Submitted by Late last night, Sony unveiled the PlayStation 4 – sort of. It’s got a custom 8-core AMD x86-64 processor, 8GB of GDDR5 RAM, and a custom Radeon-based graphics chip. It’s also got additional chips to offload specific tasks like video (de)compression (livestreaming is built-in!), and there’s a large focus on streaming games, but most of it is “an ultimate goal” instead of a definitive feature. It won’t play PS3 discs (but will eventually stream many PS3 games), and, while there’s some weaselwording involved, second hand games are safe. The biggest surprise? The console itself wasn’t shown because it’s not done yet. No joke. No price, no release date (other than somewhere before the holidays).
Not really a Sony or Playstation fan, but compared to the Playstation 3 I was expecting something a little more impressive.
8-core AMD x86-64 processor
8GB of GDDR5 RAM
Radeon-based graphics
My current PC is way better equipped than that.
Your PC is a random collection of off-the-shelf stock parts, while each component of a game console is entirely custom-designed. This isn’t the same as any regular x86 PC.
The PS4 is a x86-64 PC with some custom kit. This isn’t much more powerful on paper than my current Workstation at work.
Sorry this just isn’t that impressive.
Edited 2013-02-21 19:58 UTC
I can see a difference. Both Athlon 64 2800+ and 8 core Xeon E5-4650 are X86-64, after all.
??
Come back when your desktop comes with a low level graphics API and GDDR5 as main memory.
(“2 Gbit GDDR5 memory chips will enable graphics cards with 2 GiB or more of onboard memory with 224 GB/s or higher peak bandwidth.” – Wikipedia)
So to be impressive you have to have expensive weird hardware that no one knows how to program ? Sony has understood its lessons with the PS3, make it easy to develop games, x86-PC are difficult to beat in that area, since that is what most people are most familiar with.
The PS4 is all about services, Sony wants it to be the central place in your living room, the hub to all your entertainment, it is not just about gaming anymore. That is why we didn’t get to see the hardware, the hardware is not important, the services are, the hardware is just an access point to the services. And for this strategy to win, the hardware has to be cheap enough to sell many. And with the current performance and price of X86-PC, they get exactly that.
And they still go for selling their own hardware, because it give them vendor-locking. Once you buy a PS4, you can’t have anything but Sony services.
If it isn’t about specs why release them ;-).
TBH, I have a ps3 and use it for all the extras (netflix etc).
It’s also a fixed hardware configuration, so developers can program the hardware directly without any intermediate abstraction layers, so just like the original xbox it will perform considerably better than an identically specced computer.
We always here this and within a year the PC has better graphics again.
Consoles are great (I have own most of them all at one point or another), but their selling point isn’t about being cutting edge.
As 8 core Jaguar core CPUs are not out yet to be benchmarked, you can’t say you have a better CPU.
As the next AMD graphic hardware isn’t released yet, you can’t say you have a better GPU.
And PS4’s RAM is GDDR5. The best memory you can have is DDR3 which is much slower.
yes you can
no matter what they will call their gpu it will still bei a radeon hd 7850 oc
just compare cores, bus, throughput and performance
but they will manufacture it in a newer process to get powerconsumption down
By this logic all ATI graphics cards in last 15 years are Rage 128 Pro but with lower manufacturing processes.
well the the whole 7000 – 9200 series pretty much was the same chipset.
They will a design based on a existing design. This happens every console refresh. Nothing is new.
7000 – 7500 and 8500 – 9200 were quite different; the former were fixed-function DX7 chips, the latter somewhat programmable DX8.1
I don’t follow that analogy; GPUs have experienced dramatic changes at the architectural and design/organization levels in the past two decades. So it is not a matter of just fab process advances.
I think the previous poster was referring to the fact that the GPU architecture of the PS4 is a known quantity. As such it should be relatively easy to speculate, at the very least, some performance expectations, by simply taking into account parameters such as the expected fab process, expected bandwidth, clock frequencies, etc.
Edited 2013-02-21 21:30 UTC
I/O these days is the bottle neck.
My ancient nforce P5N-SLI machine with a Core 2 duo 8400 machine is playing Crysis 3 just off ultra settings.
I have maxed out this machine, and the only speed improvement I got going is overclocking the CPU (which means better RAM, since the multiplier is locked on intel chips).
My motherboard was purchased 6 or 7 years ago, the CPU is a E8400 and I am running 8GB of DDR2. Both of which is ancient by today’s standards.
My best upgrade to my battle-rig … two raided SSD drives. VS2012 opens instantly from cold boot. Win8 takes a few seconds to load once I am past the BIOS screens.
Processing power, ram and latency isn’t a problem. Disk I/O is.
Edited 2013-02-21 20:08 UTC
But SSD raids do not pass trim command and performance degrades over time, or did they fixed that?
I learnt the hard way. The RAID 0 failed.
I got RAID 1 so I can swap another drive in there if one of the SSD fail.
It isn’t perfect.
I dunno if Windows 7+ sorts that or not. I am not that bothered. For 2 years I had more than 300mb/s transfer rate. The performance was worth it.
Edited 2013-02-21 20:11 UTC
Processing power of the GPU is always a problem if you want to implement nice visual effects. More graphic calls/second, the better.
it is, but it is a solved problem for Hi-def screens.
Ram and latency are most definitely an issue. Just as Disk I/O is orders of magnitude slower than RAM access, RAM access is orders of magnitude slower than Cache access.
No matter how fast your storage (disk) subsystem can spit out data, it’s not going to be anywhere close to as fast as getting it from memory. And ditto, getting data or instructions from cache is far superior to making the processor use it’s memory controller to look up an address from some page table and do the virtual to physical lookup.
If you have enough RAM to fit all the game data into sytem RAM, so much the better. Unfortunately, SRAM is way too expensive, and even now, 128K Harvard architecture split data/instruction caches is considered pretty good. Getting access to L1 cache can take just a few clock cycles. Getting memory from system RAM takes a few hundred clock cycles generally speaking. But whereas system RAM access is measured in micro or even nano seconds, disk IO is stilled measured in milliseconds. In other words, disk access is thousands of times slower than RAM access. If you’re page faulting and have to swap to disk, you’re in BIG trouble in a game. The idea is you pull data from storage into RAM. RAM times are so important, that many developers don’t even use malloc or new, and they pre-allocate their own heaps (memory allocation is expensive and can put the processor to sleep, not to mention the problem with memory fragmentation).
In regards to processing power, the name of the game is concurrency. Many systems are now merging the concept of CPU and GPUs so that the massively parallel processing of GPU’s can work on all the highly vectorized game data (usually graphics, but physics too). But many other components will still rely on the main CPU (artificial intelligence for example). Splitting data across multiple threads of execution is very challenging.
Is a game more GPU or CPU bound? Depends on the game I suppose (I’m not a game developer, I’m a storage controller device driver developer). But again, processing and especially optimizing parallelization and concurrency will provide FAR greater beneft than disk IO.
Given AMDs track record the past many years, it’s a pretty safe bet though.
Jaguar is the successor to the Bobcat core found in Brazos APUs. This is AMD’s competitor to Atom, it won’t be a particularly high performance part. It’s supposed to be a substantial improvement over Bobcat, but it’s not meant to compete with more power hungry desktop cores.
Sony has stated that the GPU is capable of 1.84 TFLOPs which is a little more than a Radeon 7850 (1.76 TFLOPS). AMD isn’t introducing a radically new micro-architecture with Sea Islands so I think it’s fair to say one of the high end Soutern Islands GPUs (like the 7870 GHz Edition or higher) will easily outperform it.
This is true, but it’s also shared between the GPU and CPU whereas in a typical gaming PC the video card will have it’s own dedicated pool of GDDR5. There are certainly advantages to a unified memory architecture. In particular, there are certain tasks that would be well suited to running on a GPU if it were not for the cost of shuffling data between main and video memory, but there are other tasks in which the greater aggregate bandwidth of a system with separate main and graphics memory wins out.
I’m not sure what the big deal is though. Apart from certain classes of problems for which the Cell was particularly well suited, the PS3 was not terribly impressive compared to PCs of the time.
a hd 7850 at 900mhz (instead of 860) has 1,84 TFLOPS
You have a PC that is equipped with GDDR5? Wow, you must be a millionaire or something and have a completely custom system all the way up from the motherboard.
Your current PC is highly constrained by it’s memory bus. Your CPU will spend the majority of it’s time waiting whilst reading or writing RAM. Caching helps this a bit, but doesn’t avoid the problem. If you have a decent GPU then that will have it’s own VRAM on a wider memory bus, but that too is a constraint since the separation of system (CPU) RAM and video RAM requires transfers between the two, which will be conducted at system RAM speeds.
The new PS4 will have a radically faster memory bus than your PC, and a unified memory architecture. The CPU and GPU will spend an order of magnitude less of their time waiting for RAM, so they get to run at closer to their full potential speed significantly more of the time.
Not necessarily, the amount of wasted cycles depends on the workload as well. Incidentally, gaming workloads tend to have higher computational densities than IO-bound workloads, e.g. databases. Which means gaming processors tend to have high utilization rates.
Furthermore, unified memory models usually lead to an even bigger central bottleneck. Which means that a faster memory bus is required, just to keep up with “traditional” distributed/multi bus designs. However, the PS4 memory bus, albeit faster than the one found in off the shelf PC parts, is not orders of magnitude faster than a commodity part. So the claim of “orders of magnitude” increase in performance is baseless. The use of DDR5 does address some of the issues with traditional AMD’s APUs crippled by DDR3 channels though.
Unified memory architectures are usually done for cost reasons, not performance. In this case, the goal of the PS4 is to offer a comparable level of performance to a modern PC, with lower overall cost (smaller motherboad, reduced amount of components, higher levels of integration, etc).
Edited 2013-02-21 20:06 UTC
Note: DDR5 doesn’t exist yet. This is GDDR5, which is many, many, many times faster than current-gen DDR3 and even soon-to-come DDR4.
The main differences between GDDR and DDR are regarding voltages and burts capabilities, but for the most part they end up implementing the same memory technology.
And yes, GDDR5 is somewhat faster than DDR3. I, however, would not refer to a 50% improvement as “many many many times over,” perhaps “half a time over”… 😉
The point here is that although the DDR5 may finally help the GPU in the APU get the data at the rates it needs, that bus still has to keep 8 x86 cores fed on top of that. It is a definitive improvement over the current APUs which are BW starved under DDR3, but it is not going to offer superior performance to off the shelf PCs.
Edited 2013-02-21 22:36 UTC
i wouldn’t be so sure about this
ddr is optimised for random access, gddr for high throughput
gddr for a cpu is probably as bad a choice as ddr for a gpu
At the highest end GDDR5(200+gbps) is over 10x faster than DDR3 at the highest end(17gbps).
Not quite, DDR3 can push over 190 Gbps at the high end (PC3-24000).
Edited 2013-02-22 17:59 UTC
So you need a least 176/24*64b = 448bit memory interface with 7 DDR3 modules working in parallel to be on par with PS4. But I’m not sure it will be as effective as GDDR5. Also DDR3 is not a power efficient solution.
Edited 2013-02-23 12:19 UTC
192 giga bits per second is a correct value, it’s 64bits at 3GHz.
You can’t get to 192GBps total system RAM bandwidth using a single non-custom CPU. All max-out at 96GBps.
192 giga bits per second is a correct value, it’s 64bits at 3GHz.
192Gb/s is 24GB/s as I stated.
You can’t get to 192GBps total system RAM bandwidth using a single non-custom CPU. All max-out at 96GBps.
I don’t understand what you’re talking about.
PS4 SoC memory bandwidth is 176GB/s
Where did you get this absurd “96GBps” value? Intel Xeon Phi has 352 GB/s bandwidth (with 16 memory channels @ 5.5GT/s)
edit: Oh I see, you mean top DDR3 bandwidth @ quad channel.
Edited 2013-02-23 17:42 UTC
My mistake.
Xeon Phi is not a CPU, but a custom coprocessor. And it’s using GDDR5!!!
http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/product…
custom coprocessor
It is a generic self-sufficient x86 CPU+SIMD. Board runs on linux.
And it’s using GDDR5
Of course it uses GDDR5. I thought it was clear from “16 [email protected]/s” figure. It is designed for fast memory from the beginning.
GDDR5 is rated per chip, while DDR3 is rated per DIMM that has many chips.
DDR3 maxes out at quad-chanel(high end CPU 256bit),
GDDR goes to octa “chanel”(high end GPU’s at 512bit).
DDR3 maxes out at 3GHz interface frequency,
GDDR5 goes to 6GHz.
So let’s recap:
DDR3 = 3bln * 1sec * 256bit = 768Gbps = 96GBps
GDDR5 = 6bln * 1sec * 512bit = 3072Gbps = 384GBps
GDDR5 = 6bln * 1sec * 256bit = 1536Gbps = 192GBps
But yes, you got me there, I was referring to the common PC3-17000 when I said 17Gbps.
Mine too but, on the other hand, it’s also more expensive — even assuming that the PS4 will debut at $499/$599 like the PS3 did back at the time.
Comparisons are a bit pointless if price is not taken into account, don’t you think?
RT.
Edited 2013-02-22 08:53 UTC
The PS4 specs ARE pretty impressive because they have used the PS3 resources incredibely well: dynamic processing to alter priorities of processes, reallocating resources from lowest to highest.
Imagine what they will do with 8GB of GDDR5 Shared Memory GPU/HOST interface, considering the PS3 had hardwired 256MB GPU and 256MB HOST.
Btw: “The native operating system of the PlayStation 3 is CellOS, which is believed to be a branch from the FreeBSD project.” Quote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_system_software
Another point I would like to make: ‘BOTTLENECK’
The only bottlenecks today are CPU speeds and your personal budget for your computer builds.
CPU only plays a 15%-20% role in slowing down even the finest GPU.
Disk I/O? hogwash. Enter “RAID CALC” in a google search and then tell me again how Disk I/O limitations are the cause. You can build a disk subsystem that will saturate your meager 4GBs of RAM in a hurry.
There is no problem in this world that cannot be overcome by throwing enough money at, and fix it quickly. Oh no, sorry, I’m wrong: GREED! We can’t fix GREED.
Wait, you’re saying the PS4 is impressive because the PS3 was impressive?
Wow, no shit, Sherlock.
Let me do the same to you now. Let me take something out of context the way you did.
Wow, you can’t poo?
Just because you get to dissect and reply to my comment with such a clever retort, I will cede to you because you have such a superior superiority complex!
Do some research, use the PS3, make up your own mind, and quit being a douche to everyone that posts something you feel the need to berate with your superior wit.
Saying that the PS4 will be impressive because the PS3 was impressive is just idiotic, they do not even share the same architecture let anything else — there simply is no relation between the two hardware-wise, and thus drawing such a line is inherently flawed.
Also, yes, saying that you can fix more-or-less anything by throwing enough money at it is such a Captain Obvious – moment that you deserve to be berated for it.
The obscurity of the Cell Broadband processor and the fact that they originally let you run Linux on it slowed down the hacking of the PS3.
The x86 in this thing will make it much more attractive for hackers. They’ll want to get Windows booting on it and play PC games. Or Linux now that Steam is on there.
Surely Sony will employ some kind of secure-boot UEFI to prevent this from happening.
As a side note, I wasn’t impressed with gameplay footage.
Even if the CPU and GPU are made by AMD, they are custom. So no Windows and Linux on it unless you have drivers.
The hardware will be very good and and probably it won’t be very expensive, I see the reason why some guys might want to use PS4 as a regular PC.
Edited 2013-02-21 18:51 UTC
I would be interested in knowing about the OS this thing (PS4) uses. I can’t imagine Sony coming up with a custom x86 OS, from the ground up, for this thing.
It sucks for AMD though. They could be having some cool APU-based tablets/latops running on DDR5… alas, it’s not “comoditized” enough in the PC space (yet).
It is rumoured the PS3 OS is based on a BSD.
I’m *hoping* it’s Linux based, that would potentially allow the PS4 to be Steam-Box Compatible, (seeing as the PS4 seems to be a custom x86-64 PC)
Giving users access to both the PSN and Steam would be a huge advantage over Xbox it would certainly help my buying decision. The Question is would Sony allow another content distribution network on their hardware?
If as speculated the PS3 System Software was/is based on a branch of FreeBSD then it shouldn’t be to complicated to port to x86-64.
Either way with AMD providing the graphics hardware as well maybe the closed source AMD graphics drivers will improve on BSD/Linux…
If they put something like Boot Camp on it I could use it as my PC. They could even sell that piece of software to make up for the subsidy on the hardware and it would make sense for many consumers.
Don’t judge game footage off a stream.
Other than that, compare an early-gen Xbox 360 game to a late-gen one. World of difference.
Gears of War: Judgement looks awesome indeed, especially with render filters (like dust in first act).
Next gen games will look incredible, despite “qq my pc is fasterz”.
I think the main problem is not the hardware, rather the budgets and the art direction.
TBH Assassins Creed 2 (I only got a PS3 recently) looks lovely on my PS3 and visually it is more than good enough.
Edited 2013-02-21 20:15 UTC
The original XBox being x86 led to some awesome stuff.
XBMC is a prime example of cool stuff that console hackers did.
Of course, since familiarity of the platform will make hacking easier, it may also make rampant piracy an issue…
Just like the original XBox.
For me it’s quite the opposite, the Cell made it attractive as a “tinkering” device. I can tinker with x86 any time I like.
I agree that the Cell broadband processor was an interest to myself as well. I was disappointing that the architecture was not more accessible and friendly.
You were able to purchase a Blade Server built around Cell, but nothing came of it.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-9940771-64.html
This laptop from Toshiba looked incredible and very accessible, but talk about vaporware!
As for the revealed PS4 spec, I believe that most of use here cannot appreciate how powerful our computers are because of the mundane tasks we push at them, but when you do not refine the operating system for pure performance, that is exactly what you get – mundane.
The PS3 is not a general use operating environment, it is a media centric device that was purpose built.
I am hopeful and optimistic that Sony will do what is right for the PS4 and for their bottom line.
inb4 rootkits, OtherOS, proprietary this and that.
IIRC the original Wii U reveal didn’t show the console neither price, only the controller. I think this is becoming standard in this highly competitive market. Show something, pressure Microsoft to show something too keeping a few cards in your chest for later reveal
I don’t like consoles and I use PC for gaming, so I hope game companies will do a better job when they’ll port the games they wrote for PS4 to PC. At least they won’t have the excuse that hardware is very different.
Edited 2013-02-21 19:00 UTC
I hope the Playstation 4 saves AMD, and I’m hoping Microsoft chooses them as well!
i’m still convinced that Microsoft, as a PowerPC license holder, will go with a PowerPC processor based on the PowerPC A2 design .)
According to some leaks, it appears that Microsoft will use an 8 core AMD CPU, too, in the next Xbox.
Well…. Considering they have to consider costs and both decided to go for AMD GPU, AMD could have had a chance to “throw in” their CPUs as well at no additional cost.
Well that would be fascinating from a developers perspective. Meaning the PC and consoles would be incredibly close architecturally speaking.
Though IMHO that wouldn’t be fascinating overall, maybe even would be bad. Blurring the differences between platforms would likely mean further erosion of differences between games, creating “hybrids” (popularly but IMHO incorrectly called “console ports” – it mostly promotes crappy FPP shooters, and that’s not a console genre)
This just looks like more of the same. I didn’t want to play Killzone on the PS3. I don’t want to play it on the PS4 either. But I bet they’ll have at least half a dozen military shooters out at launch, which should make the ‘core’ gamers happy. At least if the graphics are better, they’ll forget about the fact that they’re paying $60+ for the same fucking game they played last month.
If this thing is hackable (I bet is not), I would love to make it my next PC.
Pointless discusión PCs looks a lot faster-most of the time because PCs have a more frequent release cicle and can be upgraded, but consoles have an almost 10 year cicle. PS4 will be a lot better than most of the PCs for a long time. Sure you can expend thousands of dollars every year on upgrades and amazing video cards, but the poor yearly PCs game sells does not attract many developers (piracy fragmentation) .
Now on the technical side the PS4 altough the processor will use x86 instructions, it is not the processsor you would find in your PC, it will have its own tweaks and compilers aimed for stream programming and not general purpose applications, plus it does not have an OS as the middle man between the game and the hardware.
PC gamming is cool too but unless you are a hardcore-rich-geek Warcraft Far Cry Crysis player you will be really dissapointed when you run it on your machine and realize it doesn’t look as good as the youtube video because you need 500 dollars on RAM and video cards.
Personally I love console gamming because is dumb oriented has better gamepad support (don’t start a flame war over gamepad vs Keyboard mouse please) and sometimes I just want to get away from my PC (psychological speaking) but to be clear I do have BF3 GTA Starcraft and I will buy Simcity when it comes out.
It will have an OS… just not a bloated general purpose OS. Ideally, everything will be tightly optimized and trimmed down to the bare necessities.
I might be wrong but usually when you develop over a PC you must use an operating system loop that is controlled by the OS in order to adjust process priority acording to its own calendarizer and use the operating system own API. But when you programm over a gamming console you bring your own API that interacts with the hardware, so your code takes over the hardware and get maximum priority.
In the case of the PS3 yes there is an OS but it works over a full single core, is not interacting with the rest of the cores and the games only interact with the OS to report certain things (like trophies), but the game again takes over the whole hardware.
You might be right in the case of the PS4 considering what Sony is trying to pull off, like playing while downloading, playing PS4 games with the Vita, recording footage, and the proclaimed development easiness. Right now only PS4 developers know how it was implemented, but one way could be to use a Sony developed OS or a new Sony’s game engine that implements almost everything for the developers or maybe just a really advanced development kit.
I’d actually rather see the current gen of consoles extended a few years. The quality of games today has little to do with graphics or hardware.
Far Cry 3 for example is one of the best shooters I have played in years while Crysis 3 is freaking lame even though it has better graphix.
Oh and I used to be a heavy pc gamer so please pc elitists save your pathetic patronizing for someone who cares.
Farcry 3 was massively over-rated.
the hardware specs, pay attention to the other things the PS4 is trying to introduce and the long-term ramifications.
Sony wants a lot of network-centric gaming including cloud servers, integrated social networking, and hardware with these features built in.
For now, Sony is saying yes, used games are safe. Sony does not need a specific ‘block’ to shut down the use of second hand gaming though, becuase it can simply slowly phase out the physical media. If everything is digital, stored in the cloud with just enough local storage for your personal account, is DRM locked to your console, and requires an activation code to play, then there is no need for a Blu-ray disc. Without the blu-ray, there is nothing physical to buy at Gamestop or to give to your buddy down the street. Bam, there goes the used game market.
Will there be hacks? Yes, likely, but with systems being always on, it will be more difficult. How many parents outside of hardcore gamers are going to build a server just to run a few games for their kids on the new PS4 five to 10 years from now? And even if this is possible, how many in this current generation over-share will be willing to give up online multiplayer gaming? Use a hack on the Xbox 360, and you can be permanently banned from Xbox Live.
There is precedent for this as well — Microsoft’s latest Office 2013 product. The Premium edition is now tethered to a Office 365’s cloud service and requires a $100.00 a year subscription. Sure the Home & Student is a one-off deal, but, and here’s the kicker, it is now permanently tied to the machine it is first installed on. Yup, you can’t move it to another machine.
Computing and gaming as we now know it will not be the same in 10 years.
“For now, Sony is saying yes, used games are safe”
same guys: you’ll be able to run linux on your ps3.
its all about creds.