Xbox One and PS4 are a generation ahead of the best PC, says EA CTO
275 replies, posted
[QUOTE=DoctorSalt;40756251]Excuse me since I skipped some pages (gonna read them later) but:
Purely on a level of playing games, since that's the entire point of a console, as literally every one complaining about the Xbox 1 has said...
Are there any desktop computers you can buy that'll cost the same as the PS4/Xbox 1 that could run the same games at the same settings? As much as i don't like it, the xbox 1 is (I believe) slated to run games at 60 fps @ 1080p. Also, find me a computer that uses GDDR5 RAM for the main system RAM.
Now obviously you can dump money on a system to buy a computer that is more powerful than another computer. Hell, you could buy a super computer for all I care, but it'd probably cost way more than these consoles. So comparing price, how many generations will it be where you can pay the same to play games at the same settings? I don't care about what a real desktop can do, that's beside the point. Taken in this way, I think the CTO isn't too far off.
Also, before you ask, I am an avid PC fan with nothing but respect for Steam and PC games. I just want to give this guy's remarks a fair trial.[/QUOTE]
A few posts above
[QUOTE=tarkata14;40756123]
The CTO didn't say, "Next gen consoles are more powerful than any computer of the same price", he said quite boldly "Next gen consoles are more powerful than the highest end PCs".[/QUOTE]
He's just fundamentally wrong. It's not possible to build a gaming console with hardware more powerful than a PC because of the very nature of PCs. It never has and never will be possible. I don't disagree that you would get better performance with an Xbox One compared to an equally priced PC, but that's not what he said.
[QUOTE=Lolkork;40752973]There are some people with sli titans already.[/QUOTE]
[t]http://content.hwigroup.net/images/products/xl/179054-3.jpg[/t]
mmMMMMMMmmnnng
[QUOTE=Isaac96;40756331]Dont thier games start on a pc? like developing wise.[/QUOTE]
No, they compile it on PCs and then it goes straight to the respective consoles to be run / tested
[QUOTE=Bokito;40755426]PS2 emulation tends to disagree.[/QUOTE]
[URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfTtHDPygvU"]I disagree with your disagreement.[/URL]
[QUOTE=daijitsu;40756342][t]http://content.hwigroup.net/images/products/xl/179054-3.jpg[/t]
mmMMMMMMmmnnng[/QUOTE]
Thats a genuine firestarter you got there
[QUOTE=DoctorSalt;40756251]As much as i don't like it, the xbox 1 is (I believe) slated to run games at 60 fps @ 1080p[/QUOTE]
This is [I]all[/I] up to the developers and how fast game technology is developed. Of course games like COD and the early titles in the next-gen cycle will most likely bolster 60FPS at 1080p, but it doesn't take very long for developers to begin pushing the system and resorting to either a lower framerate or a lower resolution. No one can say for sure if these 60fps at 1080p claims are true yet, but if you are expecting PS4/XboxOne to run any game thrown at it at 60FPS, you're going to be heavily disappointed because it's just not feasible with the way games evolve and become more and more complicated.
[QUOTE=catbarf;40755423]I know Facepunch loves to use the 'PC gaming master race' card completely unironically, but this is just getting dumber and dumber. There's more to how a machine performs than just numbers and if you know anything at all about programming or hardware this should obvious.
Find me a computer with a 500Mhz processor, 512 Mhz of RAM, and a Radeon X1000 card that can play Crysis 3 at 1080p, and then you can tell me that your PC is better based on paper specs.[/QUOTE]
Except that's a terribly invalid argument because no games on current gen consoles render at 1920x1080. Crysis 3 is 1024x720 on the PS3 and 1152x720 on the Xbox 360, both with subpixel morphological anti aliasing. If a game console with those specs can't do it, obviously the PC can't either.
[QUOTE=tarkata14;40756379]This is [I]all[/I] up to the developers and how fast game technology is developed. Of course games like COD and the early titles in the next-gen cycle will most likely bolster 60FPS at 1080p, but it doesn't take very long for developers to begin pushing the system and resorting to either a lower framerate or a lower resolution. No one can say for sure if these 60fps at 1080p claims are true yet, but if you are expecting PS4/XboxOne to run any game thrown at it at 60FPS, you're going to be heavily disappointed because it's just not feasible with the way games evolve and become more and more complicated.[/QUOTE]
I agree but as stated before it'd be much much easier on a console to get that performance. I have a really nice computer myself and I can't even run GTA4 at a playable framerate, yet my PS3 can do it with ease. It's not much computer's 'fault' I guess, and I don't blame the developers for not optimizing every type of computer set up but facts are facts and it runs better on a $500 console than my $1200 build
[QUOTE=Durrsly;40756362][URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfTtHDPygvU"]I disagree with your disagreement.[/URL][/QUOTE]
Some games work better than others. For example, I have a GTX 660 Ti and I can only run games like Jak & Daxter and Ratchet & Clank on a certain mode that limits it to the PS2's native resolution, mainly because of shittons of graphical errors resulting from emulation. I also have another PC that is miles ahead of the PS2, but has a hard time even getting 10 fps while running PS2 emulation.
[QUOTE=Bokito;40755426]PS2 emulation tends to disagree.[/QUOTE]
Does this mean that my GTX 570 which runs Kingdom Hearts 2 and BLACK with 60 fps is a mega super quantum computer?
[QUOTE=DoctorSalt;40756251]Excuse me since I skipped some pages (gonna read them later) but:
Purely on a level of playing games, since that's the entire point of a console, as literally every one complaining about the Xbox 1 has said...
Are there any desktop computers you can buy that'll cost the same as the PS4/Xbox 1 that could run the same games at the same settings? As much as i don't like it, the xbox 1 is (I believe) slated to run games at 60 fps @ 1080p. Also, find me a computer that uses GDDR5 RAM for the main system RAM.
Now obviously you can dump money on a system to buy a computer that is more powerful than another computer. Hell, you could buy a super computer for all I care, but it'd probably cost way more than these consoles. So comparing price, how many generations will it be where you can pay the same to play games at the same settings? I don't care about what a real desktop can do, that's beside the point. Taken in this way, I think the CTO isn't too far off.
Also, before you ask, I am an avid PC fan with nothing but respect for Steam and PC games. I just want to give this guy's remarks a fair trial.[/QUOTE]
I just realized, how the fuck can main RAM be GDDR5 ??
GDDR5 stands for "[B]Graphical[/B] Double Data Rate Version 5" :v:
[QUOTE=darth-veger;40756491]Does this mean that my GTX 570 which runs Kingdom Hearts 2 and BLACK with 60 fps is a mega super quantum computer?[/QUOTE]
No, I'm just saying that running a PC with hardware that was around in the early PS2 era would never get the same results. Of course you're going to get smooth performance seeing as the PS2 came out more than 10 years ago.
[QUOTE=Doom64hunter;40756288]...but it's still ahead of the console? :pwn:[/QUOTE]
No it's not. Again, just because a few numbers are larger on paper doesn't mean it can run games better. Comparable hardware between a console and a PC does not lead to comparable performance.
Look up the technical specs of the 360, they're extremely modest. You could easily build a PC with a slightly faster processor, slightly better graphics card, and slightly more memory, but you would still have much worse performance when actually playing modern games. Consoles are designed for playing games first and foremost, so they have a lot of tricks that let them squeeze every last bit of performance out of the hardware.
Again, it's like comparing a CPU to a GPU. A CPU has a faster clock and more available memory, but for actually doing graphics rendering a GPU is a lot more powerful than those numbers would suggest. A PC may have a better processor, more RAM, and better graphics card, but for actually playing games the console is a lot more powerful than those numbers would suggest. There are more important factors.
[QUOTE=Kaabii;40756380]Except that's a terribly invalid argument because no games on current gen consoles render at 1920x1080. Crysis 3 is 1024x720 on the PS3 and 1152x720 on the Xbox 360, both with subpixel morphological anti aliasing. If a game console with those specs can't do it, obviously the PC can't either.[/QUOTE]
Fine, show me a PC with a 500Mhz processor, 512 MB of RAM, and a Radeon X1000 card that can play Crysis 3 at [I]720p[/I].
Talk about nitpicking.
[QUOTE=Bokito;40756613]No, I'm just saying that running a PC with hardware that was around in the early PS2 era would never get the same results. Of course you're going to get smooth performance seeing as the PS2 came out more than 10 years ago.[/QUOTE]
I'm fairly certain the only reason it is difficult to emulate consoles is because of their different architecture. Just because the PS2 can play a game and a current-gen computer (in that time) can't emulate it doesn't mean the PS2 is faster.
I'm betting most next-gen games will target 30fps and just throw in as much graphics as they can squeeze in for that framerate budget, just like they're doing with the 360 and PS3 now. The sad thing is, a high end PC should be able to push the same visuals or better at around 60fps or higher.
[QUOTE=Fleskhjerta;40756595]I just realized, how the fuck can main RAM be GDDR5 ??
GDDR5 stands for "[B]Graphical[/B] Double Data Rate Version 5" :v:[/QUOTE]
It's still RAM, that doesn't mean it can't be used for things other than graphics. It was designed to be used in conjunction with a GPU though. GDDR offers a much higher memory bandwidth than DDR (faster read/write speeds), but on the other hand it also has a higher latency (time it takes until it actually starts returning data after a request). So GDDR is great if you're going to be reading huge chunks of data as fast as possible (which is what is usually required for graphics, hence why it's usually used with GPUs), DDR is better if you need to read lots of smaller chunks of data with as little delay as possible so your CPU isn't idling for too long while waiting for the data to arrive. Oh and GDDR is also more expensive.
Comparing the Xbox One and PS4, they have about ~70GB/s and ~180GB/s memory bandwidth, respectively. A huge difference actually. Looks like Sony is counting on having the upper hand in the graphics, since the GPU in PS4 is also a lot more powerful than the Xbox's so it will actually need that extra bandwidth. Microsoft tried to save money by choosing the cheaper option I guess, but it still offers a somewhat reasonable amount on bandwidth and it also has some dedicated cache for the GPU in order to make up for the slower RAM.
[QUOTE=Doom64hunter;40756288]...but it's still ahead of the console? :pwn:[/QUOTE]
economically? certainly not
practically? probably not, unless you enjoy crunching numbers instead of playing video games
[QUOTE=Juniez;40756916]economically? certainly not
practically? probably not, unless you enjoy crunching numbers instead of playing video games[/QUOTE]
Or you can do both and play eve online :v:
[QUOTE=milkandcooki;40754897]i can't really do much in depth research 'cause i'm at school, but here's the 360's hardware. pulled this shit off of wikipedia.
that's awful, right? but it could pull off some pretty cool looking games because developers didn't have to optimize their games for like, infinity + 1 systems. now compare that shit to the one's hardware.
waaaaay better, even though the "8 core amd jaguar" and the GPU aren't really that specific. we'll get more in-depth specs in the future, i'm sure. regardless of how awful the specs are, it's clear that the one is like, super good compared to the 360's awful baby-tier hardware. still sucks, but is a definite improvement. if developers could pull off games like crysis 3 and halo 4 on the 360, imagine what they can do on the one.
and now, more importantly, imagine what that will mean for PC gamers. better ports![/QUOTE]
You really have no idea what you're talking about. The Xbox One specs you provided there are more specific than the Xbox 360 ones.
The GPU is probably somewhere between a 7770 and maybe slightly faster than a 7790 depending on the workload. The PS4 is probably somewhere in-between a 7790 and a 7850. With optimization you can of course get a bit more performance out of it, but you're not gonna hit 7950/7970/GTX660Ti/670/680/780 or Titan performance here. They could probably get it up an running to match a 7870 in a very nice scenario, but not much more.
The CPU is in itself not that powerful. It's about 3:5 as powerful as an i5 2500K at stock speeds (In cinebench, so take that for what it is) - with optimization it could probably do fairly well, though, since it's quite hard to find good multi-threaded games on the PC.
This is all mid-range hardware though - the 7790 is quite new, but it isn't by any means a high-end card. The i5 2500K is fairly old, and Haswell's just around the corner. The Xbox One and PS4 can match the average gaming PC, but not without a good deal of optimizing, and most probably not on launch day.
[QUOTE] PS = Playstation 4 Xbox One = X
[highlight]Not completely accurate obviously[/highlight]
[B]PS: 18 Compute Units
[/B]X: 12 Compute Units
[B]PS: 1152 GPU cores
[/B]X: 768 GPU cores
[B]PS3: 1.84 teraflops Peak Shader Throughput
[/B]X: 1.23 teraflops Peak Shader Throughput
[B]PS: 8 GB GDDR5 @ 5500 GHz[/B]
X: 8 GB GDDR3 @ 2133MHz
[B]PS: 256 bits Memory bus
X: 256 bits Memory bus
[/B]
[B]PS: 176 Gbit/s memory bandwidth[/B]
X: 68,3 Gbits/s memory bandwidth
CPU cores seem to be pretty identical to each other[/QUOTE]
[URL]http://tweakers.net/nieuws/89245/werkgeheugen-xbox-one-blijkt-langzamer-dan-geheugen-ps4.html[/URL] (Dutch)
[URL]http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/05/xbox-one-development-photos/#slideid-138497[/URL] (Research done with the photo's from WIRED)
[QUOTE=darth-veger;40757148][url]http://tweakers.net/nieuws/89245/werkgeheugen-xbox-one-blijkt-langzamer-dan-geheugen-ps4.html[/url] (Dutch)[/QUOTE]
That's simplyfying it, but yes, the PS4's hardware is probably better. The Xbox One's memory system is gonna work very differently from the PS4's, and it might push down cost in the long run, while not compromising too much on performance.
[QUOTE=barttool;40752859]not if you ask AMD
[IMG]http://img02.imgland.net/zHOilTgh2G.png[/IMG][/QUOTE]
I have an fx-8150 and I get significantly better performance in most of the recent graphics powerhouse games than any intel processor. even metro last light, which was specifically optimized for intel CPUs.
Instead of custom faceplates, custom vent holes
[img]http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/gadgetlab/2013/05/20130514-XBOX-ONE-TEARDOWN-004-660x440.jpg[/img]
[QUOTE=barttool;40752804][URL="http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/23/4358396/xbox-one-and-ps4-are-a-generation-ahead-of-the-best-pc-says-ea-cto"]
http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/23/4358396/xbox-one-and-ps4-are-a-generation-ahead-of-the-best-pc-says-ea-cto[/URL]
HA. HA.
By 'Highest end PC on the market' do they mean 'Highest end PC sold at Best Buy'?[/QUOTE]
LAWL funny thing about that, I work at Best Buy and our highest PC (an ASUS laptop) beats the ever living pants off both the PS4 and XBOX One. It's also $2300
I love how he says resource management will be a thing of the past, as if the next generation of gaming won't exponentially grow in its requirement of resources.
[QUOTE=Bruhmis;40757367]I have an fx-8150 and I get significantly better performance in most of the recent graphics powerhouse games than any intel processor. even metro last light, which was specifically optimized for intel CPUs.[/QUOTE]
No you don't. It's one thing to say you're content with performance. It's another to make claims that simply aren't true about performance. In a scenario with absolutely no GPU bottlenecking to do proper CPU scaling benchmarks you can see Intel is noticeably ahead of AMD in the latest games. Here's your own example for Metro LL.
[img_thumb]http://www.techspot.com/articles-info/670/bench/CPU_01.png[/img_thumb]
[QUOTE=Lolkork;40756356][IMG]http://images.wikia.com/creepypasta/images/6/63/Material_Objects_Burning_House.jpg[/IMG][/QUOTE]
more like
[img]http://smhttp.14409.nexcesscdn.net/806D5E/wordpress-L/images/dark-knight-burning-money.jpg[/img]
[QUOTE=FinalHunter;40757892]Why do you keep repeating the same exact point over and over again when tarkata has already addressed it? [/QUOTE]
Because people keep directly comparing hardware between PCs and consoles, and then drawing invalid conclusions from it.
Yes, computers do more than play games. Okay. Great. Who cares? What does it have to do with this discussion? Who brought it up? Yes, gaming consoles are optimized to play games, I said as much on the first page of this thread. Yes, I'm sure there exist computers out there that can significantly outperform the latest iteration of a budget-friendly piece of consumer electronics. None of this was ever in contention.
What I've been responding to are the posts saying 'Well the Xbox One's hardware has these stats, and my PC has these stats so obviously my PC will play games better' and that's just flat out wrong. You can't draw any useful comparisons with a name, a brand, a memory size, and a clock speed. You can't build a PC to the same specs as the Xbox One and expect it to perform similarly. So much of it is software-based and will depend on the optimization a programmer implements, and so much of it is based on very low-level details of the hardware that the public doesn't have yet. There are not yet any useful conclusions to be drawn except for the almost-certain fact that these consoles will, in playing properly optimized games, drastically outperform PCs of comparable hardware. Given that this hardware doesn't appear too shabby to begin with, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that these consoles will outperform the majority (maybe even the vast majority) of gaming PCs currently in use. All of them? Fuck no. But this 'pc gaming mastur race' shit is getting old.
[QUOTE=catbarf;40758007]Because people keep directly comparing hardware between PCs and consoles, and then drawing invalid conclusions from it.
Yes, computers do more than play games. Okay. Great. Who cares? What does it have to do with this discussion? Who brought it up? Yes, gaming consoles are optimized to play games, I said as much on the first page of this thread. Yes, I'm sure there exist computers out there that can significantly outperform the latest iteration of a budget-friendly piece of consumer electronics. None of this was ever in contention.
What I've been responding to are the posts saying 'Well the Xbox One's hardware has these stats, and my PC has these stats so obviously my PC will play games better' and that's just flat out wrong. You can't draw any useful comparisons with a name, a brand, a memory size, and a clock speed. You can't build a PC to the same specs as the Xbox One and expect it to perform similarly. So much of it is software-based and will depend on the optimization a programmer implements, and so much of it is based on very low-level details of the hardware that the public doesn't have yet. There are not yet any useful conclusions to be drawn except for the almost-certain fact that these consoles will, in playing properly optimized games, drastically outperform PCs of comparable hardware. Given that this hardware doesn't appear too shabby to begin with, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that these consoles will outperform the majority (maybe even the vast majority) of gaming PCs currently in use. All of them? Fuck no. But this 'pc gaming mastur race' shit is getting old.[/QUOTE]
Ok, think of it like this. Comparing the Xbox 360 stats to the Xbox One's stats, you have a [I]massive[/I] gap between the two, while the hardware may be there to perform exceptional tasks it's still very much up to the developer to do so. I guarantee we won't see any immediate titles for either console take advantage of even 2/3rds of the power simply because it'll be like learning to ride a bike all over again. Yes they might use all eight gigs of ram in some tech demo, but seriously learning to optimize and be efficient with the consoles specs is far more crucial than simply 'using all of the power', at some point long after the release date when games are actually capable of using eight cores and eight gigs of RAM [I]efficiently[/I] is when we'll actually see what these consoles are capable of. Don't go expecting the E3 demos to blow you out of the water because I assure you release cycles for console have been like this for years now and people always try to make a competition out of it, no one company will 'win', in fact they'll all have a lot more money by the end of the year simply due to the fact that they have such rabid angry fans.
I really haven't seen anyone act, in your own words, "pc gaming mastur race" in the last two pages at all, in fact most of the arguments in this thread against the CTO's statement have been relatively level-headed and in some cases intelligent. Of course there is always that one really avid PC fan injecting how he thinks his PC will outperform anything, but honestly that's the minority in this thread, and that's pretty surprising on a forum based off of a computer game.
[B]EDIT: [/B]And whoever posted about something like, "Because the hardware is more relevant to todays hardware, PC ports will be better", we can only hope. I mean, assuming that both consoles are x86-64 systems, that [I]should[/I] mean it'll be somewhat easier in terms of porting. The problem is really all down to how well the developer/programmers do, companies that develop solely for consoles, (IE From Software), are going to have difficulty porting to PC because of how different it can be. However, a developer well suited in both areas should, all other things considered, have a relatively easy time porting between them. Now this has it's exceptions, but I really do think it would be safe to say that many developement teams could use some coaching and training in how to not only port their products, but also design them with mult-platform in mind from the get go. This way, they don't have to deal with fans backlashing due to a shitty port, (Never happens amirite?), and it would make the developement period much [I]much [/I]less of a hassle in most if not all cases where a port was needed.
That's why I personally think developers should maintain their PC roots, it's not only to appease the fans that don't have a console, but it also helps them learn the hows and whys of working over multiple platforms and the entire bugaloo of porting in general.
[QUOTE=Protocol7;40752842]the only thing that's [I]maybe[/I] true about this is the octocore processor, and as we all know cores != performance...[/QUOTE]
The thing about the Bulldozer CPUs is that they have half the number of cores as they're advertised as. The "octa core" CPUs have 4 cores, the hex cores have 3, the quads have 2 and the dualies have 1.
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