PS4 and Xbox 720 Graphics Specs Toe-to-Toe, Says Insider

[egowhip69]

Quick thought...

Those that are trying to compare a console to a standard desktop pc, please stop. It doesn't work like that. If you want to argue console vs PC, use laptops as your base.

By using a laptop as your base PC, you are now taking into account some very important things that a colsole has to as well. Heat disappation, power requirements, a small and very compact form factor.

That being said, you can pick up an A8 based laptop (using the A8 assuming that these RUMORS for the consoles are true) for ~$500 or so. Add in a dedicated video card and you up that price by another hundred or so. That puts is roughly in the same price bracket as the PS3 at it's launch.

However, I really don't think the market will bear another $600 console. Everyone is hurting for money, and I don't see that changing very drastically in the next couple years.

But, in 2 years, with standard price drops, and again, if the rumors of these specs are true, then it is possible they will be able to release these consoles at a $350, $300, or even lower price point.

Personally, my hopes for the next gen consoles is, that if they are using an existing x86 arch, that they include one or even two slots similar to the express card slots used in laptops. Maybe I'm dreaming, but being able to throw a cable card into my next console would give me a fairly good reason to pick one up...

 

[animeman59]

[citation][nom]hellfire24[/nom]a $700-$800 pc would kill both of them![/citation]

Hence why they cost twice as much compared to console systems.

 

[animeman59]

[citation][nom]CaedenV[/nom]So... You need a PC anyways, because consoles still will not run Office and many other necessary functionality programs, so instead of buying a seperate $500 console why not just add $3-500 to your PC budget?You can emulate all of your old games as far back as the original NES/ATARI, and play all of the modern games with higher settings, with higher frame rates, better textures, better filtering, and still have the option of a USB controller if that strikes your fancy.I'm really unclear as to how these consoles sell so well...[/citation]

Because of price and ease of use. Why buy a gaming PC for $1000, when you can get a console system for $300? You don't have to install anything. No drivers. No maintenance. Just insert a game disc and you're ready to go. Most people are not as tech savvy as most Tom's readers. We appreciate the magnificence ofa a a PC, but our sensibilities don't apply to the majority of people. That's why they sell so well.

Hell, it not uncommon for me to see my friends with a gaming console, and a cheap netbook for anything else non-entertainment related, such as Office, email, and web browsing. Both are still cheaper than a full-fledged gaming, or high-end PC.

 

[shin0bi272]

[citation][nom]kinggremlin[/nom]Great. Now squeeze everything into a box the size of a typical console. When you figure out it isn't going to fit, go back and buy parts that are smaller and give us a new price. When you still can't fit them, go get an estimate of what it will cost to redesign the parts so they will, and then build a prototype.Do you see where this is going? You people have a piss poor understanding of what kind of R&D goes into building a console. Sony didn't release the PS3 at $600 because they wanted to or because they were trying to price gouge the consumers. They sold it for $600 because however much that was below what they were paying for just the parts was the most they wanted to lose per console.You can't build a console by pricing out roughly equivalent parts on Newegg. If it was that easy, Sony and MS wouldn't have to charge so much at launch and they wouldn't have to wait so long between generations.[/citation]
Ok first of all see if I back your claims up again...
Second of all http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856119065

third the point of the experiment isnt to "queeze everything into a box the size of a typical console" because the average home user buying a pc isnt a motherboard manufacturer. If I was an engineer at Nvidia or AMD and I put a 680 on an nvidia motherboard and threw an amd cpu on it and the other components it would fit into a case like a pico btx case because you dont have to deal with standards like ATX or PCI-express. The difference between OTS and inhouse builds you see. The point of the test was to see the cheapest you can get a gaming rig for now including shipping... Since the argument is consoles vs pc not consoles vs pc's in a certain size box... money is the issue not size.

lastly to paraphrase the movie animal house "being a Fat, drunk, dbag is no way to go through life, son".

 

[kinggremlin]

[citation][nom]upgrade_1977[/nom]ROFL, where do I come up with this stuff?? I READ.. Maybe you should do a little research before you troll forums. LG and Toshiba already both have Ultra HD t.v.s. out. Just not in the US yet, and they super expensive. .[/citation]


Maybe you should have heeded your own advice. You would have saved yourself a lot of time and effort if you had spent your time reading up on how the development of the potential UHDTV standard was moving along instead of posting all that other irrelevant stuff.

As I already mentioned, there is no UHDTV standard yet, so obviously there can't exist any products currently that adhere to one. Secondly, the goal for UHDTV is 7680×4320 (4320P), which none of the products you listed are. What you are looking at will be the equivalent to the EDTV format we saw during the development of the last HDTV standard. A format that was higher resolution than standard definition, but was lower than HDTV. Basically and stillborne format for suckers with too much money.

The point of the test was to see the cheapest you can get a gaming rig for now including shipping... Since the argument is consoles vs pc not consoles vs pc's in a certain size box... money is the issue not size.

Which you weren't able to do. And has been pointed out repeatedly in this thread, a console with the same specs as a PC will vastly outperform it.

lastly to paraphrase the movie animal house "being a Fat, drunk, dbag is no way to go through life, son

I agree, and recognizing a problem exists is the first step towards fixing it. So congrats on taking your first step. Good luck with the rest of your remake.

 

[zloginet]

[citation][nom]kawininjazx[/nom]To build a new console for under $400, it is going to have to use older hardware, not to mention it takes a long time to develop a console. You can't just put in the newest GPU at the last second.Think about this, would you be able to run a game like Gears of War 3 on a PC with a Celeron Dual-Core, 512mb ram, and an Nvidia 7600 512mb? No, but on a console you can, that's pretty much what a 360 is.[/citation]

I think your specs are a bit off but YOU SURE COULD... Its called lower video settings....

 

[6_5x47lapua]

now it just needs to be overclockable...

 

[ronch79]

Being an AMD fan I find it interesting that a next-gen console will contain AMD's CPU technology. Not so much for the GPU part, because I still see AMD's GPU division as the purchased ATI division and not really brewed within AMD's Sunnyvale or Austin sites.

 

[teodoreh]

First Macs became PCs, now game consoles are becoming PCs too. 😀

 

[Hydroc10]

I don't care what hardware comes in the next consoles as long as the games scale well to the pc.

 

[rflynn88]

If anything, all this AMD talk could mean that both consoles will be more PC-like than ever before.

Because the 733MHz Celeron, 128MB SDRAM, GeForce 4 Ti, IDE hard drive and Windows 2000 based OS in the original Xbox were not PC-like at all.

 

[zaznet]

[citation][nom]ehaser[/nom]I predict that there wont be another change to a console until a time comes when TV's have a new resolution.[/citation]

That's really the limiting factor. TV at 1080p and 24 fps is the target for the console systems. Anything over that won't be realized by most consumers until a new HD standard starts to take hold.

 

[bigdog44]

UHDTV will not be a target (but still may be a workable after thought a few years down the road) for the up coming consoles, simply because of the previously mentioned adoption rate. A bigger problem is that there is still currently no 3D standard, with multiple vendors offering multiple solutions. At least 1 of these solutions offers 3DTV without using crappy glasses that are expensive and headache inducing in alot of cases. This solution,however, is pissing off some big tv manufacturers that have dedicated time and $ in their own versions of 3D. The lowest common denominator today and in the near future is what kind of TVs will most people own and that will be "standard" 1080p TVs. As far as having the ability to output to multiple TVs as you can with current graphics cards, while it would be nice, still isn't the kind of setup most people most people have or can afford.

 

[dash2201]

What the hell, AMD Trinity is nearly going to be released and they're using Llano....maybe a marketing startegy who knows?

 

[f-14]

8 pages of comments and i am the only one who picked up on this fact: in cross fire or sli the slowest speed gpu is the selected speed for all the gpus. why would you put a 7670 in with a 6550 if both are going to be set to the 6550 specs?

AMD's A8-3850 APU and Radeon HD 7670 discrete GPU. According to the APU's off-the-shelf specs, it packs a quad-core 2.9 GHz processor an an integrated HD 6550D graphics core. The APU will work in tandem with the dedicated HD 7670 GPU

it would only make sense if this was to switch between GPUS for the level of intensity of the applications it is being used for to watch movies, play games depending on the level of horse power required.
it makes even more sense when you have 2 6550's in cross fire to equal out to a 7670, but that is not what is happening if they are using an A8-3850.
only two other people made comments that even came close to touching on this but with out mentioning the slowest speed GPU being the CAP.
i agree with a few other people that said this article is rubbish, confusing and means jack squat.
the funneist part of this article was the comments made about cell processors which are great for folding at home, when's the last time you ran folding at home on your console? ya that's what i thought.
consoles are for bone heads they are designed, made for and marketed explicitly to boneheads, i quit buying them after the super nes because of their purpose built limiting features and antique hardware after i had more access to computers and played a few computer games. no console AI is ever going to come beat a 10 year old computer AI when it comes to games, if it wasn't for multiplayer consoles would not have survived this long.
i'm starting to believe there is some under the table deal with developers and console makers that developers shouldn't included LAN in a back and forth cash grab of sales for every generation of console and for and online privately controlled subscription based multiplayer network only games.

 

[Guest]

Sure these "next gen" console will have lesser powered hardware but, the important thing is that they'll finally be DX11 class systems. So we'll start seeing DX11 visuals a lot more. Using the "Crysis" card, that game used DX10 and still looks great, and that's a 2007 game! Now imagine the visuals when DX11 is more widespread.

 

[photonboy]

console boy????

Quite the opposite.
I'm a PC gamer and I'll be buying a GTX680.

I did study computers though. Let's say the XBox 720 will use a maximum of 180Watts like the 1st-gen XBox 360. Which parts would you choose?

You have to balance the graphics, CPU, RAM, controller parts to obtain the maximum performance within that thermal envelope. Yes, the graphics card won't be as high-end as a computer that consumes up to 400Watts, it can't. However consoles are tweaked and optimized far better than consoles.

So when a game for the XBOX720 is released using the UNREAL 4 engine, look back and compare that to one of the earliest games on the XBOX360 and the difference in quality will be massive.

 

[hellfire24]

Quite the opposite.
I'm a PC gamer and I'll be buying a GTX680.

congrats!

I did study computers though. Let's say the XBox 720 will use a maximum of 180Watts like the 1st-gen XBox 360. Which parts would you choose?

You have to balance the graphics, CPU, RAM, controller parts to obtain the maximum performance within that thermal envelope. Yes, the graphics card won't be as high-end as a computer that consumes up to 400Watts, it can't. However consoles are tweaked and optimized far better than consoles.

So when a game for the XBOX720 is released using the UNREAL 4 engine, look back and compare that to one of the earliest games on the XBOX360 and the difference in quality will be massive.

that's why i hate consoles.game makers make *lower graphics games so that they can run on consoles*(take a look at crysis and crysis 2 and you will understand my words).

 

[bigdog44]

While its more than o.k. to have a favorite platform, sometimes it can make us short sight to what diversity can do to help that favorite platform. I enjoy PC, XB360 and Wii, but for different reasons. I have 4 kids ages 6 to 13 and it sometimes takes all 3 platforms to entertain them when its game time due to their individual ages, preferences, etc as well as the different strengths/weaknessess of the different systems. Before the current generation of consoles came out, I only cared about the PC and how much horsepower I could afford, but my PC now would be considered pretty much entry level as far as gaming goes. Sure I could've pumped that extra $500-600 into the current PC and had a more respectable rig, but it alone wouldn't be able to satisfy the needs of everyone all of the time. We all like to complain about this and that, but we are just the consumer and not the manufacturers, but both coexist within the same gaming market. Both are affected by the economy and in this economy the cost of entry for all platforms will have to be lower. How does this affect the companies making the games, especially when the consumers are asking for more in the next generation and AAA titles TODAY cost as much as some movies? Theres rumor about restricting to one console use etc, but thats ridiculous for obvious reasons. So how do those companies maintain profitability? Its by reaching the same target audience or larger while reducing some developement costs by having a more uniform developement ecosystem across as many platforms as possible. This means that the more similar the platforms hardware are to each other, the easier it is to reach all platforms and to create a baseline performance target model for the PC in particular. The console manufacturers have had years to get smarter and optimize their system hardware/software/etc and do more with less, so the baseline should be alot better than the specs suggest, but this also means that they will have to find new ways to differentiate their products. It looks like the producers and consumers of all platforms may still have a win-win situation : )

 

[gradius2]

I careless, my PC is MUCH better than this combined!

 

[photonboy]

[citation][nom]hellfire24[/nom]

congrats!that's why i hate consoles.game makers make *lower graphics games so that they can run on consoles*(take a look at crysis and crysis 2 and you will understand my words).[/citation]

I hear you. I was going to buy a console but was shocked to discover that many games run at 30FPS and often have lots of stutter. Even if the current games simply had better Anti-Aliasing and run at 60FPS VSYNC'd that would make a huge difference.

Sony screwed up really bad with the PS3:
1) The XBox 360 uses 512MB of shared System/VRAM. So the developer could use 300MB for Video RAM and 212MB for the game code or any combo.

2) However Sony which came out a YEAR LATER did NOT used shared memory. They simply used 256MB + 256MB which became a NIGHTMARE for porting from the XBOX 360 to the Sony PS3 or even creating at the same time.

3) SONY also had new chips that game developers had no experience coding for and Sony didn't give them tools to make it easier, developers had to slowly develop their own.

4) Worse yet, it was expensive to tweak games to make full use of Sony's chips so games written for the XBOX 360 (or both simultaneously which is common now) just ignored certain features so the Sony version would run slightly slower than 30FPS which they would leave as is or tweak a visual setting or two to lower the quality to bring frame rates back up.

PS4/XBOX720???
It's very optimistic:
- the CPU and Graphics are not new so coding will be easy
- the PS4 and XBOX720 will be CLOSE or better yet IDENTICAL in processing (The developers really hope they are identical. SONY would be stupid to not go this way.)
- Shared RAM should be far higher now. My guess is about 2048MB of shared VRAM/System RAM which is 4x the current amount.
- Tessellation is still fairly new, but future gaming engines will optimize this far better than now.
- Anti-Aliasing should be far more efficient and vastly improved this time.

So barring any really dumb decisions we should be okay. Microsoft actually had lower specs on paper for the XBOX 360 and the developer of the UNREAL engine presented a demo showing a game with the current hardware specs vs his recommended specs. They then redesigned the XBOX 360 slightly to be more powerful. Hopefully they're listening to him this time too!!

MONITOR, Keyboard, Mouse support?
It doesn't affect hardware design, but I'm wondering if they'll make games that work like a normal gaming PC. It wouldn't be much work, mainly just offering different User Interface sizes (smaller for desktop viewing because we sit closer.)

Many PC games don't port well to the HDTV/Controller environment though. Still, it would be nice to have a choice and quite frankly trying to run an shoot with the controller is an incredible pain in many games.

(I'm ON the target.. I'm OFF the target.. I'm ON the target.. I'm shooting!!.. Oops I missed. I'm dead., meanwhile back in PC land-> I'm ON, BANG! He's dead.)

 

[shin0bi272]

Maybe you should have heeded your own advice. You would have saved yourself a lot of time and effort if you had spent your time reading up on how the development of the potential UHDTV standard was moving along instead of posting all that other irrelevant stuff.

As I already mentioned, there is no UHDTV standard yet, so obviously there can't exist any products currently that adhere to one. Secondly, the goal for UHDTV is 7680×4320 (4320P), which none of the products you listed are. What you are looking at will be the equivalent to the EDTV format we saw during the development of the last HDTV standard. A format that was higher resolution than standard definition, but was lower than HDTV. Basically and stillborne format for suckers with too much money.

The point of the test was to see the cheapest you can get a gaming rig for now including shipping... Since the argument is consoles vs pc not consoles vs pc's in a certain size box... money is the issue not size.

Which you weren't able to do. And has been pointed out repeatedly in this thread, a console with the same specs as a PC will vastly outperform it.

lastly to paraphrase the movie animal house "being a Fat, drunk, dbag is no way to go through life, son

I agree, and recognizing a problem exists is the first step towards fixing it. So congrats on taking your first step. Good luck with the rest of your remake.

wow you really are thick arent you?
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5738/zotac-zbox-nano-xs-ad11-plus-redefining-the-small-form-factor-pc

Oh and btw if you swap out the bluray burner for a bluray player (saves 20 bucks) and swap out win7pro for win7home (saves 40 bucks) you end up with .... 589 dollars. 10 bucks cheaper than the ps3 at launch.

 

[photonboy]

Hardware costs:
In 2013 the cost of the hardware will be much lower than in the past. RAM is now pretty cheap, the CPU/GPU designs are supposedly being done by AMD and aren't high spec. Even BluRay is no longer expensive, especially in mass production.

UHDTV:
For games there's no reason to care. They'll concentrate on 1920x1080. You can't magically create higher resolution textures with no processing cost.

However, watching VIDEO is a different story. I don't think it's necessarily going to happen, however the consoles have a LONG life so maybe they will offer a 3840x2160 resolution.

*UHDTV for consoles faces three large issues:
1) does offering a potential 3840x2160 affect the hardware design significanly?

2) Will Ultra-TV or Ultra-BluRay require special hardware for which the standard is not yet sorted?

3) Ultra-BluRay will probably require a DIFFERENT BluRay player (if it's even BluRay) as 3D and high-res is too much for a 50GB disc

**On the other hand, they may simply build the potential for 3840x2160 for streaming UHDTV video alone since it probably won't affect the hardware design much at all.

 

[bigdog44]

On the recent Wii article it posits that the console will cost $180 and the touchscreen remote another $120 for a total cost of $300. If each of the new overpriced "remotes" is gonna cost $120 I see failure in nintendos future. I can see MS coming in at the same price point or maybe a bit more, and spending there hardware $ more wisely on what goes into the console and still come out with 2-3 x the processing power. MS doesn't have all of its eggs in one basket like nintendo and can afford to take a liittle loss on the hardwares' initial cost. I can also see them going with cartridges for a number of reasons, but also offering an add on accessory for those wanting a bluray/dvd player/backward compatability.

 

[Guest]

The current ps3 has blu-ray,wireless,and 3D compatibility. i really cant see the reason for buying the new system unless the new games that i play(really on sports games) will look somehow perform drastically better. i just dont see what new features the ps4 can really offer to justify me spending around $300