125 replies to this topic 2 votes

[Anaron]

The Radeon HD 7970M-equivalent GPU is great. It's much more powerful than the rumoured Radeon HD 6670/7670-equivalent GPU. Performance-wise, it's somewhat close to the GeForce GTX 580. Developers will be able to get more out of it in a dedicated hardware platform than a gaming laptop.

[Lamp0]

How has anyone "sealed the deal" on anything?

Talk about jumping the gun.

[TheLegendOfMart]

Sorry didn't realise I wasn't allowed to use personal reasons to want the PS4.

I thought the PS4 was going to be quad core at best, with 2Gb of ram and a low end PC GPU.

The fact that its 8 core, 4Gb, 7970M like GPU, GPU like Compute Unit, means there's no reason for ME PERSONALLY not to get one now.

I paid £500 for PS3 on launch day with a couple of games, this thing cant be any more than £350-400.

[Biohead]

TheLegendOfMart, on 19 January 2013 - 09:58, said:

I paid £500 for PS3 on launch day with a couple of games, this thing cant be any more than £350-400.

You're setting yourself up for a very big let down if you hang onto that idea. Remember just how much more it cost in the UK compared to the rest of the world?

[Audioboxer]

Biohead, on 19 January 2013 - 10:49, said:

You're setting yourself up for a very big let down if you hang onto that idea. Remember just how much more it cost in the UK compared to the rest of the world?

The Blu Ray drive massacred the PS3 price. If they stick to mechanical hard drives instead of solid state the new consoles won't be that much to manufacture. Also when it comes to memory, isn't faster RAM better regardless of amount, due to the bandwidth? (unless you compare like 1GB to 8GB) Kind of like comparing a 3ghz celeron to a 1.8ghz dual/quad-core CPU?

edit: Trying to dig up what others say, the intricacies of memory isn't my strong point.

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Developer sources, speaking after meetings at CES, have told VG247 that the next PlayStation, codenamed Orbis, will have a run-capability of 1.84 teraflops. Conversely, the next Xbox, codenamed Durango, will be able to achieve 1.23 teraflops.

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GDDR ram is more suitable for Graphics Processing (In PS4), and DDR3 is more suitable for OS Tasks (720). It is expected that the 720 may need some sort of ES/ED Ram to compensate. Basically, don't get caught up in the RAM size but the RAM type.

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Just as a side note, the memory setup would be in keeping with the philosophy a Sony VP outlined in a presentation a little while back.

He explained that their opinion was that high bandwidth was a key to rendering performance.

He outlined the PS2 approach - relatively high bandwidth to a relatively small amount of memory.

The PS3 approach - relatively 'medium' bandwidth to a larger amount of memory.

And then said for the future they want the best of both: relatively high bandwidth to a relatively large amount of memory.

I think 4GB-200GB/s would be in keeping with that philosophy.

Microsoft's philosophy, if rumours are true, is obviously different. Relatively small bandwidth to a LARGE amount of memory + high bandwidth to a relatively small amount of memory.

Either could opt for what the other is doing so I think they're both sincerely looking at their own requirements and what developers are asking of them. They've probably come across a lot of various opinions...satisfying all of them would be impossible. Sony was probably told very resoundingly, though, that 2GB was too little, hence the change.

What I'm curious about in Microsoft's case is the talk of Windows 8 and the suggestion that their box might almost present a games machine and a custom W8 'PC' type experience in parallel, each with dedicated resources, perhaps substantial resources for the latter relative to a normal console OS. It would make sense to opt for larger memory over faster memory if that goal is a core one.

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What do you mean by the OS? Any game will have a lot of OS calls, whether it be to the networking stack during any online game, the drives, the controller, probably even the GPU. Putting those parts of the OS in a different and much slower part of memory will cause games to grind to a screeching halt every time there's an OS call. Going lower-level on OS functions like threading and memory management makes it even more critical that it's in higher speed RAM.

If you mean background media apps (like Music Unlimited for your custom soundtracks, like on Vita), then the rumored special media processing chip(s) (I'm tempted to just refer to it as the Cell) will likely handle most of the grunt work while the memory-hogging app front-end could be swapped to local storage while it's in the background.

The main thing that's going to be tough is having a browser loaded all the time.

[Anaron]

Audioboxer, on 19 January 2013 - 10:58, said:

The Blu Ray drive massacred the PS3 price. If they stick to mechanical hard drives instead of solid state the new consoles won't be that much to manufacture. Also when it comes to memory, isn't faster RAM better regardless of amount, due to the bandwidth? (unless you compare like 1GB to 8GB) Kind of like comparing a 3ghz celeron to a 1.8ghz dual/quad-core CPU?

edit: Trying to dig up what others say, the intricacies of memory isn't my strong point.

Speed is great but when you're looking at a size difference of up to 2x (3.5GB vs. 5-7GB), it'll show. Developers will be able to make larger maps, add more characters on screen, and use higher-quality assets (e.g. textures).

Read the following quotes:

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Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes, Sword & Sworcery developer Nathan Vella, CEO of Capybara Games

Most of all we're hoping for consoles to beat Mode 7 and ratchet it up to Mode 8, and perhaps add way more layers of parallax scrolling.

Seriously though… One of the obvious ‘wishes’ a lot of devs are sure to list is more RAM, but for Capy that has extra importance. Since we’re working outside of the 3D norm - using hand-animated 2D HD visuals - our texture sheets take up a massive amount of video RAM. As crazy as it sounds, every game we’ve made to date on Xbox 360 or PS3 has had to be dialled back and cleverly hacked to pieces in order to fit into the max RAM allotment of those consoles. More RAM means more textures fitting in memory, which in turn means we can go even crazier with the 2D HD we love to make.

http://www.eurogamer...ext-gen-article

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"I think our biggest request from any new console will always be more memory - more than anything else," Gamble told us.

Willard added: "Yep, that's something we lobbied for with the Xbox 360 and PS3. We talked to them and went: 'Hey, here's what we can do with this and here's what we can do with that. Give us more memory and we can do better.' That was a win for us and that is something that will always give us a bigger platform to work on."

http://www.computera...us-more-memory/

[TheLegendOfMart]

Anaron, on 19 January 2013 - 11:55, said:

Speed is great but when you're looking at a size difference of up to 2x (3.5GB vs. 5-7GB), it'll show. Developers will be able to make larger maps, add more characters on screen, and use higher-quality assets (e.g. textures).

They won't though. They always code for the lowest common denominator, do you really think that gamers will be ok with one console having noticeably better graphics for multiplatform games?

Biohead, on 19 January 2013 - 10:49, said:

You're setting yourself up for a very big let down if you hang onto that idea. Remember just how much more it cost in the UK compared to the rest of the world?

Don't think so, Blu-ray Drive cost Sony $125 in the original PS3, coupled with XDR and a custom CPU from IBM the price all added up.

This time round I wouldn't be surprised if the Jaguar is a standard part, Blu-Ray drives are dirt cheap now, only thing that is expensive is the GDDR5.

I don't think the consoles will cost as much as they did last generation this time around.

[Praetor]

honestly console specs doesn't matter that much; it's all about the games/online and the experience you get (in a consumer perspective) and the easier to program in it the better (from a developer perspective); history has proven that it's not always the powerhorse console that wins, but the one that can deliver a great experience.

[TheLegendOfMart]

I agree, its just something to talk about until they are properly revealed. We don't know anything about what online services are going to be like yet.

[Blackhearted]

Anaron, on 19 January 2013 - 11:55, said:

Speed is great but when you're looking at a size difference of up to 2x (3.5GB vs. 5-7GB), it'll show. Developers will be able to make larger maps, add more characters on screen, and use higher-quality assets (e.g. textures).

Read the following quotes:

http://www.eurogamer...ext-gen-article


http://www.computera...us-more-memory/

If the target of the next gen would end up being 1080p then memory bandwidth will be incredibly important. Think of a pc graphics card, and how adding more ram doesn't make it more powerful, how it doesn't suddenly make it capable of more than it could do with the amount it originally shipped with. The same will apply to the xbox 720/3/whateverthehellyouwannacallit. They can add as much ram as they like, but if the gpu isn't powerful enough to be able to make use of all the extra assets the extra ram would allow, or it's somewhat starved in bandwidth it wont make a difference.

Praetor, on 19 January 2013 - 13:03, said:

honestly console specs doesn't matter that much; it's all about the games/online and the experience you get (in a consumer perspective) and the easier to program in it the better (from a developer perspective); history has proven that it's not always the powerhorse console that wins, but the one that can deliver a great experience.

Specs are important actually. The low end specs of the current consoles lingering around as long as they have like a bad odor does is the reason why progress in gaming graphics has nearly screeched to a halt.

[TheLegendOfMart]

I think 1080p30 is going to be the focus this time around, with performance games locked at 720p60 like the Call of Duties.

[theyarecomingforyou]

TheLegendOfMart, on 19 January 2013 - 13:37, said:

I think 1080p30 is going to be the focus this time around, with performance games locked at 720p60 like the Call of Duties.

The Call Of Duty series already runs at 60fps with a slightly lowered resolution (880x720) and that's with the incredibly limited hardware of current gen consoles. The biggest advantage the next-gen consoles have is the resolution bump from 720p to 1080p, so I can't see developers giving that up. I imagine games like Call Of Duty will do something similar for the next gen, picking an non-standard resolution like 1320x1080 and upscaling.

[Dushmany]

I'm curious, have any features been leaked or released for either console?
Probably just naievety on my part, but does anyone know if you can cross platform chat?
(I know cross platform gaming will be most likely out of the question, unfortunately)

[Hardcore Til I Die]

TurboShrimp, on 18 January 2013 - 19:12, said:

I don't look at specs when buying a video game console all I care about is does it have online so I can play with my friends and does it have fun games.

I even pay gamestop like a year before the WiiU release for the system not knowing anything more then it had a touch screen controller.


all these specs do not really matter , sure more hardware better games but people try to hard to compare them to pc specs.

the WiiU does not have super computer specs and it looks amazing and has some really fun games .

just my 2cents

Nintendo have the right ideas; make games fun to play.

[+remixedcat]

Nintendo isn't nintendo anymore. all they do is make gimmacks and toys. pleh.