PlayStation 4 Announced: PC-based AMD Hardware Inside

Page 6 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Status
Not open for further replies.
[citation][nom]wozza365[/nom]please tell me it supports above 1080p, it wont be long until we have 4k tvs in our houses and then it will look crappy again[/citation]

The PS3 actually supports 4K over HDMI for pictures as of a 2011 update. Though I realize its a still image and not video or graphics, it does make one hope that the PS4 can at least do something over 1080p (maybe a game running at 2560x1400 then having it upscaled from there for a 4K TV). Interesting video Sony had in 2008 using 4 PS3s to run a special version of Gran Turismo 5 on 4 1080p screens set up in a 2x2 layout. Then most recently at CES 2013 they had one 4k screen running GT5, they were able to do this with 3 PS3s.
 
[citation][nom]tomfreak[/nom]I am quite happy to see the GPU as long as it is anything above 7770. But the problem we should worry is the 8 core tablet CPU @ only 1.6GHz = it could be about the speed of 1.1GHz 8 core trinity.[/citation]
Where are you getting this information??
I have seen no mention of a clock rate.
And just because it's based on a mobile cpu doesn't mean it won't be unique, what you need to keep in mind is that it's "CUSTOM"! Current APU's could NEVER even get close to 1.8 TFLOPS so that is part of what is custom about this chip. So the clock rate might be custom as well. Also, the Jaguar chips aren't even out yet so no one really knows much about them.
 
Great news for PC enthusiasts and anybody with MOAR cores. My 8350 might start looking a lot better with next gen games being optimized for eight cores. If the XBOX rumors are as accurate as the sony ones were then it truly is great news for all PC gamers.
 
IMHO anyone thinking of building this would be better off simply building an ITX based HTPC with a powerful graphics card and simply subscribing to Steam . . . all the gaming benefits with non of the restrictions associated with tying yourself to a particular corporation plus you can upgrade the computer hardware every 4 years (or whenever you feel like it) and 1080p (or higher) gaming
 


"PrayStashion Computah! PrayStashion NOT a Consore!" (c) You-Know-Who.



"Emulators. Emulators Everywhere".png

P.S. It's not like I'm against Emulators of any kinds...absolutely opposite, actually, since I'm Emulation-addict. %)
 
As far as progress this is not, this is old tech they still use polygons it's outdated and going in wrong direction just check out Euclideon and yes they were verified by a few top game production studios.
The graphics on ps4 don't impress me at all the whole industry needs to change and stop clutching onto old tech polygons and move on.
 


"Yeah, just voxel everything, bi*ches! It worked so well for Outcast!"


P.S. Well, actually, sarcasm aside, it DOES work fantastically, just look at: FEZ, Miasmata, Minecraft, Ace of Spades, Perimeter 2 (Alright, bad example, really. First one was much better), Master of Orion III, C&C (Yuri's Revenge and Red Alert 2, HELL YEAH!), Blood, FRIGGIN' BLADE RUNNER FOR CHRIST'S SAKES!

P.P.S. Yeah yeah, I know Outcast wasn't using actual 100% voxels, stop whining.
 
x86? That is good news for developers and PC enthusiasts (for porting purposes). Unfortunately, x86 is an old architecture. It's instruction set isn't very elegant and a lot of things can get done a lot faster if they were to use an x64 architecture (although programming is a little more difficult). That's just me being nit picky though. I do like that they are going this route. Nice Sony!
 
x86 is an old architecture, it's instruction set isn't very elegant and a lot of things can get done a lot faster.

At least it's better than what Sony was stuffing poor developers with, with it's "DevKits" for PS 2 and PS 3...
Remember the PCSX 2? It recently updated to official "1.0" version...8 years later than it might have had been. Thank you, Sony...thank you. :\
 
[citation][nom]aznjoka[/nom]I feel bad for nvidia both xbox and ps3 with AMD GPU's = AMD optimized Games. So it pretty much concludes that most games will run best with AMD.[/citation]
Given that AMD is going through a bad phase, I feel good for AMD rather than feeling bad for nVidia. nVidia will thrive in the smartphone market, where AMD has no foothold at the moment.
 
So in short, its an AMD Fusion APU which combines eight x86 jaguar CPU cores with a 2 TFlops GPU and 8GB DDR5 Unified RAM. Cool, so that means better PC games in the future :))
 
[citation][nom]nieur[/nom]as it is based on x86 it will be easier for developers to port games from PS4 to PC or Vice versa[/citation]
It will also be easier for hackers to mod the crap out of this thing.
 
[citation][nom]jupiter optimus maximus[/nom]Hurray for AMD! (Why did its stock fall to $0.14? It should be the other way as it gives AMD a huge pie of the counsel market and games will be optimized specifically with AMD APU architecture.)[/citation]

That was because the AMD financial results ended Q4 in the red.What the wall street annalist missed is that AMD did make profit from both the CPU and GPU divisions (heck; even the ram modules did gain a little money).But the one time payments from layoffs, the Sea MIcro buyout and the GloFo liquidation; did eat the earnings.Interesting is that the CPU division is still by far the main business for AMD not the GPU division,Even if AMD is closer to Nvidia than to Intel.

[citation][nom]TeraMedia[/nom]The specs on that APU look fantastic, and perhaps a bit fantastical. An 8-core CPU AND a 78x0-level GPU on a single die? I suppose if they're using a low-power mobile-oriented CPU module (which theory the 1.6 GHz seems to support) with something like a 65W power cap, then there might be enough leftover cooling headroom to support a 78x0 GPU module on the same die.The memory BW looks amazing. Rather than bolting a GPU onto the CPU, it looks like they did the opposite and bolted a CPU onto the GPU and its memory bus. The only concern I have with this approach is memory latency. GPUs are not impacted as much by latency because the latency is effectively divided across the 1000-odd threads that are simultaneously running. But we've seen in recent THG articles that CPUs - especially AMD CPUs - are susceptible to reduced performance from high latency. AMD doesn't have the fast, high-volume L1 and L2 cache systems that Intel has, so they depend more on the memory performance. And if the memory is high-bandwidth but high latency, this can have an adverse effect on the performance of CPU-bound processing such as AI and other linear processing threads. I hope AMD included a good, large, fast L3 cache on this thing.[/citation]

Feel free to correct me (whit links) but the Jaguar is not a modular design. Is a true core by itself; without the fatness of the behemoths desktop products from INTEL/AMD .But keep some of the goodies like out of order execution and some form of branch prediction.Consoles binaries are optimized at compile time so... a 8 threads each one with perfect coded alignments is something worth to be seen in action.

Also the 1.6mhz is not from a under-clock; it was a target from the beginning; the performance of this design is optimal at that speed.The other target was a 7watts per core so a 8 core at 65watts are feasible.Even if you add the GPU side for another 50 watts, thats still WAY lower power consumption than a PC running the same game.Not to be ignored if you live in a country where the electricity bill is a PITA.

Also i would LOVE to know how the GDDR5 - APU was bridged. Do not worry about the latencies as long the raw speed is keep high enuff. Waiting 15 cycles is not big deal if the clock is fast, and GDDR5 is very fast.The need for larger caches diminish; if the main ram is this fast.
Looking at the big picture, premium DDR3 are expensive, DDR4 still far on the horizon,IF this is the first glance of the Unified memory architecture for the GDDR5 memory type, AMD overall performance will blow out of the water any NVIDIA/INTEL products on naturally closed gadgets like Tablets, Nettops,All-in-Ones and netbooks variants.
 
[citation][nom]senupe[/nom]Pretty much right my friend, as they say almost i guess they meant the Radeon HD 7850http://www.amd.com/US/PRODUCTS/DES [...] 850.aspx#2"1.76 TFLOPS Single Precision compute power "[/citation]
AMD has SoC on the roadmap. It'd be reasonable to include other functionality in the APU.. if there's enough space on the die. I wouldn't be shocked to find out Sony is licensing the design and having a fab with better process make it though. Not sure if TSMC is printing large processors at 28nm or below yet.
 
the reason why the ps3 was so hard to hack was the cell processor. Now that it is actually a pc inside...they'll hack it in 2-3 months. third party programs installation here I come 😀
 

Yeah, actually that's possible either, if the speed on the processor isn't that high they could actually use more computing power on the GPU at the price of more heat on it or more functionality on CPU/GPU instructions; about TSMC don't know either.
 
[citation][nom]anonymous[/nom]what about backwards compatibility?[/citation]
Sony has said that it will use cloud gaming for backwards compatibility with all playstations.
 
Playstation and Xbox consoles have been & are a failed attempt by large corporations to monopolize the gaming industry. Xbox lost Microsoft $4 billion over 4 years, much of that $4 billion was spent on title exclusivity: paying developers of PC games NOT to release those games for other consoles or PC. For the cost of a ps4/ Xbox One & a few games one can build a PC much more powerful both in terms of graphics acceleration & raw CPU power. (aka: runs higher polygon count models with better textures & effects at higher framerates) PC's can be upgraded over time to match the needs of new games which allows game devs to take advantage of new tech as it's released into the market while maintaining scalability of settings for older PCs. Meanwhile console software & tech are frozen in time for 5 more years.

If something goes wrong in a PC we can RMA JUST THAT PART & replace it easily, rather than ship back the entire system. Consoles are now & always will be for the sadly misinformed marketing-dominated people who cannot fathom that games are nearly 8 years behind what they could & SHOULD be as a result of the console manufacturers play for market dominance. This limits games both graphically & control-wise due to console's simplistic, slower & less precise controllers (meanwhile PC can use any peripheral controller in existence including console controllers) The PC hardware market has lots of competition driving both technology forward & prices downward. PC games are hugely cheaper because they are distributable digitally by companies like Steam, GoG, Origin and Amazon DD.

I love games but I hate consoles both from a player AND a developer standpoint. If they were upgradable, compatible with any & all peripheral controllers/hardware, didn't limit the progress & quality of games & actually belonged to us once we buy them (so that we may install any software/operating system we want & use them as we wish) then consoles would be awesome! or wait... no, they'd be Personal Computers for gaming. High fives & respect to anyone who smashes a PS or Xbox & comes over to the free future of quality gaming: Personal Computers
 
Status
Not open for further replies.