previous versions. They usually went with a GPU that was a generation ahead of whatever was available at the time,

No, they didn't. The PS3 GPU was worse than a 7900GS, and it was released 3 days after 8800GTX, which was ~3 times better.

and the Cell CPU was quite advanced as well.

The cell was a in-order, low-ipc piece of shit. (With really impressive maximum aggregate throughput, which no-one ever got even anywhere close to in any real workloads.)

 

[jacktesterson]

Just further proof that even PC Gamers find a 5770/6770 to be acceptable... ITs been the #1 used card on steam for a long time. (unless recently changed, will check)

And our games are not optimised nearly as much as ps4 games will be.



I personally think the 7770 would be a better card to base the GPU off of. It's very low powered and stronger. Oh well. It could happen, these are all rumors.

 

[Tuna-Fish]

Just further proof that even PC Gamers find a 5770/6770 to be acceptable... ITs been the #1 used card on steam for a long time. (unless recently changed, will check)

Actually, it did. Now the holder of the crown is 560 series. (But a *lot* of different cards go under the name, from 560 SE to 560 Ti 448, while 5700 and 6700 are split into two in the stats.)

(edit) Oh, and by the way, there was a major bug in the hardware survey which shifted the numbers to favor older systems. This means the March numbers are now corrected and differ quite a bit from the previous ones.

 

[Olikan]

makes me wonder, how much stronger the 6770 is against a X1800...4 times?

 

[Joseph F]

makes me wonder, how much stronger the 6770 is against a X1800...4 times?

I'd say that's roughly right.

 

[Arzachel]

I don't understand Sony's thinking going with AMD for the CPU. It's going to be weak compared with what Intel could give them.

Not really. Intel has the advantage in that their CPU's are better suited for usual desktop workloads. Heavily threaded, module-conscious software utilizing XOP and FMA4 would work pretty well, considering that console developers can do much more optimization because they only have to target a few combinations of hardware.

 

[IntelUser2000]

They probably went AMD because of the GPU, not the CPU.

The cell was a in-order, low-ipc piece of shit. (With really impressive maximum aggregate throughput, which no-one ever got even anywhere close to in any real workloads.)

Consoles always had weaker CPUs compared to the GPUs. They are for gaming, so it makes sense. Don't underestimate the impact of optimization either. PC refresh cycle is often short enough that not all capabilities are squeezed out of the platform. The 6770 might be more future proof than we think.

 

[taltamir]

console developers can do much more optimization because they only have to target a few combinations of hardware.

Console developers do optimizations because they MUST not because they CAN.

 

[Arzachel]

Console developers do optimizations because they MUST not because they CAN.

You could say the same thing about any kind of software developer, what is your point?

 

[taltamir]

You could say the same thing about any kind of software developer, what is your point?

No, you can't say the same.

PC developers DON'T spend nearly as much optimizing the code because they don't need to. It is the luxury of having powerful hardware.

On the PC they just set minimum/recommended requirements that are higher and let inefficient code be compensated for with hardware power.

On the console they spend a lot of time, effort, and money optimizing because they must in order for the game to work.

Take skyrim PC requirements:

Windows 7/Vista/XP PC (32 or 64 bit)
Processor: Quad-core Intel or AMD CPU
4 GB System RAM
6 GB free HDD space
DirectX 9 compatible NVIDIA or AMD ATI video card with 1GB of RAM (Nvidia GeForce GTX 260 or higher; ATI Radeon 4890 or higher).
DirectX compatible sound card
Internet access for Steam activation

Xbox 360?
512MB of RAM
Triple Core slow and inefficient power PC (an intel/AMD dual core is faster then it)
GeForce GO 7950 with half the ram.
HDD optional.

PS3?
256MB of RAM reserved for games 256MB of ram reserved for the OS.
Cell CPU
HDD optional.

How does it run? well, the PS3 and Xbox are having performance issues and the developers are optimizing it non stop for the consoles... PC? Meh, no worries.
They did turn on the LAA flag though (which modders did first for them)

 

[Arzachel]

They probably went AMD because of the GPU, not the CPU.

They went AMD because they offered competitive performance for less, it's as simple as that. Otherwise they would've just licensed a GPU like MS and Nintendo does/did. (If the rumors are true of course)

Consoles always had weaker CPUs compared to the GPUs. They are for gaming, so it makes sense. Don't underestimate the impact of optimization either. PC refresh cycle is often short enough that not all capabilities are squeezed out of the platform. The 6770 might be more future proof than we think.

That's not saying much, the GPU's in this console generation aren't exactly stellar either. RSX is either a 7800 with half the ROPs and memory bandwidth or a 7600 with double the pixel pipes depending on how you look at it.