When the PS4 and XBox One were both announced to have 64 bit Jaguar based CPUs, there was a collective celebration among PC gamers. Finally, consoles and PC shared a unifying 64 bit architecture which would not only make games bigger and more seamless than ever, it would also make porting and optimization much easier; at least theoretically. In the end, I think it worked out rather well. PC gaming is stronger than ever, and as a long time PC gamer, I think the quality of the porting and optimization is much better than it was in the PS3/Xbox 360 days. Another massive benefit of the x86-64 based consoles was that they also forced the developers to multithread their engines to a much greater degree. Although the CPUs in the PS4 and Xbox One were significantly more powerful than the PS3 and Xbox 360 CPUs, they were relatively weak compared to their PC counterparts, with much lower IPC and clock speeds. But they did have multiple cores, and so developers definitely found ways to target them and milk every last bit of performance out of them. The advent of Vulkan and DX12 made exploiting parallelism easier and more powerful and now we have full fledged DX12 and Vulkan only titles that can fully use our expensive multicore CPUs to run at ridiculous framerates.
That's the past, now fast forward to just yesterday when AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su made her presentation for their upcoming Zen 2 based CPU lineup. Unlike the previous Jaguar based CPUs found in the PS4 and Xbox One consoles, these new CPUs are apparently extremely potent and come with IPC that's comparable or better than the best Intel CPUs out now, whist also having a modern instruction set and an arguably more efficient SMT implementation wrapped in significantly lower TDP envelopes courtesy of TSMC's 7nm process. Of course I don't expect the CPUs in the next gen consoles to rival their PC counterparts in clock speed due to power restraints, but these new CPUs are potentially game changing; not only for consoles but for PCs as well.
Despite the huge advancements in gaming over the years brought about by the current gen consoles, particularly in terms of size, scope and seamlessness (thanks primarily to 64 bit), there is no doubt that the comparatively weak Jaguar based CPUs held gaming back in several ways. Most notably, A.I, physics and framerate. Current gen consoles have a helluva time trying to maintain their framerates, and this is especially the case with 60 FPS titles. A good example of that is Doom. None of the consoles, including the PS4 Pro and X1X can maintain a solid 60 FPS in that game, and Doom is one of the most performant current gen titles with a good balance of IQ and framerate. Online FPS/MMBR titles fare even worse.
I expect all of that to be remedied for the better with the new Zen 2 based CPUs, and then some. The question is, to what degree? I don't know how much faster Zen 2 is compared to Jaguar, but I know it has to be at least 3 to 4 times. There's a whole lot that can be done with such a massive increase in CPU performance. Another thing to consider are the full speed AVX2+FMA units, which the new consoles will now have access to. Developers are going to target AVX/AVX2+FMA in a big way I would wager, and this will also impact PC gaming. I'd like the more knowledgeable forum members to comment on this in particular if possible. I suppose the increased vector performance can be put to good use in real time physics simulation rather than relying on canned effects or static simulations.
All comments are welcome!
That's the past, now fast forward to just yesterday when AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su made her presentation for their upcoming Zen 2 based CPU lineup. Unlike the previous Jaguar based CPUs found in the PS4 and Xbox One consoles, these new CPUs are apparently extremely potent and come with IPC that's comparable or better than the best Intel CPUs out now, whist also having a modern instruction set and an arguably more efficient SMT implementation wrapped in significantly lower TDP envelopes courtesy of TSMC's 7nm process. Of course I don't expect the CPUs in the next gen consoles to rival their PC counterparts in clock speed due to power restraints, but these new CPUs are potentially game changing; not only for consoles but for PCs as well.
Despite the huge advancements in gaming over the years brought about by the current gen consoles, particularly in terms of size, scope and seamlessness (thanks primarily to 64 bit), there is no doubt that the comparatively weak Jaguar based CPUs held gaming back in several ways. Most notably, A.I, physics and framerate. Current gen consoles have a helluva time trying to maintain their framerates, and this is especially the case with 60 FPS titles. A good example of that is Doom. None of the consoles, including the PS4 Pro and X1X can maintain a solid 60 FPS in that game, and Doom is one of the most performant current gen titles with a good balance of IQ and framerate. Online FPS/MMBR titles fare even worse.
I expect all of that to be remedied for the better with the new Zen 2 based CPUs, and then some. The question is, to what degree? I don't know how much faster Zen 2 is compared to Jaguar, but I know it has to be at least 3 to 4 times. There's a whole lot that can be done with such a massive increase in CPU performance. Another thing to consider are the full speed AVX2+FMA units, which the new consoles will now have access to. Developers are going to target AVX/AVX2+FMA in a big way I would wager, and this will also impact PC gaming. I'd like the more knowledgeable forum members to comment on this in particular if possible. I suppose the increased vector performance can be put to good use in real time physics simulation rather than relying on canned effects or static simulations.
All comments are welcome!
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