Will i5 2500k keep pace with PS4/Xbox720 CPU?

[kasakka]

You also have to remember that the next gen consoles will be different from the current ones also on the OS level. I wouldn't be surprised if Sony's PS4 OS is similar to what they're doing on Vita where games can keep state, you can switch between them (albeit by suspending games to storage) and other things. That is something that you just can't do on the PS3. That kind of stuff should eat a gig or two.

At some point the next gen consoles will probably also run into a few walls for developer ambition and we start seeing sub-1080p upscaled stuff like we did with the sbu-720p games on the PS3 and Xbox. At that time the PC still can probably run those things with higher resolutions if the port is good.

 

[StrangerGuy]

Correct, the PC platform certainly isn't the most efficient platform for gaming, nor should it be. PC's are general purpose machines. But that's why we have 700+ watt power supplies and 265watt video cards 🙂 to power through those inefficiencies.

Please, spare me the PC elitism. Even you can spend $500 on GPUs every year you will still be entirely at mercy to consoles because I can tell for sure every single AAA game will be a console game first, PC port second.

 

[poohbear]

A 2500k is still top of the line in 2013, the reality is in the past 3 years there hasnt been much in terms of performance increases, just efficiency.

 

[2is]

Please, spare me the PC elitism. Even you can spend $500 on GPUs every year you will still be entirely at mercy to consoles because I can tell for sure every single AAA game will be a console game first, PC port second.

It's not PC elitism its the truth. Buy more powerful hardware, get higher frame rates. PC port second is true but irilivent to the discussion. If you'd like I can show you benchmarks showing more powerful hardware gettimg higher fps. Ill PM them to you to "spare" everyone else facts they're already aware of.

And you don't even have to spend $500/year to do it. That's just made up, similar to "squeeze out more performance because its fully PC" comment.

 

[cytg111]

Correct, the PC platform certainly isn't the most efficient platform for gaming, nor should it be. PC's are general purpose machines. But that's why we have 700+ watt power supplies and 265watt video cards 🙂 to power through those inefficiencies.

Yet with Intels InstantAccess and AMDs ZeroCopy, the PC is moving in that general direction too 🙂 .. I suspect that these two techs is some of what Carmack is/was missing on the PC platform.

 

[Idontcare]

It's not PC elitism its the truth. Buy more powerful hardware, get higher frame rates. PC port second is true but irilivent to the discussion. If you'd like I can show you benchmarks showing more powerful hardware gettimg higher fps. Ill PM them to you to "spare" everyone else facts they're already aware of.

And you don't even have to spend $500/year to do it. That's just made up, similar to "squeeze out more performance because its fully PC" comment.

You also get the opportunity to play on higher resolution formats than 1080P, be it single or multi display.

 

[frozentundra123456]

You also get the opportunity to play on higher resolution formats than 1080P, be it single or multi display.

Plus you can play legacy games, both current and past generations, which will not be playable on consoles. Personally I see a place for both. I think the ps4 will be a great platform, especially if the price is right, say 350 to 400 dollars. On the other hand I don't think the console win is suddenly going transform the PC landscape in general, or even the PC gaming landscape like some are claiming.

 

[2is]

Plus you can play legacy games, both current and past generations, which will not be playable on consoles. Personally I see a place for both. I think the ps4 will be a great platform, especially if the price is right, say 350 to 400 dollars. On the other hand I don't think the console win is suddenly going transform the PC landscape in general, or even the PC gaming landscape like some are claiming.

Well.... Kind of... Some legacy games also require legacy operating systems, so you may need to fire up an instance of VMWARE or dual boot to accomplish that, but at least it's still possible.

 

[NTMBK]

Did I mention anything about amd stock or financials in my post? Believe it or not I hope amd survives, and I am using an amd graphics card. So I would advocate an amd product for a purpose for which I think it best meets my criteria of price/performance/power usage.

No, you didn't.... which is why I didn't quote your post. 😉

 

[NTMBK]

Also PC gaming is expanding, the same cant be said for consoles.

Of course console gaming isn't expanding- it's the end of a cycle. Very few interesting game launches, everybody already owns one (or two) of the current gen consoles, and everybody knows that the next gen is just over the horizon. It's how the cycle works, and the same will probably be true in another 8 years' time. Consoles go in cyclical spurts and contractions, with a long term tendency towards growth. PC gaming is a more consistent slow burner, due to its nature of not being dominated by a handful of key players like consoles are.

 

[NTMBK]

Over the last 20 months, I read posted numerous times how bitcoin was going to bring AMD's gpu to dominance and profits. If anything, both divisions are struggling more than ever. The console contracts are just this weeks gold rush.

Bitcoins are a totally new, emergent, inherently unstable market based around speculation on a currency. The console market has literally decades of history and experience. Its really not the same thing.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Of course console gaming isn't expanding- it's the end of a cycle. Very few interesting game launches, everybody already owns one (or two) of the current gen consoles, and everybody knows that the next gen is just over the horizon. It's how the cycle works, and the same will probably be true in another 8 years' time. Consoles go in cyclical spurts and contractions, with a long term tendency towards growth. PC gaming is a more consistent slow burner, due to its nature of not being dominated by a handful of key players like consoles are.

Not at all actually. The model that the consoles use to repay the hardware is simply against what most people wish. Why pay 70$ for a game when you can pay less or maybe even free. Plus again, the consoles are sandwiched between 2 growing segments.

The Wii U sales also collapsed.

 

[NTMBK]

Well, that's right. But such applications will mostly be run on real CPUs or GPUs, not anemic APUs. Even if an APU would be more efficient, the overall system efficiency probably would be lower. Maybe useful in dense servers like Seamicros, but not widely useful in the PC market as such. And of course we have to wait for more info about Xeon Phi performance, which should be well suited for just such application profiles.

Separate CPUs and GPUs are a complete pain in the arse to develop for. Have you tried write software for them? In any sufficiently complex algorithm, you will have sections that perform better on parallel processors like a GPU, and certain bits which run better on a CPU with strong single threaded performance and excellent branch performance. And generally speaking, these sections are not neatly divided into one half you can run on the CPU and one half you can then offload to the GPU. But because of the costs of passing tasks from one to the other (scheduler overheads, and uploading and downloading data to and from a card) you need to draw the line somewhere. If you try passing back and forth from one to the other, you will get absolutely killed by that PCIe bus. Just look at PC gaming. Sections of the graphics pipeline like frustum clipping, occlusion clipping are inherently parallel problems which *should* map very well to a GPU. But because of the cost of running them there, passing the results back to the CPU and then using them to schedule more work for the GPU, they are run on the CPU instead. By having the two combined into one, with a combined memory pool with no need for passing data across external buses, you can look at this kind of fine grained algorithm and just do the tasks where it makes sense. If you want some reading on the occlusion culling, frustum culling stuff, go read this. http://www.slideshare.net/zlatan4177/gpgpu-algorithms-in-games (Warning: contains AMD slides, and hence marketing jargon... but still contains useful information.)

As for Xeon Phi- it's a graphics card, basically. It has some neat features, like the ability to run a Linux + MPI stack natively, but it's a graphics card. It has all the drawbacks of separate memory pool to manage, sucky single threaded performance, and requirements for massively parallel tasks to extract performance out of it. However, it will get a lot more interesting if Intel integrate it into their CPUs. (As Semiaccurate is suggesting they will at Skylake.)

 

[NTMBK]

Not at all actually. The model that the consoles use to repay the hardware is simply against what most people wish. Why pay 70$ for a game when you can pay less or maybe even free. Plus again, the consoles are sandwiched between 2 growing segments.

The Wii U sales also collapsed.

Wii U sales collapsing also fits the history. There are plenty of corpses of former console makers who flamed out. Just look at the Dreamcast- tried to beat their competitors to the market, but came with poor hardware and a lacklustre software lineup, and the customers didn't bite because they knew better was coming. Nintendo pulled it off well with the Wii with a genuinely cool and innovative feature, but people don't really care about tablet controllers apparently.

Sandwiched between 2 growing segments- I assume you mean smartphone and PC? Smartphones are more of a threat to the handheld console market, not the TV console market, and PC growth is a) filling in the gap due to cyclical drop off in console market and b) fuelled by steadily dropping costs of entry to PC gaming... largely driven by the number of console ports, whose hardware requirements will shoot up massively in 12 months' time.

 

[ShintaiDK]

I am also thinking Smart TVs, tablets etc. We can play games on our TV and use gestures to control it. Right out the box.

 

[NTMBK]

I am also thinking Smart TVs, tablets etc. We can play games on our TV and use gestures to control it. Right out the box.

As soon as someone makes a smart TV platform that a) a human being can use, and would want to and b) is used in more than a handful of TVs, the console makers will start worrying. 😛 It's certainly a logical area of growth in the future, and as soon as they get their act together it could be something really good. But in its current state, it's just a mess.

 

[jpiniero]

Why pay 70$ for a game when you can pay less or maybe even free

There certinately is plenty of risk that the $70 AAA model is dying - be it on the consoles or the PC. F2P has become much more popular, and it's possible that it's rise will be the end of the consoles as we know it. It's worth watching to see if the Ouya takes off.

 

[cytg111]

As soon as someone makes a smart TV platform that a) a human being can use, and would want to and b) is used in more than a handful of TVs, the console makers will start worrying. 😛 It's certainly a logical area of growth in the future, and as soon as they get their act together it could be something really good. But in its current state, it's just a mess.

Samsung could pull that off now?

"3D Android TV, special price for you" .. the adds would go.

 

[NTMBK]

There certinately is plenty of risk that the $70 AAA model is dying - be it on the consoles or the PC. F2P has become much more popular, and it's possible that it's rise will be the end of the consoles as we know it. It's worth watching to see if the Ouya takes off.

2 years ago, every video game analyst was predicting that social gaming (i.e. Zynga) was the next big thing, and going to kill traditional gaming stone dead. That went really well, didn't it?

F2P is a decent fit for certain types of games- I had plenty of fun with Tribes Ascend. But it just doesn't work well for games with a strong narrative. Do you think we'll ever see a F2P Bioshock Infinite? I doubt it.

 

[Sable]

just pick HD 7970 GHz ED and you'll be just fine, but u'll have to Upgrade your Rig for FX 8350 cuz upcoming Games will be Optimized for Modular AMD Builds and that is for sure 8/6 cores is the current minimum for Playing Games on UE4.... so FX 8350 8GB RAM and 7970 GHz on Sabertooth 990FX or Maximus ---> 🙂

vampirr, is that you?!

 

[NTMBK]

just pick HD 7970 GHz ED and you'll be just fine, but u'll have to Upgrade your Rig for FX 8350 cuz upcoming Games will be Optimized for Modular AMD Builds and that is for sure 8/6 cores is the current minimum for Playing Games on UE4.... so FX 8350 8GB RAM and 7970 GHz on Sabertooth 990FX or Maximus ---> 🙂

The PS4 is using Jaguar, which isn't a CMT ("module") based processor.

 

[Idontcare]

The PS4 is using Jaguar, which isn't a CMT ("module") based processor.

Which I think says absolutely everything that needs to be said of the future of AMD's MPU roadmap as it relates to Excavator.

We see where the future is for AMD's x86, it is back with CMP designs targeting performance/watt and IPC/watt. It's not speedracer gimped-core designs.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Well.... Kind of... Some legacy games also require legacy operating systems, so you may need to fire up an instance of VMWARE or dual boot to accomplish that, but at least it's still possible.

I dont mean "legacy" as in DOS or early windows games. I mean games from this generation or the recent previous generations. With the change in architecture, will the PS4 be backwards compatible to play any games at all that were not designed for it? I dont really know, but I would think not.

 

[frozentundra123456]

vampirr, is that you?!

Funny, that is exactly the thought that went through my mind as well!!

 

[Dresdenboy]

Which I think says absolutely everything that needs to be said of the future of AMD's MPU roadmap as it relates to Excavator.

We see where the future is for AMD's x86, it is back with CMP designs targeting performance/watt and IPC/watt. It's not speedracer gimped-core designs.

That's the future in a many tasks/highly multithreaded environment (actually throughput oriented). If there is still a need for few threads running fast, I doubt from looking at Jaguar's Shmoo plot, that it may reach 3GHz@28nm. It's the usual trade off topic. But first we need to see both archs at a comparable process.