Digital Foundry: all questioned AAA developers recommend AMD CPU's for gaming PC's

[erunion]

Perhaps first gen games will look better than a most current PC, but I guarantee you that the PC versions of the same games will run better than they do on PS4 (higher resolution, higher framerate, more features, etc) when paired with high end hardware. But if you don't believe it I guess you'll have to wait and see.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-unreal-engine-4-ps4-vs-pc

PS4 is definately worse than gtx 680.

 

[Blitzvogel]

Why is everyone so butthurt over the PS4 PC comments?

Sure, in theoreticals the PS4 should be hardly better than an FX-4xxx + Radeon 7850, but we all know that such a setup will probably be obsolete for playing multiplatform titles in a few years. It's "perfect" in the sense that the PC relevant processing hardware has had it's bottlenecks highly but reasonably balanced in reference to the expected performance of the CPU and GPU cores and projected cost to consumers.

It's a damn decent kit for $400 if the price really is such. A "PC version" of such a setup (same APU + same 256 bit 8 GDDR5 memory) would be pretty awesome. I'd gladly pay $600 for it assuming it came with Win7 or 8. My only qualm would be CPU clock speed, as plenty of games are likely better tuned to 2 or 4 threads max, and GHz would be of the upmost necessity to maintain high FPS.

 

[Exophase]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-unreal-engine-4-ps4-vs-pc

PS4 is definately worse than gtx 680.

I thought saying that "the PC versions of those same games will look and run better" was enough to show I already know that. What I was trying to say is that the new consoles will raise the bar on the lowest common denominator, so we'll see more games that are designed with that minimum spec in mind. Today most games are designed with PS3/XBox360 in mind and then enhanced for PC, and a lot of first PS4 games could look better than that.

 

[blastingcap]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-unreal-engine-4-ps4-vs-pc

PS4 is definately worse than gtx 680.

Am I reading that right or are they removing even the OPTION of SVOGI for all platforms including PC?? I really hope I'm misreading that.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Why is everyone so butthurt over the PS4 PC comments?

Sure, in theoreticals the PS4 should be hardly better than an FX-4xxx + Radeon 7850, but we all know that such a setup will probably be obsolete for playing multiplatform titles in a few years. It's "perfect" in the sense that the PC relevant processing hardware has had it's bottlenecks highly but reasonably balanced in reference to the expected performance of the CPU and GPU cores and projected cost to consumers.

It's a damn decent kit for $400 if the price really is such. A "PC version" of such a setup (same APU + same 256 bit 8 GDDR5 memory) would be pretty awesome. I'd gladly pay $600 for it assuming it came with Win7 or 8. My only qualm would be CPU clock speed, as plenty of games are likely better tuned to 2 or 4 threads max, and GHz would be of the upmost necessity to maintain high FPS.

If they were backed by solid data from a reliable source, I would have no problem with it. It is what it is, so to speak. The problem is all kind of claims are being bandied about and comments from persons with a vested interest in the platform are quoted without question.

I have no doubt it will be a very nice gaming platform. I have never disputed that. It just is not valid to say whether or not it will rival a top end gaming pc until we see the actual results. It may invalidate gaming pcs for the next 2 years, or it may only rival a midrange current gaming PC. I dont know because there is no data.

 

[galego]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-unreal-engine-4-ps4-vs-pc

PS4 is definately worse than gtx 680.

No.

The article explains that both demos are virtually the same (except SVOGI and FX scaling) and that many visual differences were due to merging different cinematics and some bug such as broken tessellation.

As explained in the article, the PC demo is old and developed over a well understood API. The PS4 has been developed over a non-final API.

Developers received the PS4 kit some weeks ago and had no time to do it better before the scheduled show. This is also said in the article read the part about "we know for a fact that most studios only received final dev kits in the weeks beforehand" or the part about "compromises".

Moreover, this is not said in the article, the Ps4 demo was not running on the PS4, but on a kit and the kit was using less than 30% of real possibilities of the PS4.

Moreover, the PS4 demo was a fast port from the PC. No optimization, no use of unified memory, no use of HSA...

The PS4 is much better than the GTX 680.

 

[CHADBOGA]

The PS4 is much better than the GTX 680.

If that were true, it almost certainly changes when video cards come out on 20nm.

 

[Exophase]

If that were true, it almost certainly changes when video cards come out on 20nm.

Someone who believes PS4 is much better than a PC with a GTX 680 then sounds willing to believe pretty much anything about console hardware :|

I'm guessing that it's not also true that PS4 is much better than HD 7970..

 

[Sleepingforest]

Clearly, the PS4 is better than 2 Titans in SLI. I mean, the lower overhead, the faster API calls, the countless devs calling it a perfect gaming machine... at least, that's the reasoning I've been hearing

Actually I have yet to see performance with a finalized and optimized game (a few hastily ported games don't really count). I'll believe whatever I see; until then, it's probably best to reserve judgement.

 

[erunion]

I thought saying that "the PC versions of those same games will look and run better" was enough to show I already know that.

Backing you up.

 

[Enigmoid]

Clearly, the PS4 is better than 2 Titans in SLI. I mean, the lower overhead, the faster API calls, the countless devs calling it a perfect gaming machine... at least, that's the reasoning I've been hearing

Actually I have yet to see performance with a finalized and optimized game (a few hastily ported games don't really count). I'll believe whatever I see; until then, it's probably best to reserve judgement.

+1. I think it may be well over a year before we see any games that can really use a ps4.

I highly doubt the ps4 is better than two titans. Sheer brute power. But we'll wait and see.

 

[galego]

Guerrilla Games' technical director Michiel Van Der Leeuw has dismissed the notion that PS4 is little more than a high-end PC, suggesting that those describing the console that way are 'trolls' and 'fanboys'

http://www.edge-online.com/news/ps4-isnt-just-a-high-end-pc-says-guerrilla-games/

There is some technical remark and the history of the development that deserves a reading as well.

 

[Spjut]

+1. I think it may be well over a year before we see any games that can really use a ps4.

I highly doubt the ps4 is better than two titans. Sheer brute power. But we'll wait and see.

Timothy Lottes said that PS4 1st party games could be lightyears ahead of the PC, but agreed that most initial games probably would be DX11 ports

One thing that devs have complained openly about with DX11 is that it has too expensive draw calls.
The eight years old consoles are using 10-20000 draw calls, whereas PC games using DX11 use a maximum of 5000 draw calls, so there's obviously still plenty of work to be done.

If one looks back at the beginning and looks at the 360/PS3 games that got ported to the PC, they required pretty good hardware to run well, both GPU and CPU wise.

 

[galego]

Timothy Lottes said that PS4 1st party games could be lightyears ahead of the PC, but agreed that most initial games probably would be DX11 ports

One thing that devs have complained openly about with DX11 is that it has too expensive draw calls.
The eight years old consoles are using 10-20000 draw calls, whereas PC games using DX11 use a maximum of 5000 draw calls, so there's obviously still plenty of work to be done.

If one looks back at the beginning and looks at the 360/PS3 games that got ported to the PC, they required pretty good hardware to run well, both GPU and CPU wise.

Yes Timothy Lottes (Nvidia) said so, but some game developers has already announced that their games will run faster on the PS4 than on PC.

 

[Exophase]

One thing that devs have complained openly about with DX11 is that it has too expensive draw calls.
The eight years old consoles are using 10-20000 draw calls, whereas PC games using DX11 use a maximum of 5000 draw calls, so there's obviously still plenty of work to be done.

Which ultimately means that games are usually optimized to use less draw calls, and kept this way across the board.

If one looks back at the beginning and looks at the 360/PS3 games that got ported to the PC, they required pretty good hardware to run well, both GPU and CPU wise.

But back then the delta wasn't as great. XBox 360 in particular had a GPU with technology that was absent from PCs in 2005. PS3 had Cell which gave it a bunch more raw FLOPs than 2006 CPUs.

PS4 has a GPU which is same basic design but half as powerful as what was released over a year ago and, and a CPU which is even further behind even older CPUs - and no, having a big hardware core count doesn't change that. The delta will be bigger by the end of 2013 when PS4 is actually released. Low level API advantages and unified RAM does help but they don't negate what you can get with a > 2x difference in transistor budget and an even bigger difference in power budget while using the same or better process technology.

 

[Spjut]

Which ultimately means that games are usually optimized to use less draw calls, and kept this way across the board.



But back then the delta wasn't as great. XBox 360 in particular had a GPU with technology that was absent from PCs in 2005. PS3 had Cell which gave it a bunch more raw FLOPs than 2006 CPUs.

PS4 has a GPU which is same basic design but half as powerful as what was released over a year ago and, and a CPU which is even further behind even older CPUs - and no, having a big hardware core count doesn't change that. The delta will be bigger by the end of 2013 when PS4 is actually released. Low level API advantages and unified RAM does help but they don't negate what you can get with a > 2x difference in transistor budget and an even bigger difference in power budget while using the same or better process technology.

But regarding the draw calls, isn't it likely that it's going to be a problem down the road for PCs with DX11? (and even if there is a much more improved DX or OpenGL available, it probably will take very long before it's adopted)
Almost all current games are made for the PS3/360 as LCD, and the PC version of Crysis 3 still scales down to a HD 5770 and any quad core CPU. And devs are already complaining about the draw calls cost.

Once games are being made for the next-gen consoles in mind, can the devs just really optimise away eventual draw calls performance issues in DX11?

I'm no developer(which you certainly have noticed) but I'm reading on plenty of forums where there are some developers, and all of them certainly aren't optimistic about DX11's limitations when compared to the next-gen consoles.
Then there are also those who have complained openly, as seen in bit-tech's article about the DirectX performance overhead.


We'll have better parts in 2013, but it doesn't seem like there will be anything ground-breaking. Haswell seems to have improved IPC by around 10-15%, and the new GPUs on 20nm are pretty much confirmed for sometime in 2014.

 

[galego]

But back then the delta wasn't as great. XBox 360 in particular had a GPU with technology that was absent from PCs in 2005. PS3 had Cell which gave it a bunch more raw FLOPs than 2006 CPUs.

PS4 has a GPU which is same basic design but half as powerful as what was released over a year ago and, and a CPU which is even further behind even older CPUs - and no, having a big hardware core count doesn't change that. The delta will be bigger by the end of 2013 when PS4 is actually released. Low level API advantages and unified RAM does help but they don't negate what you can get with a > 2x difference in transistor budget and an even bigger difference in power budget while using the same or better process technology.

PC GPUs with the same raw power than the Xbox were available on 2005. When the PS3 born in 2006 more powerful PC GPUs were available.

No. The PS4 main chip is not a some CPU plus some GPU, it is an APU-HSA.

 

[2is]

And if PCs were limited to hardware only as powerful as a PS4 that would certainly be an issue for PC gamers. There's no question that the windows/directx model isn't the most efficient for gaming, but we do have the ability to brute force around that. It comes at a price, namely a GPU alone that costs nearly as much as a console, but no one ever got into PC gaming because it was more economical.

And more non-sense above. 360 GPU was more powerful and more capable than any PC GPU at the time of its release. You've already proven you don't know what you're talking about, no need to convince anyone further.

 

[Exophase]

But regarding the draw calls, isn't it likely that it's going to be a problem down the road for PCs with DX11? (and even if there is a much more improved DX or OpenGL available, it probably will take very long before it's adopted)

Is it? Can you refer to rendering technologies that require a big increase in draw calls?

There's some overhead and hassle in having to sort to avoid draw calls. Devs will complain, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they can't work around them.

AFAIK some parts of newer APIs also make it easier to work around draw call limits, like no longer being locked to a fixed texture binding for a draw call.

 

[Accord99]

But regarding the draw calls, isn't it likely that it's going to be a problem down the road for PCs with DX11? (and even if there is a much more improved DX or OpenGL available, it probably will take very long before it's adopted).

In a Beyond3D thread, some numbers were provided showing that a modern PC can do millions of simple draw calls per second, and tens of thousands of complex draw calls per second with only one core:

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?p=1725711#post1725711

Current cutting-edge engines currently only require a few thousand draw calls per second.

A console will be more efficient, but that is countered by the overwhelmingly more powerful CPUs of a PC.

 

[Exophase]

Another thing worth noting is that the draw call/state change/synchronization overhead is purely a CPU cost. So it's not something you overcome with brute force GPU power.

Most games aren't close to CPU limited with Pitcairn (at least at decent resolutions) but get a big boost with Tahiti. They'll have a similar advantage over PS4 if a high end GPU is used. If PS4 games use more resources for GPGPU that a PC can handle in CPU the difference will be even greater.

 

[2is]

What I find funny is when the specs of PS4 were first revealed everyone was disappointed in its lack of grunt compared to PCs, and through nothing more than hype (which surrounds every single new console release) a select few people now think it'll give a pair of titans and an i7 a run for their money. Keeping in mind the specs haven't gotten any higher, just the hype behind them has.

 

[Abwx]

Some new clues at Xbit.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multim...ecture_Details_It_Is_All_About_the_Speed.html

 

[SiliconWars]

What I find funny is when the specs of PS4 were first revealed everyone was disappointed in its lack of grunt compared to PCs, and through nothing more than hype (which surrounds every single new console release) a select few people now think it'll give a pair of titans and an i7 a run for their money. Keeping in mind the specs haven't gotten any higher, just the hype behind them has.

Are you a game developer? Do you understand the difference between closed systems and gaming on Windows?

If one thing stands out for consoles it's how much graphics improve over the years on the exact same hardware. We should look at the PS4 as the beginning not as the end.

 

[cytg111]

And if PCs were limited to hardware only as powerful as a PS4 that would certainly be an issue for PC gamers. There's no question that the windows/directx model isn't the most efficient for gaming, but we do have the ability to brute force around that. It comes at a price, namely a GPU alone that costs nearly as much as a console, but no one ever got into PC gaming because it was more economical.

And more non-sense above. 360 GPU was more powerful and more capable than any PC GPU at the time of its release. You've already proven you don't know what you're talking about, no need to convince anyone further.

I've been speaking my mind on this subject a couple of times, the advantage of adressing hardware specifically for the task at hand, just now remembering days past. Back in the commodore amiga days we had the 68060 expansion card rivalling the flops of a 90mhz pentium pc, yet it took another 200-300mhz to actually rival the content. Amiga devs would address all the friggnin hardware available at the asm level, cause they could, and it worked. where at pc gaming we are layers on layers on layers... I wouldnt count the ps4 out on numbers, cause that is not all there is to the equation.