[techradar] AMD on the PS4: We gave it the hardware Nvidia couldn't

[Arkadrel]

SB is 32nm. Still destroys FX.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/697?vs=287

Destroy is a strong word.
Usually its 10-17% faster yes (2600k vs 8350).
the 8350 does beat the 2600k a few times, usually its other way around.

And yes its a 95w vs a 125w CPU.

Most of the cases where the differnce is big,
its because the software isnt useing very many threads.



anyways this is off topic, can we drop it?
Yes Intel CPUs are slightly faster usually, and espcially so, if application doesnt use alot of threads.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

you are here to always talk negative about AMD. according to you AMD can't do anything right i guess. it doesn't matter that people like John Carmack appreciate the Sony PS4. it doesn't matter that Sony and Microsoft picked AMD APUs for the consoles. you are the guy who knows it all. People like you are seriously clueless. The value of the APU design from a software design point of view cannot be understated.

I'm only "negative" about AMD because I only speak towards the reality of the current situation. I have no emotional attachment to any cooperation, unlike a lot of posters here who seem to believe every thread is a vs and you need to "pick a side".

I couldn't care less what John Carmack says, Rage was probably the worst console port I've ever seen.

It doesn't matter to me what Sony and Microsoft picked for their bottom dollar trying to create maximum profits. They weren't trying to create the best gaming system as some people seem to believe, they're trying to create the best profit machine.

Which is it, do I know it all, or am I clueless?

 

[badb0y]

I'm only "negative" about AMD because I only speak towards the reality of the current situation. I have no emotional attachment to any cooperation, unlike a lot of posters here who seem to believe every thread is a vs and you need to "pick a side".

I couldn't care less what John Carmack says, Rage was probably the worst console port I've ever seen.

It doesn't matter to me what Sony and Microsoft picked for their bottom dollar trying to create maximum profits. They weren't trying to create the best gaming system as some people seem to believe, they're trying to create the best profit machine.

Which is it, do I know it all, or am I clueless?

You talk about the reality of the situation but ignore the fact that PS4/Xbox 720 will probably out power most of the PCs out there. Not everyone has a gaming PC, we are a small part of a larger market. I don't even understand what the argument here is anyway. Sony/MS obviously thought AMD was better suited to power the next generation consoles so they picked AMD. If they though nVidia was better they would have gone with them and likewise for intel or IBM.

Yea, screw Carmack what does he know about PC gaming. :whiste:

You second point of the profits is true....but that's true for every company out there. nVidia is pushing GPU technology out of the goodness of their hearts? Intel is pushing CPU technology forward because they love us? Everyone is looking for profits whether it's AMD, nVidia, Sony, MS, Apple etc.

 

[Leadbox]

I'm only "negative" about AMD because I only speak towards the reality of the current situation. I have no emotional attachment to any cooperation, unlike a lot of posters here who seem to believe every thread is a vs and you need to "pick a side".

I couldn't care less what John Carmack says, Rage was probably the worst console port I've ever seen.

It doesn't matter to me what Sony and Microsoft picked for their bottom dollar trying to create maximum profits. They weren't trying to create the best gaming system as some people seem to believe,they're trying to create the best profit machine.

Which is it, do I know it all, or am I clueless?

That's how they roll in the world of big business
So why you're having a go at all things AMD buffles me:\

 

[BallaTheFeared]

That's how they roll in the world of big business
So why you're having a go at all things AMD buffles me:\

If they used an eight core atom I'd have said the same thing I am now, my concern was never the label on the box but the performance contained within it.

Who got the console wins doesn't really matter to me, since consoles have historically fallen short every generation in terms of performance. PS4 doesn't look to change that storied history with it's hardware configuration.

badb0y, PCs have settings, they can support a large array of hardware configurations because of it.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/new...k-Apologizes-for-Rages-Inexcusable-PC-Release

 

[Souv]

Stupid comment, I would like to ask you what GPU do you think nVidia would have put into the PS4 if cost was not the issue? It wasn't going to be GTX 680,670 or the Titan because of power constraint. Would they be able to squeeze in a GTX 660? Possibly but how much better is the GTX 660 compared to a stronger version of a 7850? Not much.

You can argue that intel might have been able to fit a better CPU in but that argument comes down to cost because intel likes to maintain high margins on their CPUs. In a perfect world where cost was not an issue they would probably put in a Intel CPU for the best performance.

Then it comes down to the fact that intel/nVidia on the same chip would probably never happen and Sony/MS would need to buy separate GPUs/CPUs. So in some ways AMD is right, they were the only ones who can provide what the consoles were looking for since they have CPU/GPU on the same die and can sell it as a whole package to the console makers.

I get the feeling that people forget sometimes that consoles need to cost around $500 to be viable. There was no way Intel would put in a 3960X or nVidia would put in a GTX Titan into these consoles.

that benchmark is outdated

 

[raghu78]

I'm only "negative" about AMD because I only speak towards the reality of the current situation. I have no emotional attachment to any cooperation, unlike a lot of posters here who seem to believe every thread is a vs and you need to "pick a side".

I couldn't care less what John Carmack says, Rage was probably the worst console port I've ever seen.

It doesn't matter to me what Sony and Microsoft picked for their bottom dollar trying to create maximum profits. They weren't trying to create the best gaming system as some people seem to believe, they're trying to create the best profit machine.

Which is it, do I know it all, or am I clueless?

maybe you should start your own company and design a game console and create the best gaming system for the market :whiste:

The game development business is facing tremendous difficulties with skyrocketing game dev budgets. Game titles are easily exceeding 200 million dollars in budgets. They are now required to sell 5 million units to be a reasonably profitable venture for the publisher. Sony and Microsoft picked single chip x86 APUs to lower the BOM of the console and sell at a lower launch price than last gen to enable better mass market penetration. The other aim is to make game development easier as developers are comfortable and have vast experience with x86 architecture.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

maybe you should start your own company and design a game console and create the best gaming system for the market :whiste:

The game development business is facing tremendous difficulties with skyrocketing game dev budgets. Game titles are easily exceeding 200 million dollars in budgets. They are now required to sell 5 million units to be a reasonably profitable venture for the publisher. Sony and Microsoft picked single chip x86 APUs to lower the BOM of the console and sell at a lower launch price than last gen to enable better mass market penetration. The other aim is to make game development easier as developers are comfortable and have vast experience with x86 architecture.

Hey thanks, I wasn't aware that consoles were officially moving to the basement of generational performance based on specs alone.

So I'm confused, if we're all in agreement the specs are low/low-mid why are we arguing?

 

[BrightCandle]

Having 8 computation cores in the PS2 and 3 fully functional cores in the Xbox did not bring us games that utilise lots of cores. Increasing it in a console yet further and even more cores might but its not necessarily the case.

It is really difficult to split game simulations across multiple cores, for many games concepts its actually impossible. Games are not an embarrassingly parallel problem, they are deeply serial in their design and there is no obvious multithreading strategy available that doesn't involve adding a lot of latency. The games studios aren't magically going to find a solution on the new consoles that they didn't manage to come up with in the previous generation, which also had quite a lot of parallel hardware they couldn't use and didn't translate to ports using many cores.

AMD getting this deal was good for them, but it might bring minimal benefits to gamers on PC especially in regards to CPU utilisation and the amount games can actually simulate.

 

[badb0y]

If they used an eight core atom I'd have said the same thing I am now, my concern was never the label on the box but the performance contained within it.

Who got the console wins doesn't really matter to me, since consoles have historically fallen short every generation in terms of performance. PS4 doesn't look to change that storied history with it's hardware configuration.

badb0y, PCs have settings, they can support a large array of hardware configurations because of it.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/new...k-Apologizes-for-Rages-Inexcusable-PC-Release

Large array of hardware is also one of the biggest downfalls of PC gaming because they have to cater to the LCD.

As far as performance is concerned I wouldn't be to sad about it I mean look at the shit they made on 512MB ram and CPUs/GPUs that are exponentially slower. I am very happy that new consoles since initially we thought we were getting something much worse (7600 series GPU lol).

 

[badb0y]

Having 8 computation cores in the PS2 and 3 fully functional cores in the Xbox did not bring us games that utilise lots of cores. Increasing it in a console yet further and even more cores might but its not necessarily the case.

It is really difficult to split game simulations across multiple cores, for many games concepts its actually impossible. Games are not an embarrassingly parallel problem, they are deeply serial in their design and there is no obvious multithreading strategy available that doesn't involve adding a lot of latency. The games studios aren't magically going to find a solution on the new consoles that they didn't manage to come up with in the previous generation, which also had quite a lot of parallel hardware they couldn't use and didn't translate to ports using many cores.

AMD getting this deal was good for them, but it might bring minimal benefits to gamers on PC especially in regards to CPU utilisation and the amount games can actually simulate.

I agree with most of your post but the reason why PC didn't benefit from the PS3/Xbox having multiple core CPUs is because they were a totally different architecture. They were using PowerPC-based chips which were already hard to program for (A primary reason why Sony/MS wanted x86 this time) and they were horribly inefficient. The CPU cores on the PS3 could only do specific things, it's not like on the PC where all the CPU cores are the same.

 

[raghu78]

Hey thanks, I wasn't aware that consoles were officially moving to the basement of generational performance based on specs alone.

So I'm confused, if we're all agree the specs are low/low-mid why are we arguing?

I think you are underestimating the PS 4 CPU which uses the Jaguar core. 8 Jaguar cores running at 2 Ghz is no slouch.

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=sv&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sweclockers.com%2Fnyhet%2F16597-amd-temash-specifikationer-och-prestanda

a 1.4 Ghz Temash tablet apu performs slightly better than a core i3 2367m cpu running at 1.4 Ghz in cinebench r 11.5. This application scales very well with multiple cores. 4 jaguar cores are matching a core i3 (dual core with ht). 8 jaguar cores will match a core i7 (quad core with ht) at the same clocks. obviously single threaded performance will be better on the intel core i3 / core i7. but with software designed to utilize the 8 cores, the PS4 CPU should do very well. the latest cryengine 3 (crysis 3) and frostbite 2 engines (bf3 multiplayer) already scale very well with multiple threads.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I think you are underestimating the PS 4 CPU which uses the Jaguar core. 8 Jaguar cores running at 2 Ghz is no slouch.

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=sv&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sweclockers.com%2Fnyhet%2F16597-amd-temash-specifikationer-och-prestanda

a 1.4 Ghz Temash tablet apu performs slightly better than a core i3 2367m cpu running at 1.4 Ghz in cinebench r 11.5. This application scales very well with multiple cores. 4 jaguar cores are matching a core i3 (dual core with ht). 8 jaguar cores will match a core i7 (quad core with ht) at the same clocks. obviously single threaded performance will be better on the intel core i3 / core i7. but with software designed to utilize the 8 cores, the PS4 CPU should do very well. the latest cryengine 3 (crysis 3) and frostbite 2 engines (bf3 multiplayer) already scale very well with multiple threads.

I'm not underestimating the performance here, the docked for additional power quad core Temash scores lower than a single core of a stock i5-2500k.

 

[Arachnotronic]

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/697?vs=287

Destroy is a strong word.
Usually its 10-17% faster yes (2600k vs 8350).
the 8350 does beat the 2600k a few times, usually its other way around.

And yes its a 95w vs a 125w CPU.

Most of the cases where the differnce is big,
its because the software isnt useing very many threads.



anyways this is off topic, can we drop it?
Yes Intel CPUs are slightly faster usually, and espcially so, if application doesnt use alot of threads.

It's not raw performance that's the 8350's problem - it's power consumption. That being said, enthusiasts don't really care so much about perf/watt in desktop systems, so the 8350 is actually a pretty decent solution for its niche 🙂

I've actually really been meaning to get my hands on one, but I usually get to play with new hardware by way of builds I do for friends. So far, I've found it hard to recommend anything but a 3570k, but maybe someone will come to me dying for an FX chip. In that case, I'll get to test the snot out of it 😀

Pre-Bulldozer almost every build I did was with those Athlon II X3's and X4's...such great chips for the $.

 

[raghu78]

Having 8 computation cores in the PS2 and 3 fully functional cores in the Xbox did not bring us games that utilise lots of cores. Increasing it in a console yet further and even more cores might but its not necessarily the case.

It is really difficult to split game simulations across multiple cores, for many games concepts its actually impossible. Games are not an embarrassingly parallel problem, they are deeply serial in their design and there is no obvious multithreading strategy available that doesn't involve adding a lot of latency. The games studios aren't magically going to find a solution on the new consoles that they didn't manage to come up with in the previous generation, which also had quite a lot of parallel hardware they couldn't use and didn't translate to ports using many cores.

AMD getting this deal was good for them, but it might bring minimal benefits to gamers on PC especially in regards to CPU utilisation and the amount games can actually simulate.

the PS3 Cell CPU was a heterogenous design and very difficult to program and extract performance. the xbox 360 was a homogeneous design and had 3 identical cores which proved to be much easier for the developers to program.

Now imagine what a 8 core x86 AMD 64 bit cpu with support for the latest instruction sets like SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE 3,SSE4a, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, AES, CLMUL, F16C, BMI1 etc is capable of. all of this at a very low die size and power

http://www.techpowerup.com/180394/A...he-Fight-to-Atom-with-AVX-SSE4-Quad-Core.html

 

[Arachnotronic]

the PS3 Cell CPU was a heterogenous design and very difficult to program and extract performance. the xbox 360 was a homogeneous design and had 3 identical cores which proved to be much easier for the developers to program.

Now imagine what a 8 core x86 AMD 64 bit cpu with support for the latest instruction sets like SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE 3,SSE4a, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, AES, CLMUL, F16C, BMI1 etc is capable of. all of this at a very low die size and power

http://www.techpowerup.com/180394/A...he-Fight-to-Atom-with-AVX-SSE4-Quad-Core.html

Jaguar is compelling on paper. It will be very, very interesting to see how it does in the real world.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Consoles on paper always looks fantastic. Xbox360 and PS3 had quite the paper war.
I am sure Sony/MS would pick a slower 8 core than a faster quadcore. Simply to say there was 8. And they hype thr crowd up to believe in it. Just like last time.

http://www.ps3blog.net/about/ps3-specs/

Just look at the specs. 2Tflop system performance, 7 SPEs etc. higher number must be better.

Reality was a bitter one tho.

To compare the PC had 2 Tflop with the HD5870. The PS3 numbers was simply..paper numbers. The Xbox360 boosted 1 Tflop. Also a number from a magical wonderland.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Reality was a bitter one tho.

Yes, the reality that we're discussing an ultra low power tablet/ultrabook designed cpu will set in soon after it's release.

 

[raghu78]

I'm not underestimating the performance here, the docked for additional power quad core Temash scores lower than a single core of a stock i5-2500k.

why do you compare 2 cpus of different power consumption ranges. i showed you a 4 core jaguar running at 1.4 ghz slightly is faster than a core i3 dual core with HT cpu. those were both ultra low power cpus. the core i3 2367m draws 17w. We don't yet know the exact power consumption of a Temash apu at 1.4 Ghz. it must be either 10w or 15w. also that power consumption includes the 128 GCN cores at 500 mhz. so the cpu is even lesser. so the performance for a given power envelope is very good.

 

[Leadbox]

Yes, the reality that we're discussing an ultra low power tablet/ultrabook designed cpu will set in soon after it's release.

If this is the reality, bring it on!

 

[Ancalagon44]

Consoles on paper always looks fantastic. Xbox360 and PS3 had quite the paper war.
I am sure Sony/MS would pick a slower 8 core than a faster quadcore. Simply to say there was 8. And they hype thr crowd up to believe in it. Just like last time.

http://www.ps3blog.net/about/ps3-specs/

Just look at the specs. 2Tflop system performance, 7 SPEs etc. higher number must be better.

Reality was a bitter one tho.

To compare the PC had 2 Tflop with the HD5870. The PS3 numbers was simply..paper numbers. The Xbox360 boosted 1 Tflop. Also a number from a magical wonderland.

I really dont get why you care so much that the PS4 uses what it does instead of 4 BD cores running at 6Ghz each and an 8990. So what? Its not that powerful relative to a modern top end gaming machine, who cares? How does it affect you?

 

[frozentundra123456]

Do you understand that useing 22nm technology + 3D transistors, might favor Intel in power consumption ?

Compaired to AMD useing 32nm.

If AMD had 22nm + 3D transistors, how much power would their bulldozer use?
How fast could it run? would it be a match for Intels newest CPUs (if 8threaded)?

Does it really matter what the reason is? The performance is the bottom line. As a friend of mine says all the time "it is what it is". You can always say what if this/what if that, but it doesn't change anything.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Yes, the reality that we're discussing an ultra low power tablet/ultrabook designed cpu will set in soon after it's release.

Clocked higher, and with 2x the cores that an thin & light laptop variant (and 4x the ones a tablet one) would have. I don't think that Jaguar in PS4 will hold a candle to the mainstream 4 core Intel chips or the 8 core AMD FX ones, but it'll be "good enough".

 

[Cloudfire777]

Y Do you think that intel would outfit the PS4 with a high performance CPU?

You forget that power consumption is a big issue too since these consoles are not mid tower cases but small black boxes.

This does not make sense, at all.

AMDs APU are highly inefficient compared to Intel CPUs. Its a world of difference.

So yes, if Sony could, they would have picked a Intel CPU anyday of the week instead of a AMD APU.

You know what's really scary? nVidia/Intel monopoly. That's the real scary part because it's actually quite possible right now if AMD dies.

You think Titan/3960X is bad now? Prepare your angus for when AMD really does go under.

Oh please stop with the fear mongering. The price wouldn`t go through the roof just because AMD dissappeared. I don`t think Nvidia would be allowed to be the only CPU manufacturer either, most likely forced to split up.
Why do you think Titan and 3960X is expensive? Because its the greatest CPU/GPU out there, people want the best, therefor Nvidia and Intel can charge whatever they want and people will still buy it. Its basic marketing. Don`t blame Nvidia or Intel for it, blame AMD for being too sucky to come up with something that is equally powerful

 

[raghu78]

Yes, the reality that we're discussing an ultra low power tablet/ultrabook designed cpu will set in soon after it's release.

we will know much more about what jaguar is capable at the temash / kabini launch in q2. you keep forgetting that hyperthreading has a 20% scaling and is no match for a true core. When properly multithreaded software like cinebench r11.5 is used a Temash 4 core can match a core i3 dual core with HT at the same clocks (mostly for lower power). so its clear a 8 core jaguar can match a core i7 quad core with ht at the same power.

sony spoke to game developers before they designed the console. they must have got the feedback that 8 cores is ideal for the next generation.