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*** Playstation 4 CPU Equivalent? ***

ttechf

ttechf

Senior member
Hi,

not sure if I have this in the right section but I was wondering if anyone had a good idea or knew what the CPU, NOT GPU, but the CPU in the Playstation 4 is comparable to? I've heard it's relatively weak and is compared to an Intel Pentium processor.


If anyone could shed some light on this, I'd appreciate it. Thank you! : ]
 
Pentium sounds about right, its not even i3 levels of performance. Its very weak on single core performance and overall it might be similar to Pentium but we have to also take account of the fact that games don't typically scale well across lots of cores so despite having 8 cores its rare they will all be used, so on average its even worse than the anandtech review would suggest.
 
hams it up with sounding like the sterotypical kung fu sensei.

Channels Uncle

CPU not important...GPU important!!!

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Most likely your cpu is already good enough, if its a new cpu. This is a very simplistic benchmark and not specifically gaming, but anything that scores above 4000 on this benchmark will be faster than the 8 core amd apu in the ps4 and xbox one.

Passmark, chips with scores 3500 or higher

And in most games depending on how well the engine is balancing all the software threads a score of 3500 or higher will probably be faster than the amd apu. Note that list places all the laptop, tablet, and desktop cpus on one list. An i3 desktop chip will be faster than an i5 laptop chip.
 
We don't even know why the OP wants to know, do we? I don't think there is anything one could purchase that would simulate what is in a PS4, maybe what NTMBK suggests, that or an eight-thread FX clocked to 1.6GHz.
 
It's easy to belittle consoles, but the PS4 APU is quite unique in that it shares GDDR5 for main and graphics memory, that's something you can't actually get on the desktop, the closest you get are Kaveri APUs that due to their use of DDR3 ram have only enough memory-bandwidth for about half the GPU cores of the PS4.

The CPU is rather slow. The same Jaguar cores are used in AMDs AM1 platform, which is roughly equal to a Bay Trail Celeron (comparison http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1223?vs=1227 ), these are low power configurations, yet again you can't actually get these low power 8 core config on the desktop, aside from that Intel micro-server 8 core that NTMBK posted earlier. Last I heard it runs at 1.6 GHz.

Developers should be able to account for the relatively low (read. power efficient) speeds of the CPU cores and their number (6 available to the game), so we should finally get well multi-threaded games. Although by all accounts frame rates and frame time consistency on modern consoles is pretty bad and loading times are even worse.
 
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know of fence said:
Last I heard it runs at 1.6 GHz.
Click to expand...
Xbox One boosted it at the last minute to 1.75 ghz from the original 1.60 ghz. Now I can't recall how many of those 8 core (2 modules) is usable for games, I know some of it is reserved for the OS and the kinect voice command accessory. You get slightly better/more consistent frame rates if you disable the kinect now that microsoft is allowing that option.

PS4 is still 1.6 ghz but it has the better gpu, sure the edram is nice on the xbone one but the ps4 has more shaders and faster memory bandwidth for the vast majority of options.
 
crashtech said:
We don't even know why the OP wants to know, do we? I don't think there is anything one could purchase that would simulate what is in a PS4, maybe what NTMBK suggests, that or an eight-thread FX clocked to 1.6GHz.
Click to expand...

Yea, not sure the purpose of the question. No CPU like it is really available, and it it were it would not be very well suited to the desktop because of low single thread performance.

Edit

Actually the new "desktop" atom and kabini might be fairly close, probably faster in lightly threaded loads but similar in something that could efficiently use 8 cores. However, except for very rare circumstances I don't consider them a good choice for the desktop.
 
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know of fence said:
It's easy to belittle consoles, but the PS3 APU is quite unique in that it shares DDR5 for main and graphics memory, that's something you can't actually get on the desktop, the closest you get are Kaveri APUs that due to their use of DDR3 ram have only enough memory-bandwidth for about half the GPU cores of the PS3.
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True, but its not really there for the CPU. That RAM bandwidth is being consumed by the GPU and its purpose is to reduce the enormous reduction in performance such a limited memory interface has on a relatively modest GPU that is integrated in the CPU package. The CPU probably can't utilise the bandwidth even remotely. A Sandy Bridge E is incredibly hard to get into a memory limited scenario and its a considerably faster CPU. Infact you can drop it down to 2 channels of memory for basically all but 1 game I know of and it performs near identically. The two channels are there for the true memory heavy applications found in workstation apps and enterprise applications, not games. Games really don't use a lot of memory, their working set of game data is tiny.

So I doubt it makes any real difference other than being more expensive.
 
Roland00Address said:
Thanks I was pretty sure it was 6 cores, but did not want to make a claim without being a 100% confident.
Click to expand...

the consoles have 8 working CPU cores, if they restrict games to 6 it's something else and it can change with software (like MS did with the GPU allowing games to use SPs reserved for other uses at launch)

PS4 CPU is 1.6GHz Jaguar, so it can be as slow as a 10 years old CPU for a few things, or as fast as an i3 for others I guess...

but it's irrelevant because consoles are not running PC software, they have custom, highly optimized software, and the PS4 will achieve a lot more than a desktop Jaguar based CPU trying to play games
 
SPBHM said:
the consoles have 8 working CPU cores, if they restrict games to 6 it's something else and it can change with software (like MS did with the GPU allowing games to use SPs reserved for other uses at launch)
Click to expand...
Yes we agree, 8 actual cores 6 for games, 2 for os and everything else, yes it can be changed via software
PS4 CPU is 1.6GHz Jaguar, so it can be as slow as a 10 years old CPU for a few things, or as fast as an i3 for others I guess...
but it's irrelevant because consoles are not running PC software, they have custom, highly optimized software, and the PS4 will achieve a lot more than a desktop Jaguar based CPU trying to play games
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Yes we agree.

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That said in theory in the future (not the next year but several years down the road) Microsoft could create a "virtualized" os where you are running windows for most things but you are running an xbox os for your games. In effect allow them to make money by selling you software services on hardware you already own, or different form factors than just an xbox console. If they do this, they would do many things to prevent you from accessing the part of the hard drive/ssd where the xbox os is running (a sandbox).

Also keeping things sandbox would have many other benefits. For example you can have all new software be made on universal metro apps, while still keeping older backwards compatibility in its separate virtualized space. This will make it harder for things such as viruses to screw up your computer. Sure they can still run havoc in the "compatibility" sandbox but you are not as SOL since your more modern OS with limited options will be safe, and you could just always re-image the compatibility area and get rid of the virus. It appears that windows may go down this way in the future with things such as windows 9. Then again Microsoft has been looking like its been planning to do this for years but in the end nothing in the immediate future ever happens. Sometimes I wonder what the hell is happening with this company, yes I know what I suggest is hard but you need a vision or else the world will adapt around you and you will become obsolete.
 
Wow, I come back and so many responses. Haha. Well, I think more than one person wanted to know why I am asking. I am asking because if I wanted to build a cheap gaming machine that was comparable to the ps4, what CPU would I choose? Because buying an i5 or i7 is great and all. But thats not budget, lol.

Basically, I am fully 100% aware there is no CPU+GPU combination exactly like the unique ps4. Got it. BUT I am talking strictly CPU here. So if I bought a Pentium clocked at 3Ghz for example that is a dual core and a decent 3GB graphics card, would I be on or above par of what a ps4 performance can give me? Throw in 8GB of memory as well.

Just an example of course. I am also asking because at least with a PC, its not just limited to games. I can surf the web and listen to music and such. A PC has more than 1 use.


Thanks! : ]
 
A pentium is roughly equal to the ps4/xbox apu but you really want an i3 or i5 because the console os is better and more efficent.

You want a gtx 750ti or better, or a radeon 265 if you want xbox levels of gpu performance. The ps4 is a better gpu, it uses a modified 7870 so you want a 770 or a R9 280 or higher. (remember you want slightly better since the console is more efficient)

In other words you have options depending on what framerate and settings you are okay with (remember consoles go for 720p ish resolutions and 30fps) and how much you want to spend.
 
Roland00Address said:
A pentium is roughly equal to the ps4/xbox apu but you really want an i3 or i5 because the console os is better and more efficent.....
Click to expand...

It isn't an OS thing. The reason things run well on consoles is because consoles have static and well defined hardware. It is easier to program against something when you know exactly what will be on it. You don't have to support several different texture types, different AA modes, or even that many resolutions.

On top of that, you can abuse the hell out of the hardware. Got some special magical sort of GPU instruction that makes operation 10x faster? Great, use it. You should use it! In the PC environment you should be extremely leery of such instructions just because there is no guarantee that whoever runs your game will support it. You have us it, see what competitors have and if they are are comparable and then use them, and then you also need to build a default implementation if some fly by night vendor runs your game without the set of supported instructions that you worked painstakingly to implement.

XBox one uses just a modified version of the vanilla windows os (modified in that they strip out drivers and crap that isn't needed and slap on a new ui). And the PS4 is simply a forked version of FreeBSD (no shocker there). More than likely, the core components in the OS which would make a (minimal) difference on the performance of games and apps are pretty much identical to their parents.
 
I understand what you are saying Cogman, but there is nothing stopping Microsoft from allowing some options and not just one option. Of course there will be a certification program to make sure the software is a 100% compatible and that will require specific hardware to be inside the device that will make sure it can run the code exactly. It really depends on how flexible or how bare to the metal the apis for the xbox one is.

As for the console OS vs specific hardware with less excess layers of software. Yes I did not pick my word choice perfectly/exactly for I was trying to simplify a 200 word answer into a 3 word response.
 
ttechf said:
not sure if I have this in the right section but I was wondering if anyone had a good idea or knew what the CPU, NOT GPU, but the CPU in the Playstation 4 is comparable to? I've heard it's relatively weak and is compared to an Intel Pentium processor.
Click to expand...

There is no AMD 8 core Beema available on the market and nothing really comparable.

However if you couldn't tell from the responses here you don't want this CPU even if were available. There would be no way to match the performance of the consoles using this CPU in a standard PC.
 
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