How the PlayStation 4 is better than a PC

[toyota]

My i3-540 overclocked to 3.8GHz with an undervolted 7950 @ 800 core uses 177~ watts in games total system and the i3 nor the board are as efficient as things today. Next month when haswell comes out they'll look really bad.

that is not in demanding games then as I cant believe that setup is more efficient than mine.

 

[Olikan]

Is that even the same? That seems to integrate a CPU on the GPU which doesn't replace your i7 and GTX 680 with one chip that does both.

that's the problem...
the lower latency that APUs have, opens a windown of programs that is hard to imagine...

 

[frozentundra123456]

So in other words, no matter how powerful the PS4 might be, you can still built something faster on the PC side because you don't care about power or cost. And in a couple of years you can build something even faster! Great point there, you've mastered the obvious. Suppose the thread title said, How the PlayStation 4 is better than a PC given the same power/monetary budget

Is that better? Now if you would read even a little bit into the title (not to mention the tech details of the PS4) and what it means, you would already realize that's what is being said.

What you bolded is clearly NOT what is being said by a few very, especially one, stubborn and opinionated posters in this thread.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I've read this entire thread and don't recall anyone saying this. But if they did, that would be stupid. What IS being said, or what is accurate, is the PS4 has far more synergistic hardware and will be able to do more with less hardware versus the PC.

But the great thing is this time, that same hardware will come to the PC side. In fact, it is inevitable that the CPU and GPU will become one device with a single memory pool. The PCIe bus is obsolete.

It would make things easier if they could give me a 4Ghz 3930k and a GTX Titan on a single chip I can drop in the motherboard with 16GB of memory and be done. Way less troubleshooting too.

 

[Rakehellion]

For someone with an overclocked i7 and SLI or a GTX Titan it's hard to fathom how it could possibly be "better".

Sure, and I could buy a 10000-core supercomputer that would blow your Titan rig out of the water. But that's an edge case that doesn't apply to very many gamers.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

that is not in demanding games then as I cant believe that setup is more efficient than mine.

Sure it is, it's a dual core and the stock 7950 uses less power than the 660 Ti plus I was undervolting.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Sure, and I could buy a 10000-core supercomputer that would blow your Titan rig out of the water. But that's an edge case that doesn't apply to very many gamers.

Unfortunately for you, it won't run Crysis since it doesn't even run Windows. lol

 

[2is]

FFS, fanboyism is turning peoples brain to mush. It's not JUST about the amount of memory, it's how it will be utilized. The PS4's GPU can directly share data with the CPU, and in fact can even bypass the CPU cache. If you took a high end GPU and put it into the same on-die configuration with a fast CPU, it would annihilate similar hardware in the traditional CPU/GPU configuration.

Except this debate is stemming form hardware that's several times more powerful, not similar. The fanboyism stems from folks thinking AMD pulled a miracle overnight with the PS4 APU. Yes, the shared memory is an advantage, but how much so? The hype to make it sound so superior is taking worst case scenario from PC's, that being not having enough VRAM and having to access much slower main memory.

In situations like that, yes, I can certainly see a PS4 outperforming hardware that is much more powerful due to that bottleneck. Short of that, this advantage is no nearly as game changing as the hype machine would lead you to believe. Not to mention, that advantage does not apply nearly as well to Titan with 6GB of VRAM. I highly doubt there's going to be a PS4 game that's going to use over 6GB of VRAM and leave the OS and game code with well under 2GB to play with.

CAN it outperform SLI 680's? Yeah, potentially it can if your SLI 680's are 2GB and the game uses more than 2GB of VRAM. Short of that, there's no way it's going to outperform a pair of SLI 680's.

That's what people like a select one or two here don't understand, and the marketing folks responsible for selling this product know this and paint a picture that could potentially exist given best case for PS4 and worst case for higher end PC hardware, and that's why so many of these regurgitated claims are taken out of context by the folk(s) who repeat themselves over and over again.

The question is, what are the developers going to do and when are they going to do it? That's what we don't know. Are they going to crank up the textures and AA to that extent? The end result likely being a 30fps target? I don't know about you, but for me, cranking up eye candy is only beneficial until I start dipping below 45 fps in any game with certain games (racing for example) where I aim for 60 due to the input lag below that.

Is the 8GB never going to be taken advantage of short of a 4k display? How much of it is reserved for the OS? What will happen when Sony undoubtedly releases updates that add features/functionality and quite likely increase idle RAM usage? Are developers going to play it safe with how much memory they use due to this unknown factor? It is a fixed system after all, it's not like you can swap out a video card or add a DIMM.

Those are the questions we really don't have answers to. I for one doubt games will use that much VRAM anytime in the near future that's will render PS4 > a pair of 680's

 

[Rakehellion]

Unfortunately for you, it won't run Crysis since it doesn't even run Windows. lol

And the PS4 won't run MS Office. What a shame!

 

[toyota]

Sure it is, it's a dual core and the stock 7950 uses less power than the 660 Ti plus I was undervolting.

depends on what you are testing in I guess. in the Hitman Absolution benchmark I hit 250 watts at the wall on max settings with 4x AA an of course no vsync. I guess that would be around 210-215 actual watts for that game.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I tested with Bioshock Inf and Tomb Raider.

I can go from 176~ to 300+ with my card though, depending on the clocks/voltage.

 

[Rakehellion]

The hype to make it sound so superior is taking worst case scenario from PC's, that being not having enough VRAM and having to access much slower main memory.

The issue isn't about running out of memory, it's about transferring memory from the CPU to the GPU over the slow PCIe bus.

Didn't read the rest of your post.

 

[2is]

The issue isn't about running out of memory, it's about transferring memory from the CPU to the GPU over the slow PCIe bus.

Didn't read the rest of your post.

The slow PCIe bus that shows virtually zero performance drop when it's bandwidth is cut in half on GPU's many times more powerful than what's in the PS4? Is that the one you're talking about?

 

[Rakehellion]

The slow PCIe bus that shows virtually zero performance drop when it's bandwidth is cut in half on GPU's many times more powerful than what's in the PS4? Is that the one you're talking about?

Try one of these:

a) Google it.
b) Read one of the dozens of other posts in this thread where PCIe is explained.
or
c) Act as if you've "stumped" me by asking a completely ridiculous question.


Hint: PCIe is slow on purpose.

 

[alcoholbob]

Chicken and egg problem.

No game requires 8GB of VRAM yet because it doesn't exist.
No game requires PCIe 32x because it doesn't exist.

As soon as these features become ubiquitous, developers will use them.

Your also forgetting content delivery, the bottleneck is game disc sizes no publisher wants to pay for more discs if they can avoid it. Blu Ray still has virtually no marketshare in PC space.

 

[galego]

and? that does not make the 7850 level of graphics some magical gpu that can utilize 8gb of ram. wait until games come out and this thread will be looked back on as a joke. that will be especially true in a few years when what little technical advantage the ps4 has at launch will likely be surpassed on even mobile devices.

Your claim about "7850 level of graphics" already did me laugh. But take a look to some episodes of the early history of the PS4...

This is a small collection of the reactions of some members of this forum to the early rumours of the PS4 using an APU from AMD D:

I'm betting on not using an APU.

The entire concept of the PS4/Xbox720 to use an AMD APU seems emotion based only without any real world thought.

All the PS4 APU goes back to psx-sense.nl. The only thing stronger is more just ran with the same nonsense. Doesnt make it any better.

There will be no APU in PS4 and Xbox720.

Everything rational points against AMD based x86 cores. Not to mention, consoles are expected to last 10 years. Thats not something I would trust AMD to do currently.

I guarantee 100% that if they are using AMD they are not using an APU.

If Sony and MS use an AMD APU Nintendo will obliterate them in a violent fashion. It won't be remotely close.

Recent AMD APUs still lose to a 8800GT, they aren't even a generation ahead of what Sony and MS have in the six seven year old consoles. Console gamers expect order of magnitude performance jumps between generations, they are going to laugh at ~15%.

Score ---> PS4: 1 Jokes: 0. :whiste:

When the first specs of the PS4 were shown. Some people reacted with a misguided the AMD APU is a low-end CPU with a medium-level GPU.

I laugh reading lots of comments on forums, blogs, news sites... about how the PS4 would be playing tablet-like games.

Then Epic went to GDC 2013 with a demo where the PS4 was not competing with a tablet... but with a high-end PC: i7 + 16 GB + GTX-680

PS4: 2 Jokes: 0. :whiste:

Then lots of sites 'analyzed' the demo and concluded that the PC looked better than the PS4. Epic corrected some of those sites, explaining that both demos were essentially the same except SVOGI and some FX. Several of the claimed visual differences were an artefact due to using a different cinematics and others such as the lava effect were due to tessellation broken in the PS4 due to a bug (a bug they are fixing), not due to the hardware in the console.

PS4: 3 Jokes: 0. :whiste:

Still some people decided to attack once again the PS4 and claimed that SVOGI back and scaling down some FX was a consequence of "low performance". And once again, in the defence of the PS4, developers said that the PS4 demo was prepared in a pair of weeks, using non-mature APIs, without time for any optimization (recall the demo even had bugs), and run in an early dev. kit. with less memory and performance than the final PS4 hardware.

PS4: 4 Jokes: 0. :whiste:

 

[2is]

Try one of these:

a) Google it.
b) Read one of the dozens of other posts in this thread where PCIe is explained.
or
c) Act as if you've "stumped" me by asking a completely ridiculous question.


Hint: PCIe is slow on purpose.

It's very clear why you don't want to answer that question.

 

[Rakehellion]

It's very clear why you don't want to answer that question.

In the time it took you to think of this ultra-witty reply, you could have skimmed the last 2 pages and seen that it was already answered.

Also the "running out of memory" thing was addressed too. Hell, on this page even.

 

[toyota]

snip

galego, sorry but the gpu is 7850 level from a hardware perspective and that is a fact. I did not say that it could not be way more efficient though which of course it will be. the laughable part is that you think it will be 10 times more efficient. AGAIN they claim the current consoles were so efficient too yet the gpu in there is not even twice as fast as a desktop equivalent even after all this time to work with it. funny how you just ignored that part.

 

[2is]

In the time it took you to think of this ultra-witty reply, you could have skimmed the last 2 pages and seen that it was already answered.

Also the "running out of memory" thing was addressed too. Hell, on this page even.

It's really quite simple. Your claim is that the PCIe bus is what is holding PC's back, suggesting the devices on either side of that bus are starving for more bandwidth. If that's the case, cutting that bandwidth in half should result in a nearly linear performance drop, and it doesn't. It's funny, I keep reading this "it's already been answered" defense thrown around time and again yet the thread continues.

 

[toyota]

It's really quite simple. Your claim is that the PCIe bus is what is holding PC's back, suggesting the devices on either side of that bus are starving for more bandwidth. If that's the case, cutting that bandwidth in half should result in a nearly linear performance drop, and it doesn't. It's funny, I keep reading this "it's already been answered" defense thrown around time and again yet the thread continues.

dont you know that all we need is 8gb of vram slapped on the gtx680 and 32x pci-e bus to play future games at max settings? :biggrin:

 

[galego]

...and no links still eh?

No. The links were given before.

 

[2is]

...It's funny, I keep reading this "it's already been answered" defense thrown around time and again yet the thread continues.

No. The links were given before.

Some things never change lol

 

[Rakehellion]

the PCIe bus is what is holding PC's back

False. Software is written to run on the hardware that's available, not the other way around.

cutting that bandwidth in half should result in a nearly linear performance drop

False. A bus does not run programs, only transmits data.

yet the thread continues.

With or without you.

 

[Rakehellion]

Some things never change lol

Not that it's so much trouble for me to copy and paste, but the question was answered on all of the last three pages, including this one (and many others since that's what this thread is about.) You're harping on "unsolvable" issues that you're too lazy to solve yourself.