Will a 7950 keep pace with PS4 @ 1080p

[futurefields]

Will the 7950 3gb keep pace with PS4 @ 1080p (optimizations and so forth notwithstanding...)

Pared with say a 2500k @ 4.0ghz and 8gb ddr3-1600? And an FSP Aurum Gold 600 watt power supply?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814202026
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817104098

Thanks,

 

[Red Hawk]

Yes, it certainly will.

 

[Rifter]

by a large margin yes.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Yes, everyone of your components is ahead of the PS4 curve, and they all overclock well something no PS4 will do.

PS4 will be below DX, but above the driver level, it's not direct to the metal as some may have thought, but any optimizations will probably lend themselves to it's gimped cpu rather than the graphical performance.

 

[alcoholbob]

Sure, at the beginning, but as console optimizations improve, no.

Same as a Pentium 4 with an 8800 GTX, can certainly run multiplatform games from 2006 at PS3 detail levels, but it certainly can't do it as well as a PS3 can run Crysis 3 today.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Sure, at the beginning, but as console optimizations improve, no.

Same as a Pentium 4 with an 8800 GTX, can certainly run multiplatform games from 2006 at PS3 detail levels, but it certainly can't do it as well as a PS3 can run Crysis 3 today.

Crysis 3 is DX11 only, to give you an idea of how valid that comparison is.

 

[fstime]

Sure, at the beginning, but as console optimizations improve, no.

Same as a Pentium 4 with an 8800 GTX, can certainly run multiplatform games from 2006 at PS3 detail levels, but it certainly can't do it as well as a PS3 can run Crysis 3 today.

^^^ this, game optimization for consoles is too strong. That's the advantage of being able to develop the game for a standard platform.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

In this case the standard platform is x86 and DX11.1 or did I miss something?

 

[fstime]

In this case the standard platform is x86 and DX11.1 or did I miss something?

By platform, I meant the fact that all PS3's use the same hardware and all 360's use the same hardware. A PC can be a combination of thousands of components put together.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

So you mean they can get more precise settings, not an actual code or programing advantage, yes?

Whereas a PC will have generic low/med/high/ultra settings, that may take some effort to hone?

 

[turn_pike]

Counting optimization ? I think in the long run, very unlikely.

From this 2011 article at bit-tech :
AMD's worldwide developer relations manager of its GPU division, Richard Huddy said :

'We often have at least ten times as much horsepower as an Xbox 360 or a PS3 in a high-end graphics card, yet it's very clear that the games don't look ten times as good. To a significant extent, that's because, one way or another, for good reasons and bad - mostly good, DirectX is getting in the way.

'Wrapping it up in a software layer gives you safety and security,' says Huddy, 'but it unfortunately tends to rob you of quite a lot of the performance, and most importantly it robs you of the opportunity to innovate.'

It can vary from almost nothing at all to a huge overhead,' says Huddy. 'If you're just rendering a screen full of pixels which are not terribly complicated, then typically a PC will do just as good a job as a console. These days we have so much horsepower on PCs that on high-resolutions you see some pretty extraordinary-looking PC games, but one of the things that you don't see in PC gaming inside the software architecture is the kind of stuff that we see on consoles all the time.

On consoles, you can draw maybe 10,000 or 20,000 chunks of geometry in a frame, and you can do that at 30-60fps. On a PC, you can't typically draw more than 2-3,000 without getting into trouble with performance, and that's quite surprising - the PC can actually show you only a tenth of the performance if you need a separate batch for each draw call.

 

[NTMBK]

So you mean they can get more precise settings, not an actual code or programing advantage, yes?

Whereas a PC will have generic low/med/high/ultra settings, that may take some effort to hone?

When you know the precise processor, you can tailor so finely. You can tweak your code to adjust the size of structs to fit into caches precisely. You know exactly how many cycles you have a second, how many cycles it takes to execute an instruction, and hence exactly what you can fit into 1/60th of a second. You know exactly how many threads you have, so you know how far to go with parallelizing your code before you stop getting benefits. You know exactly how much memory you have, so you know exactly what resolution of textures will fit into VRAM without having to swap out.

When you write for a PC, you don't know any of these. You can write heuristics to try and determine a few things, you can provide sliders in settings to give users some stuff to tweak, but you can never hit that precise level of optimization.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

Try playing modern games with a p4 and 7900gtx at minimum settings.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

It seems PS4 will be between a DX like API and the driver, it won't get "down to the metal" - at least that's what it seems to be at this point.

The other discussion is on draw calls it seems, which has to do with cpu bottlenecking and not something that directly hinders gpu performance.

From looking at screens of Oblivion against a 8800, where the 8800 really showed much better graphics, to my own testing with a 9800 GT 512 (slower than 8800) in Bioshock Inf, there doesn't seem to be any real notable gain for the xbox 360, it still has less view distance, smaller fov, lower resolution, less crisp textures, and so on. That's seven years after the fact, and it still can't match a 112 core DDR3 chip. Of course I'm not using a Pent 4, or a gpu that was slower at release, neither is the OP though.

Also advancements in DX to reduce draw calls, including multithreading (does AMD support this yet?) is something that should be considered. BF3 reduced their distance view draw calls from 4000 to 900 by rendering blocks instead of individual areas. Again this just helps alleviate cpu overhead, nothing I've seen linked anywhere shows some magic texture compression to allow higher texture resolutions on consoles over PCs, nor have I seen anything that indicates (outside cpu bottlenecks) that the gpu in consoles can do more work than those in PCs.

 

[raghu78]

OP a HD 7950 is a very good card for 1080p gaming. go with the sapphire hd 7950 (newegg 2L) version. sapphire model 11196-16-20G. reference PCB design. unlocked voltage. good cooler. 29 cm long.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814202006

the card you chose is newegg 3L . sapphire model 11196-19-20G. custom PCB. does not have VRM temp sensors. unlocked voltage. same dual x cooler.

so if you can fit the 2L card in your case go with it.

 

[turn_pike]

It seems PS4 will be between a DX like API and the driver, it won't get "down to the metal" - at least that's what it seems to be at this point.

Yes, but it was addressed in the article I linked to.

When a console is first launched, you'll want an API so that you can develop good-looking and stable games quickly, but it makes sense to go direct-to-metal towards the end of the console's life, when you're looking to squeeze out as much performance as possible.

Hence, in the long run the 7950 will be severely outclassed. Luckily by then we probably will have a 200$ graphic card that performs 5x faster.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

No what your link showed was consoles could handle more draw calls, meaning a PC would become cpu limited before a console would. It also assumed a deeper level of to the metal than what the PS4 is rumored to have, because the PS4 will not go below the driver level according to recent reports.

However your link does not address new techniques to reduce draw call overhead on PCs, nor was AMD too keen on multithreading at that time with DX11 (nvidia had it for awhile, which was why the 580 did so well against the 6970 in titles like Civ V which had multithreaded DX11 enabled).

7950 will never be outclassed by the PS4 gpu, not ever. The only thing that MIGHT happen is draw calls exceed what his i5-2500k is capable of handling, thus incurring a cpu limited situation much like what we already see with older processors and AMD cpus in lightly threaded titles.

This all ignores some major facts that seems to go unaddressed, such as you can address draw calls in batches ( http://blogs.amd.com/play/2011/12/12/bf3techinterview/ ), and can increase the PC's draw call capability by using the multithreading technique used in DX11 by several fold.

 

[Lonyo]

When you are coding for a set hardware spec, you can optimise everything for that hardware spec.

I am sure you have seen the many driver updates put out by AMD and NV to optimise for specific new release games, and improve performance.
The developers can theoretically do that work, and more, with consoles.

It's not a new idea that you can extract more performance from a set hardware spec, whether you can code closer to the metal or not.
Since it has a set hardware spec, developers can optimise and tweak for optimal performance.

And comparing any game to Xbox 360/PS3 is silly nowadays, because the RAM in those systems is so crippling that you can't really make things look all that good, because you only have a certain amount of textures you can throw in for starters.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

That's cool but optimized settings won't make up the performance gap between a 7850 + a few percent vs a 7950, not to mention with OC.

All it does it tweak the best settings to hit the required speed/res target, be it 1080p at 30 or 720 at 60. It doesn't create a more powerful gpu.

Anyways, it seems consoles are the second coming around here.

OP don't get tricked by the pre-console hype, i5-2500k + 7950 is a great setup. :thumbsup:

 

[Skurge]

Balla? Are you being serious?

Forget Multiplatform games for a second here. GT5, Forza 4, Uncharted, Halo, MGS, Killzone, Final Fantasy. I dare you to find a PC game running on a 7900GTX 256MB thats looks half as good as those games. Even at 720p.

Don't get me wrong, PC's are a lot more powerful than a console will ever be for quiet some time. I have a 360 and a PS3 that I only use for Forza, GT5 and Final Fantasy. I know how terrible consoles look, but I also know how terrible a 8800gt does in modern games, let alone a G70.

The Witcher 2 is a good example. Go look at in on a 360 and then on an 8800.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

100% serious.

7900GTX 256MB wasn't as fast as the 360's GPU, nor did it have as much vram.

Here is my 9800GT running Bioshock Inf.

This is 1080p

xbox 360 doesn't even run 1080p, and I would stop talking right now if you can produce a screen cap from the game on a 360 that looks better than a weak, cheap 9800GT 512.

 

[RussianSensation]

Balla your comparison doesn't make any sense. You aren't properly accounting for the GPU spec performance differential, VRAM differences or the time span properly.

1) GPU Performance Differential

The GPU inside Xbox 360 is roughly equal to X1800XT (17 VP). 9800GT 512MB is rated at 45 VP or 2.64x faster. HD7950 925mhz is only 52% faster than HD7850 2GB, but it's actually less because the GPU inside PS4 has 176GB/sec memory bandwidth. That makes it faster than HD7850. To make a proper comparison, you need to compare a GPU with performance similar to X1900XTX or GT430 running Bioshock Infinite.

How does comparing a GPU that's more than 2.5x faster than Xbox 360/PS3's to a GPU that's barely 50% faster than PS4's make any sense? Oh ya, it doesn't.

2) VRAM differential

9800GT had full access to 512MB of dedicated VRAM, while PS3 could only allocate 256MB for the GPU and Xbox 360 had to share 512MB in total. That means your comparison is once again skewed to favour the PC part. Coincidentally, you are not accounting for the huge advantage PS4 has since it has 8GB of shared GDDR5. That automatically means games on PS4 will have higher resolution textures down the line as games in 2018-2020 will surely use more than 3GB of VRAM and 7950 will run out.

3) Incorrect time span comparison

9800GT came out on July 29, 2008, or less than 5 years from Bioshock Infinite's release. Since PS4 is just coming out by end of 2013, and it's reasonable to estimate that it will have a useful life of at least 7 years, HD7950 would have to last much longer than 9800GT did.

Essentially your 9800GT 512MB comparison vs. PS360 consoles is making the PC GPU look way better than it is and incorrectly extrapolating that to HD7950 vs. PS4. HD7950 has way less of a power advantage over PS4's GPU, it has to last much longer than 9800GT did in comparison to PS3, which means games will get even more advanced which means optimizations for PS4 will matter more and by then HD7950 won't be optimized at all. You are also not taking into account that HD7950 will run out of VRAM by then and PS4 will have way more room in that area.

Granted, HD7950 isn't supposed to last 7 years because it costs substantially less than PS4. However, implying that HD7950 should last throughout PS4's useful life while providing similar graphics to PS4 for the next 7 years is just wishful thinking. X1900XTX/GT430 are completely worthless right now.

Finally, you are also incorrect on low level access to PS4's hardware:

"Sony is building its CPU on what it's calling an extended DirectX 11.1+ feature set, including extra debugging support that is not available on PC platforms. This system will also give developers more direct access to the shader pipeline than they had on the PS3 or through DirectX itself. "This is access you're not used to getting on the PC, and as a result you can do a lot more cool things and have a lot more access to the power of the system," Norden said. A low-level API will also let coders talk directly with the hardware in a way that's "much lower-level than DirectX and OpenGL," but still not quite at the driver level. ~ Source

 

[Erenhardt]

100% serious.

7900GTX 256MB wasn't as fast as the 360's GPU, nor did it have as much vram.

Here is my 9800GT running Bioshock Inf.

7900GTX is faster than 360 GPU on paper.
360 GPU have 10MB RAM where 7900GTX have 256MB...

This is 1080p

It is not?

xbox 360 doesn't even run 1080p, and I would stop talking right now if you can produce a screen cap from the game on a 360 that looks better than a weak, cheap 9800GT 512.

Weak and cheap 9800GT:
have as much memory as a whole 360 system
It is 2 times faster (or even more)
16ROPS vs 8ROPS
65nm vs 90nm
takes 2 times more power than 360 and have 3 times more transistors...
etc..
etc..

 

[RussianSensation]

Weak and cheap 9800GT:
have as much memory as a whole 360 system
It is 2 times faster (or even more)
16ROPS vs 8ROPS
65nm vs 90nm
takes 2 times more power than 360 and have 3 times more transistors...
etc..
etc..

Ball doesn't like facts so he makes up comparisons that are not relevant to put down PS4 because he hates consoles.

Let's see Witcher 2 running on a Core 2 Duo and X1900XTX 256MB. The interesting part is by the time PS3 came out, 8800GTX launched. 8800GTX was at least 3.12x faster than X1800XTX/7950GT 256MB. The GPU in PS4 is at minimum at HD7850 2GB level. The Titan is about 2.5x faster than HD7850 2GB and is expected to be the fastest single GPU for all of 2013.

That means PS4's GPU is actually better off in relation to the fastest single PC GPU than PS3's was. PS4 will also allow access to lower level of hardware for coding, something that was missing for most of PS3's life for 90% of developers.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Balla your comparison doesn't make any sense. You aren't properly accounting for the GPU spec performance differential, VRAM differences or the time span properly.

1) GPU Performance Differential

The GPU inside Xbox 360 is roughly equal to X1800XT (17 VP). 9800GT 512MB is rated at 45 VP or 2.64x faster. HD7950 925mhz is only 52% faster than HD7850 2GB, but it's actually less because the GPU inside PS4 has 176GB/sec memory bandwidth. That makes it faster than HD7850. To make a proper comparison, you need to compare a GPU with performance similar to X1900XTX or GT430 running Bioshock Infinite.

How does comparing a GPU that's more than 2.5x faster than Xbox 360/PS3 to a GPU that's barely 50% faster than PS4's make any sense? Oh ya, it doesn't.

2) VRAM differential

9800GT had full access to 512MB of dedicated VRAM, while PS3 could only allocate 256MB for the GPU and Xbox 360 had to share 512MB in total. That means your comparison is once again skewed to favour the PC part. Coincidentally, you are not accounting for the huge advantage PS4 has since it has 8GB of shared GDDR5. That automatically means games on PS4 will have higher resolution textures down the line as games in 2018-2020 will surely use more than 3GB of VRAM and 7950 will run out.

3) Incorrect time span comparison

9800GT came out on July 29, 2008, or less than 5 years from Bioshock Infinite's release. Since PS4 is just coming out by end of 2013, and it's reasonable to estimate that it will have a useful life of at least 7 years, HD7950 would have to last much longer than 9800GT did.

Essentially your 9800GT 512MB comparison vs. PS360 consoles is making the PC GPU look way better than it is. HD7950 has way less of a power advantage over PS4's GPU, it has to last much longer than 9800GT did in comparison to PS3, which means games will get even more advanced which means optimizations for PS4 will matter more and by then HD7950 won't be optimized at all. You are also not taking into account that HD7950 will run out of VRAM by then and PS4 will have way more room in that area.

Granted, HD7950 isn't supposed to last 7 years because it costs substially less than PS4. However, implying that HD7950 should last through PS4's useful life while providing similar graphics to PS4 for the next 7 years is just wishful thinking. X1900XTX/GT430 is completely worthless right now.

Help me understand 😉

1) GPU Performance Differential

2.64 times faster, running over twice the pixel count. It's also producing a better quality image. Also the gpu in the 360 is not a X1800XT, it's more advanced and uses a unified shader package.

I can't do a simple 1:1 comparison, since I don't have the exact gpu in the xbox 360, but I tried to come as close as I could by easily maintaining 30fps or more, and using as much of the vram as I could without going over budget.


2) VRAM differential

360 has a unified memory address space, as well as an additional 10MB of EDRAM. Only the PS3 split the memory, and the 360 has better texture quality than the PS3.

Have you played Skyrim? Have you attempted to max out the 3GB frame buffer at 1080 or 720, where the PS4 is slated to operate? I have, you have to install so many 4k textures it becomes a bit silly. Maybe we'll see it someday, but I'm under the impression that it would bloat the download/install so large it's actually kind of impractical to create games with 8k textures atm.

3) Incorrect time span comparison

9800 is a lower power derivative of G80, a 8800 GTX which came out in 2006 is faster, it has a larger bus, more memory, more cuda cores, more rops and more TMU's, it's a far better card.

You're missing some key elements here, the 360 is running the aa free of charge basically, and it's doing it at a lower resolution than I was. Less than half the pixels, assuming it's running 720p. It's also not the gpu you think it is, it's VP is higher as the 360 had a more advanced GPU than was on the market during that age.

Ball doesn't like facts so he makes up comparisons that are not relevant to put down PS4 because he hates consoles.

No it's because I hate AMD, remember? :thumbsup: