How the PlayStation 4 is better than a PC

[futurefields]

That would be nice. Or even a "gaming setting"?

When you play a game on Windows, what do you think the GPU is doing, other than running the game?

The answer is nothing. When you play a game on Windows, 100% of the GPU resources are going towards the game.

You do know that, right?

 

[Fx1]

If the PS4 does end up faster at some things I hope it will make people in the PC industry e.g. Micro Soft to make a lean Gaming OS

They have one

Its called the Xbox

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

They have one

Its called the Xbox

No Thanks

 

[Carfax83]

If the PS4 does end up faster at some things I hope it will make people in the PC industry e.g. Micro Soft to make a lean Gaming OS

I can't see a reason why Microsoft would do such a thing, as PC games already run at very high frame rates for the most part compared to consoles. The PS4 will likely be faster than a PC with equivalent specs, but that PC would be considered low end anyway and not really a gaming rig.

How many of us here are running low end rigs? Not many, and the one that do probably aren't gamers. Most of us here have mid to high end PCs with a handful having super high end, ie Titan SLI etc...

The PS4 won't compare to the performance of those machines.. If it does, I'll eat my shorts..

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

fps isn't the only thing that is important

 

[Cerb]

No Thanks

I wouldn't expect much else, then, without a cultural shake-up in a Microsoft towards rewarding technical excellence, above conservative filling of business needs--and, I would not expect this to occur without a CEO change, at a minimum. While Linux has that covered, it needs to become much more strict about drivers, and/or separate them from the main kernel tree via stable API, before having any chance, outside of embedded (consumer hardware drivers have a tendency to break with new kernel releases).

 

[Stuka87]

If the PS4 does end up faster at some things I hope it will make people in the PC industry e.g. Micro Soft to make a lean Gaming OS

Making the OS leaner would do very little to boost game performance. Consoles like the PS4 get their advantage from being able to skip all the intermediate layers of the OS and talk directly to the hardware. There is no way MS would get rid of all the intermediate layers in Windows. That and it would be next to impossible for game developers to do what they do on a console on PC, because every PC is different.

 

[ShintaiDK]

If the PS4 does end up faster at some things I hope it will make people in the PC industry e.g. Micro Soft to make a lean Gaming OS

Its a misconception that the OS makes it slow.

Imagine you can only pick 1 CPU, 1 GPU and not install anything or update any drivers. The main point of consoles is you know what you code for. There are no options or alternatives.

Also such OSes with direct hardware control tends to crash a lot outside of an extreme controlled environment. And even consoles still crash.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Interesting. Thanks for the enlightenment.

 

[Silver Prime]

Reguardless, the graphics now days are epic, so the Ps4 will be intresting to see the latest and greatest.

 

[showb1z]

Still waiting your comments on the high-end i7 with the GTX 680, which could not play the elemental demo at 30 fps unless the resolution was dropped to below 1080p.

You mean the PC-demo that was released a year ago? Ever heard of optimization?
How about you comment on the Infiltrator demo that was released recently, and which clearly showed the ps4 to be less capable? Or how about you comment on Thief... It's only been mentioned 10 times by 4 different people.

 

[Sleepingforest]

You mean the PC-demo that was released a year ago? Ever heard of optimization?
How about you comment on the Infiltrator demo that was released recently, and which clearly showed the ps4 to be less capable? Or how about you comment on Thief... It's only been mentioned 10 times by 4 different people.

It's pretty clear that Galego just ignores what he has no answer to and repeats the same points which have been pointed out as false, wrong, or inappropriately applied. He'd probably say something like "optimization happens to a much greater extent on the PS4 since devs can program directly to metal and PCs have insurmountable draw-call overhead in DX11" while ignoring the real point of your question.

 

[showb1z]

About games running faster...

http://www.destructoid.com/jon-blow-ps4-games-to-run-faster-than-pc-248474.phtml

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/03/12/j...ware-equivalent-game-will-run-faster-than-pc/

Wow, they guy who delivered the mind-blowing graphics of Braid is going to educate us on PC graphics, amazing.
Disclaimer: I like Braid and it's graphics.

Here's something you might want to consider. After all I quoted from one of your approved sources it, so it must be the ultimate truth.

Will it really have a marked effect on the performance of games across platforms? Ultimately we’re not going to know for sure until they’ve been released for comparison.

 

[galego]

The PS4 will likely be faster than a PC with equivalent specs, but that PC would be considered low end anyway and not really a gaming rig.

How many of us here are running low end rigs? Not many, and the one that do probably aren't gamers. Most of us here have mid to high end PCs with a handful having super high end, ie Titan SLI etc...

The PS4 won't compare to the performance of those machines.. If it does, I'll eat my shorts..

Agree on that the PS4 will be faster than a PC with equivalent specs, but as extensively covered in this thread, the PS4 will be also faster than high-end PCs.

About the share of Titan and similar cards among PCs users, Steam statistics show that 1GB VRAM cards are the more popular among gamers. At the time of writing this, less than a 0.5% of gamers has a 4 GB VRAM card. There are not dedicated statistics for 6 GB which seems to indicate that Titan users are not noticeable.

 

[galego]

While Linux has that covered, it needs to become much more strict about drivers, and/or separate them from the main kernel tree via stable API.

I don't like separation.

 

[Silver Prime]

In fact, does anyone have any screen shots of the most lushes graphics of the ps4 thats recent?

 

[galego]

It is pretty clear that some people here ignores the points made and repeats the same points which have been pointed out as false, wrong, or inappropriately applied.

Since the Xbox, DirectX, and "the intermediate layers in Windows" are being now mentioned, it is interesting to notice that Microsoft will be releasing an enhanced version of DirectX for the console. Apart from extra functions for controlling the custom hardware in the console, this version will introduce:

a level of flexibility in how DirectX is used that is equivalent to the almost legendary concept of "coding to the metal".

However, this must be not eliminating all the DX overhead on PCs and thus it seems that PS4 with its low-level API plus the alternative no-API coding to the metal will provide advantage regarding performance:

With Orbis, Sony is using a new variant of the LibGCM library, which has also been utilised in PS3 and Vita. This allows developers to more directly address the hardware, so elements of the AMD graphics hardware in particular can be accessed in a manner where there is no direct correlation in DirectX. You only need to look at games like God of War and Uncharted to see what Sony's approach to exploiting its hardware can produce: these remain state-of-the-art video games to this day, despite utilising graphics hardware directly derived from now-obsolete vintage 2005 Nvidia graphics hardware. Of course, with PS3 in particular, the GPU is only one part of the overall hardware offering, but the fact remains that developers are extracting performance from RSX that could only have been dreamed of when the console was designed.

Bold from mine

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/df-hardware-spec-analysis-durango-vs-orbis

 

[Sleepingforest]

And it took them 7 years to do that; you are somehow expecting that level of optimization to come out from day one of games.

 

[2is]

It is pretty clear that some people here ignores the points made and repeats the same points which have been pointed out as false, wrong, or inappropriately applied.

Yes, that's what we've been telling you since you started replying to this thread. It's about time you recognized yourself with that comment.

 

[galego]

Here's something you might want to consider. After all I quoted from one of your approved sources it, so it must be the ultimate truth.

What you quoted is part of a larger paragraph said by Phil Savage (who, so far as I know, is not a developer but a writer for PC gamer). I am giving the whole paragraph to put his words in context:

This isn't the first time the PS4 has been praised for its 8GB of GDDR5 RAM, and certainly the knowledge that it’ll be a constant across the system – in contrast to the vastly varied hardware of PC users – must be helpful for developers. Will it really have a marked effect on the performance of games across platforms? Ultimately we’re not going to know for sure until they’ve been released for comparison

He is not going to know for sure... but he is not developing the games neither has access to PS4 hardware.

What Jonathan Blow (the game developer) says in the interview is in full agreement with my points about Windows API overhead (bold from mine):

"[RAM] really helps in shuttling graphics resources around, and since it’s not running a heavyweight operating system like Windows that gets in the way of your graphics," Blow says. "Rendering stuff through Windows has an impact on performance. Since a console is just about games, that doesn’t happen, and the equivalent game will run faster. And if you can target to specific hardware you can make it run faster, too."

 

[galego]

And it took them 7 years to do that; you are somehow expecting that level of optimization to come out from day one of games.

If you are referring to me then you are wrong, because I am expecting just the contrary.

In the PC world, developers do not spend many time on optimization because hardware is continuously evolving. PC game developers obtain more frames, more graphic effects, more phys, more all by targeting a more powerful PC. This is a brute-force approach.

This is evidently impossible on a console where the hardware is fixed. Console developers obtain more frames,... more all via optimization for that hardware. This is an use-all-the-metal approach.

Almost all early games for the PS4 will be direct ports from PC or games developed for console without any optimization and then ported to PC. The gaming PC that Epic and other developers are targeting for the first demos of PS4 is an i7 + 16 GB + GTX-680 (2 GB).

In future, developers will be optimizing games for the PS4 to match future gaming PCs, until a point where the PC hardware will be so powerful that a new gen of consoles will appear.

If you ask me, hardware is evolving so fast those days that I doubt that the new consoles will survive for 7 years. I think that a 5 years span is more realistic.

 

[Cerb]

I don't like separation.

Stable drivers in Windows stay stable. Treating the driver API conservatively, somewhat like external APIs, and allowing driver versions to be decoupled from kernel versions, possibly even in their own packages, would be very nice to have. Consumer- network, audio, and video drivers often break with new releases, and in most distros, it's not easy for non-geeks to fix. Even if Linux could get pre-installs, this would be a huge problem in keeping regular users happy. For us, it's just a minor frustration, but it would be unaccaptable for anyone coming from Windows or OS X, who needs their software and hardware to work, and stay working, even with all the updates.

 

[2is]

Agree on that the PS4 will be faster than a PC with equivalent specs, but as extensively covered in this thread, the PS4 will be also faster than high-end PCs. .

Extenisvely covered yes, to not be as fast as high end PCs. You make it sound like you convinced everyone when the reality is, as the thread progresses, there were more people calling shens on that opinion, not less.

 

[3DVagabond]

When you play a game on Windows, what do you think the GPU is doing, other than running the game?

The answer is nothing. When you play a game on Windows, 100% of the GPU resources are going towards the game.

You do know that, right?

I was responding to the thought of a leaner O/S for gaming. It was a one sentence response to a one sentence post where the GPU wasn't mentioned at all. What are you on about?

 

[showb1z]

blabla

I'll spell it out for you one last time.
The point is this: all this stuff you keep repeating ad nauseam is either outdated, speculation or PR. Show me one post of yours with solid, independent data, something with actual numbers. There are none. You know nothing, stop pretending you do.

(Looks like you still found nothing to explain Thief either :whiste