Friday, May 24th 2013
Xbox One Chip Slower Than PlayStation 4
After bagging chip supply deals for all three new-generation consoles -- Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Wii U, things are looking up for AMD. While Wii U uses older-generation hardware technologies, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 use the very latest AMD has to offer -- "Jaguar" 64-bit x86 CPU micro-architecture, and Graphics CoreNext GPU architecture. Chips that run the two consoles have a lot in common, but also a few less-than-subtle differences.
PlayStation 4 chip, which came to light this February, is truly an engineer's fantasy. It combines eight "Jaguar" 64-bit x86 cores clocked at 1.60 GHz, with a fairly well spec'd Radeon GPU, which features 1,156 stream processors, 32 ROPs; and a 256-bit wide unified GDDR5 memory interface, clocked at 5.50 GHz. At these speeds, the system gets a memory bandwidth of 176 GB/s. Memory isn't handled like UMA (unified memory architecture), there's no partition between system- and graphics-memory. The two are treated as items on the same 8 GB of memory, and either can use up a majority of it.
Xbox One chip is a slightly different beast. It uses the same eight "Jaguar" 1.60 GHz cores, but a slightly smaller Radeon GPU that packs 768 stream processors, and a quad-channel DDR3-2133 MHz memory interface, which offers a memory bandwidth of 68.3 GB/s, and holding 8 GB of memory. Memory between the two subsystems are shared in a similar way to PlayStation 4, with one small difference. Xbox One chip uses a large 32 MB SRAM cache, which operates at 102 GB/s, but at infinitesimally lower latency than GDDR5. This cache cushions data-transfers for the GPU. Microsoft engineers are spinning this off as "200 GB/s of memory bandwidth," by somehow clubbing bandwidths of the various memory types in the system.
The two consoles also differ with software. While PlayStation 4 runs a Unix-derived operating system with OpenGL 4.2 API, Xbox One uses software developers are more familiar with -- a 64-bit Windows NT 6.x kernel-based operating system, running DirectX 11 API. Despite these differences, the chips on the two consoles should greatly reduce multi-platform production costs for game studios, as the two consoles together have a lot in common with PC.
Source:
Heise.de
PlayStation 4 chip, which came to light this February, is truly an engineer's fantasy. It combines eight "Jaguar" 64-bit x86 cores clocked at 1.60 GHz, with a fairly well spec'd Radeon GPU, which features 1,156 stream processors, 32 ROPs; and a 256-bit wide unified GDDR5 memory interface, clocked at 5.50 GHz. At these speeds, the system gets a memory bandwidth of 176 GB/s. Memory isn't handled like UMA (unified memory architecture), there's no partition between system- and graphics-memory. The two are treated as items on the same 8 GB of memory, and either can use up a majority of it.
The two consoles also differ with software. While PlayStation 4 runs a Unix-derived operating system with OpenGL 4.2 API, Xbox One uses software developers are more familiar with -- a 64-bit Windows NT 6.x kernel-based operating system, running DirectX 11 API. Despite these differences, the chips on the two consoles should greatly reduce multi-platform production costs for game studios, as the two consoles together have a lot in common with PC.
148 Comments on Xbox One Chip Slower Than PlayStation 4
Just that you be better of with a PS4 but they need exclusives to make people like me at least to even think about getting a xbox..
And if movies annd stuff is what you going do mostly with it get a frigging Roku 3 as that will beat the pants of it in every way even more so on power usage as the unit only takes 3.2w on load and supports 3rd party stuff too.
I would have to go PS4 for a few reasons like for Heavy Rain if there is ever another of those and uncharted and then the free online so no monthly fee's.
Again if ya just watching movies Roku 3 has more than enough to keep you happy for a long time..
Just because you have a 120Hz monitor doesn't mean your experience is diminished if 120FPS isn't achieved. Most console games are capped between 25FPS and 30 FPS yet the high end HD TVs can support up to 120Hz. I'm not saying 25-30FPS is something PC gamers should be accustomed to as I wouldn't tolerate such a low frame rate, but I see nothing wrong with playing a game at 50-60-70+ FPS on my almost 4 year old GPU/GPU. I'm not going to drop money to see Fraps @ 120FPS vs 70FPS to run at the same detail settings to see a negligible difference.
And I'm pretty sure the XBO's GPU side is no slouch either.
PS4's CPU part is @ 2GHz, it's been confirmed time and time again over the weeks after it's launch, not sure about the XBO. All in all yes, probably slightly above half the i7-2600's performance, but specific coding and optimizations should bring results of something way above what the i7 can do on a straight-up PC platform... of course, this in the following years, not at launch. However... taking into account AMD's HSA... the CPU part plus the GPU grunt work... it's computational power is going to be way above anything we see in today's PCs, heck, more FLOPs than on a 4-CPU 10-core Ivy Bridge server... (abstracting out the fact that the GPU as a pure graphics processing unit will be starved of resources in that scenario).
All in all, it's more like a mid-range or above gaming system, with the vast untapped capabilities we aren't aware of yet... (que AMD's Kaveri/Kaveri+ HSA demostrations...)
If I had to look at the best exclusives its nintendo without a doubt, sony tends to keep many exclusives in the japanese markets(and they're some very good ones that end up being unknown) ms tends to do multiplatform games better but when their is an exclusive its usually a pretty good minus the kinect games.
As to what midnightoil said, bare in mind that Windows on Xbox isn't the same as Windows on IBM-PC compatible. Xbox developers likely have direct access to the hardware resources to squeeze every drop of performance from the hardware. On consumer Windows, developers have to go through layer after layer of software to reach the hardware which means it is slower--but less likely to crash (and other undesirable outcomes) the computer. The reason why there isn't a direct access to the hardware in consumer Windows it has to account for the hundreds of graphics devices out there.
I have no doubt that Sony would have used DirectX if they didn't have to license it from Microsoft.
OpenGL 3.# requires Direct3D 10 hardware
OpenGL 4.# requires Direct3D 11 hardware
On *nix, for example, the implementations are much better.
But comparing between D3D on Windoze and and OGL on *nix cannot be called "apples to apples" due to arising external factors [obvious one - different friggin' OS].What the hell were You smoking?
There are a lot of engines out there which run on Windows that support Direct3D and OpenGL render paths and the performance is more or less the same when trying to achieve the same degree of visuals.
A lot of EA titles (The Sims 3 and Spore, for example) are DirectX on Windows and OpenGL on Mac OS X. If DirectX was as terrible as you claim it is, why would EA go out of their way to use DirectX on Windows instead of OpenGL on both?
And don't expect a further reply from me on this topic. The discussion is circular.
Come on, man! :shadedshu You seriously think these shitty consoles can beat any current PC, let alone the next-generation ones? A Haswell + Titan will crush any of these so-called "gaming machines" hands down. Even the developers themselves (from both platforms) have said they won't take on the high-end PC's head on, instead focusing on "good" (read: not great, let alone the best) middle-of-the-road performance for a gaming console. This time they focused more on entertainment, making the consoles a "media hub" etc. for the living room, not raw power.
By the time the consoles launch and developers get experience coding for them, Broadwell + Maxwell will be out, so these consoles stand NO CHANCE in beating PC's. Mark my words on that. :rockout:
Go ahead and pay 1000 USD for your Titan. Some person who could care less will probably get an Xbox One, pay a mere fraction of the cost of a full gaming rig, and still enjoy it just as much as you and not know the difference because the general user really doesn't care as much as we do here at TPU.
I guess that depends on how you look at "winning." Image quality wise PCs will be better. Cost effectiveness, market penetration and profits wise, I think consoles are winning by a pretty large margin.Don't call someone else's comments stupid when your post is just as bad. :shadedshu
As far as PC gaming being a dying niche, well never has that statement been less true than right now.Now let us compare that to console sales in 2012
So if i get one of the ewer systems it would have to not have a monthly fee.
It would be nice what the power usage is of these newer ones too how much better are they.