Digital Foundry: next-gen PlayStation and Xbox to use AMD's 8-core CPU and Radeon HD

[Greenlepricon]

That's due to Valve's stance on 'good enough'.

I think Valve has pretty high standards. It's mainly due to that engine approaching 10 years of age. Hopefully they'll actually start making some nice improvements soon, otherwise they might get left behind the new console standards.

 

[NostaSeronx]

Source² will come out soon enough. Don't worry about Valve's hard time with fusing the jumbled mess of APIs: DirectX and OpenGL. (Valve doesn't support Windows 8 so that makes the whole DirectX thing even worse since everything is fractured unless you use Windows 8.)

Gaben isn't stealing the source code from Quake this time. (I don't mean it in a harsh way the only way to be successful is to copy and improve.)

 

[Borkil]

No .. see, it says so in my sig !!

dang seems I'm a little late to the party!

yeah 1.6 seems a little low but i'm sure amazing games will come out still

 

[NostaSeronx]

At the end of the day...if the games are going to be poorly optimized like Windows games.

It should perform exactly like this notebook: http://www.msimobile.com/level3_productpage.aspx?id=381
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834152372
http://www.amazon.com/MSI-Series-GX6.../dp/B009H8OA0C

Give or take 3-5 frames.

 

[Enigmoid]

At the end of the day...if the games are going to be poorly optimized like Windows games.

It should perform exactly like this notebook: http://www.msimobile.com/level3_productpage.aspx?id=381
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834152372
http://www.amazon.com/MSI-Series-GX6.../dp/B009H8OA0C

Give or take 3-5 frames.

Well, the gpu is definitively good, but the a10 cpu does bottleneck modern games.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-MSI-GX60-Notebook.86283.0.html

gw2, hitman, ac3 unplayable because of sub 20 fps cpu bottleneck.

 

[NostaSeronx]

Well, the gpu is definitively good, but the a10 cpu does bottleneck modern games.

If the CPU effects framerate that much I wouldn't say the game is 'modern.'

 

[Haserath]

I think Valve has pretty high standards. It's mainly due to that engine approaching 10 years of age. Hopefully they'll actually start making some nice improvements soon, otherwise they might get left behind the new console standards.

They believe most people don't care about graphics much anymore. It's not their main focus.

 

[Subyman]

If the CPU effects framerate that much I wouldn't say the game is 'modern.'

There's a lot more going on in modern games than projecting 3d geometry onto a 2d plane and rasterizing the resulting scene. GPUs are good with very specific tasks, but not everything can be offloaded, especially in mmos such as gw2. AC has always been a pig though.

 

[Scientist113]

Playstation 3 had a PowerPC 970 in-order CPU, at 3.2 ghz, running the entire game. One 1.6 ghz Atom core is as good as a PowerPC970 in-order CPU for most tasks. In fact - both take up similar transistors sizes, and score the same on zip compression. Thus the Playstation 3 is powered by just a 1.6 ghz Jaguar (similar to Atom) core. This one will have 8. Thus making it at least 8 times more powerful in general purpose programming - on the same code - by this metric alone.

However - the PowerPC 970 for the Playstation 3 also has no branch-prediction - since it has no out-of-order code execution. Thus - the Playstation 4's CPU will be even more then 8 times more powerful at general code. I'm guessing 10 times.

Compare this to Xbox 360 versus Xbox 1. The Xbox 360's CPU, I heard developers say, was only 2-3 times more powerful then the Pentium 3 733 mhz. Thus - a far greater jump this generation in that sense.

 

[tulx]

Playstation 3 had a PowerPC 970 in-order CPU, at 3.2 ghz, running the entire game. One 1.6 ghz Atom core is as good as a PowerPC970 in-order CPU for most tasks. In fact - both take up similar transistors sizes, and score the same on zip compression. Thus the Playstation 3 is powered by just a 1.6 ghz Jaguar (similar to Atom) core. This one will have 8. Thus making it at least 8 times more powerful in general purpose programming - on the same code - by this metric alone.

However - the PowerPC 970 for the Playstation 3 also has no branch-prediction - since it has no out-of-order code execution. Thus - the Playstation 4's CPU will be even more then 8 times more powerful at general code. I'm guessing 10 times.

Compare this to Xbox 360 versus Xbox 1. The Xbox 360's CPU, I heard developers say, was only 2-3 times more powerful then the Pentium 3 733 mhz. Thus - a far greater jump this generation in that sense.

Then you look at it from that perspective, this does seem to be a sensible upgrade. I'm not much of a console gamer, but I'm still looking forward to how this will change the console to PC dynamic (in terms of porting games and advancing multithreading).

 

[wlee15]

The PowerPC 970 is an wide out-of-order processor and has nothing to do with the CPU in the Xbox 360 and PS3. It's in the same neighborhood as the Athlon 64 and original Core processors so it's much much faster than Atom processor.

 

[itsmydamnation]

The PowerPC 970 is an wide out-of-order processor and has nothing to do with the CPU in the Xbox 360 and PS3. It's in the same neighborhood as the Athlon 64 and original Core processors so it's much much faster than Atom processor.

yep cell/xenons CPU is far weaker in single threaded code, this actually caused lots of inital launch title issues as game devs didn't get final dev kits until late in the piece and all the development work before that was done on MAC G5 based "dev kits".

 

[inf64]

Also one Jaguar core is not even close of being on par with poor Atom( both at 1.6Ghz). It's miles ahead of Atom IPC wise. It's like a race between a ferrari and a WV beetle .

 

[Idontcare]

Also one Jaguar core is not even close of being on par with poor Atom( both at 1.6Ghz). It's miles ahead of Atom IPC wise. It's like a race between a ferrari and a WV beetle .

More like a race between a ferrari and a prius once you factor in power consumption IIRC.

 

[cytg111]

.. but I'm still looking forward to how this will change the console to PC dynamic (in terms of porting games and advancing multithreading).

- Very much, especially advancing concurrency, scaling etc.and what kind of dev env. will they get for the consoles? Some visual-studio bastardation or what?
Interresting times ahead.

 

[itsmydamnation]

More like a race between a ferrari and a prius once you factor in power consumption IIRC.

O RLY?
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4134/the-brazos-review-amds-e350-supplants-ion-for-miniitx/7

give us one reason why jaguars power efficiency is going to be worse then atoms?

 

[ShintaiDK]

O RLY?
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4134/the-brazos-review-amds-e350-supplants-ion-for-miniitx/7

give us one reason why jaguars power efficiency is going to be worse then atoms?

If I was you I would look more on the difference between load and idle. Then reconsider the statement.

 

[inf64]

I think Jaguar will have impressive power draw characteristics outshining atom parts more than it will do in pure performance numbers(which will be ugly for atom in that comparison).

 

[Olikan]

O RLY?
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4134/the-brazos-review-amds-e350-supplants-ion-for-miniitx/7

give us one reason why jaguars power efficiency is going to be worse then atoms?

amd used some shanenigans in that laptop, intel do wins in power comsuption in normal tests, BUT not like a ferrari vs prius

more like prius vs punto

 

[Zstream]

amd used some shanenigans in that laptop, intel do wins in power comsuption in normal tests, BUT not like a ferrari vs prius

more like prius vs punto

What laptop are you talking about? It uses a motherboard called: MSI's E350IA-E45

 

[Zstream]

If I was you I would look more on the difference between load and idle. Then reconsider the statement.

It uses less power and load and idle?

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4134/the-brazos-review-amds-e350-supplants-ion-for-miniitx/7

 

[Olikan]

What laptop are you talking about? It uses a motherboard called: MSI's E350IA-E45

i thought that you used the preview article XD

 

[itsmydamnation]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i3-2100t_11.html#sect0
http://techreport.com/review/20401/amd-e-350-fusion-apu-on-the-desktop/5
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1470/9/
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_brazos_platform_tested_the_e350_apu_review,10.html

im seeing very consistent results here, all within PSU/binning/measuring device error of margins.

 

[ShintaiDK]

It uses less power and load and idle?

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4134/the-brazos-review-amds-e350-supplants-ion-for-miniitx/7

The delta. Plus differences in motherboards.

Anyway, other numbes with newer atoms:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/atom-cedartrtail_9.html#sect0

 

[ShintaiDK]

I think Jaguar will have impressive power draw characteristics outshining atom parts more than it will do in pure performance numbers(which will be ugly for atom in that comparison).

Unreleased product to older products?