82 replies to this topic 3 votes

[TheLegendOfMart]

HawkMan, on 21 February 2013 - 20:33, said:

You're forgetting those two extra "engine" thingies rumored to be in the Nextbox to offload a lot of the GPU strain. So while they both share the jaguar x86 architecture, there's a LOT more diference in the underlying architecture that could affect performance in a major way.

PS4 has that as well. GPU has 18 CUs, 14CU with ALUs and another 4CU that have extra ALUs

[HawkMan]

I'm talking abut the enigmatic "move engines"

[TheLegendOfMart]

I thought it does what it says on the tin, negates the slow memory by moving the data around from ram to gpu without going through the CPU. Fixed function non-programmable engines, completely different from ALUs on the GPU?

[HawkMan]

http://www.vgleaks.c...s-move-engines/

they free up a lot of gpu shader resources, among other things.

[TheLegendOfMart]

Free up shaders in what way?

From my limited understanding all it does is moves data to and from the shaders avoiding bottlenecks with the slow DDR3 RAM. Doesn't free up shader processing its just a cheaper way of including loads of ram, Sony answer is to give you 8Gb of super fast ram so it doesn't need move engines.

[HawkMan]

quite well explained in the article

Quote

The four move engines all have a common baseline ability to move memory in any combination of the following ways:
From main RAM or from ESRAM
To main RAM or to ESRAM
From linear or tiled memory format
To linear or tiled memory format
From a sub-rectangle of a texture
To a sub-rectangle of a texture
From a sub-box of a 3D texture
To a sub-box of a 3D texture

The move engines can also be used to set an area of memory to a constant value.

Quote

The careful reader may deduce that raw performance of the move engines is less than could be achieved by a shader reading and writing the same data. Theoretical peak rates are displayed in the following table.

Quote

The advantage of the move engines lies in the fact that they can operate in parallel with computation. During times when the GPU is compute bound, move engine operations are effectively free. Even while the GPU is bandwidth bound, move engine operations may still be free if they use different pathways. For example, a move engine copy from RAM to RAM would not be impacted by a shader that only accesses ESRAM.

Those are the fundamentals from the article, there's also more things they do, especially in regard to compression and decompression, but these are the functions that will affect performance as all the above functions are functions usually done by shaders, shaders now freed up to do other tasks by the move engines. Hence they potentially free up a lot of power from the GPU's they would otherwise need to deal with.

[DirtyLarry]

jerzdawg, on 21 February 2013 - 17:33, said:

While I agree on most of what you say... isnt what you say above making you sound like a PS4bro? We dont have anything solid on the next xbox but you are already claiming the ps4 will be the "best" (in comparison to the next xbox).

Was super busy at work and meant to reply to this.
I could no doubt see how what I say could be viewed as me being a PS4bro, but it is more about being sympathetic towards Sony and genuinely believing they know what they are doing for the most part.

The many reasons people use for why Sony did not win this past generation, I actually do not really agree with, and think if anything this past generation was a tie. Many point towards Live to why MS clearly won, and while a great service no doubt about it, I actually have questioned why I choose to continue paying for it. I am hardly on anymore, and I also tend to be more of an individual video game player, so the social aspects of it such as parties, etc., while I recognize their value for many gamers, because I have no real need for them I do not view them as all that essential to the video game playing process. And others point at Kinect being more advanced and just more impressive then Move. And while I agree it is, again, it does nothing to enhance what I believe to be a more pure video game experience.

I guess a lot of it does come down to just that. I like to play video games on my consoles and not much else, and as such, I believe Sony as a company focuses on this truth just a bit more then MS does, and will more than likely continue to do. People were making a big deal about the social aspects Sony were touting this past Wednesday, but I actually felt they were a minimal part of the discussion, and I liked that a whole lot.

So was I jumping the gun saying Sony is going to have the better console this generation? Absolutely. And trust me, I would love for MS to prove me wrong, but I just have a hunch that will not be the case.

So not so much a PS4 Fanboy as an observer and player of all consoles, and based on past experience and what I have heard thus far, yes both rumor and fact, I am leaning towards the PS4 being the console that bests suits my needs. I will almost definitely own both consoles regardless, so does not really matter all that much at the end of the day, just my hypothesis of the situation.

[Audioboxer]

More clarification from Yoshida

Quote

Sony has been criticised for not actually showing the PlayStation 4 at the launch event. Was this because you wanted to save something for E3 or because you still have six different prototypes on your desk and can't decide between them?

[Laughs] We have not finalised the hardware yet and decided not to try to get it finished in time. Also, it's a long time from February to launch, we have to design our communication in phases. Our focus here was to show some games and talk about the key principles – we wanted to save the unveiling of the actual console.

But is the design of the final console important to Sony? Is it a major consideration?

I think if you asked different people within our company that question, you would get different answers! I was criticised when I said, why bother show the case? Who cares? Some said I was disrespecting people's curiosity – I apologise for that. But as a game developer, I'm much more into how the games work, and the controller is crucial for us developers – without the input device we can't make games of the best quality. A box is a box to us! But yes, I appreciate that it's symbolic, people want a games console to look good so they can be proud of owning it and of course our hardware design team are working hard on that.

Source: http://www.guardian....shida-interview