I don't think so; latency is going to be a problem. GDDR5: High Bandwidth, high latency. DDR3: Low Bandwidth, low latency. So essentially, main memory is going to be VERY slow when you aren't loading massive amounts of data. This will require significant efforts to handle to aviod things such as "texture pop in" and stuttering. That, and its shared data, so after the GPU and OS are done, figure about 4GB for apps. As for the other hardware, the CPU...is interesting. Figure about half the clockspeed, twice the IPC as Cell, so theoretical max performance isn't going to be significantly different on that end. That being said, having a more PC like architecture (no more needing to DMA!) should equate to some extra "real" performance. I don't see the CPU as that big an upgrade honestly. The GPU looks to be somewhere between the 7850 and 7970. Which is a significant boost over the modified 7800GTX inside the PS3.
Wtf are you on about? Gddr5 is the fastest we could have dreamed for. 8gb of the stuff is fantasy tackle. We have for the first time a console that will not be constrained by tiny amounts of slow ram....
I was going to upgrade my pc again but I think that this console has changed my mind. The 580 may have been my last big spend on a gpu seeing the way things are going. I just want games to work and I think I will probably let my pc antiquate until it is useless which would still be many years if I no longer used it for gaming. I think the next gen consoles are going to have a lot of people in the same boat. I know the pc will pull ahead again but the graphics that I am seeing coming down the pipe are good enough for me on the consoles and I dont care about getting 200fps anymore. Never thought I would say that ! I just hope my fanatec wheel will work on the next gen boxes.
Playstation 4 will NOT play PS3 games. http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/02/21/playstation-4-not-backwards-compatible-with-retail-or-digital-games Excuse after excuse. "keeping costs down" "emulation is too difficult" Look, my CD-ROM copy of Starcraft worked on my Pentium II Windows 98 machine when I bought it back in 1999, and it still works just fine on my Windows 8 Hex-Core Desktop. Same disc, Different Hardware, Different Operating system, Different EVERYTHING. This is Sony rushing their console to the market.
4k no 4k res for games!!!! uke2: hope this aint true!!!! http://www.techradar.com/news/gamin...video-output-on-ps4-but-not-for-games-1132919
A console is not a PC, it makes perfect sense why the PS4 doesn't play PS3 games as it's completely different hardware, and no way is it powerful enough to emulate it. I never expected 4k for games, it takes 4 times as much hardware as 1080p, what would be the point as the games would have to be incredibly basic just to be playable.
Yes because your PC still uses a x86 processor, the architecture on the PC has been the same for ages... The Cell CPU & a x86 CPU are about as different as you can get. These are very valid excuses. Emulating the Cell is not possible on any current CPU, there isn't anything out there that could emulate it at full speed. The only other option would be to slap the Cell CPU into the PS4 which would make this another $800-1000 console. Yah no thanks! Lol you really expected 4k resolutions! You'd pretty much need a Geforce Titan or some type of dual-GPU setup to render this stuff at 3840×2160. Just be happy this thing will be able to pull off full 1080p!
4k resolution ? Not for many years. 1080p will be the console standard for a long time. Besides, if AA is good enough or supersampling is used it isnt that big of a deal anyway. I downsample 1600p to 1080p and the difference isnt all that. Anyone want to wager that in the living room 1080p will be around for at least 10 more years ? At least in the U.S. No sense in having 4k until 4k is being broadcast. Everything follows broadcasting standards in the living room. PC is exempt but then you are sitting at a desk which I am personally tired of doing. I have my pc on my 1080p 55 inch and game from the couch. When the ps4 comes out and has some good games I believe my pc will not get much use anymore. Email on phones, web on tablets etc.. I hate to say it but I think the days of sitting at a desk playing pc games are coming to an end. Those that want that will be able to get that because it isnt going to die but I believe it will become less common. Im sitting on the couch now with my feet up. Wireless mouse and keyboard and the mouse works perfectly on the couch cushion. I hate to say it but I can not see myself shelling out cash for any more video cards with what is coming down the pipe. I am not paying $600.00 for a single component and hope for 60 fps. Not anymore that is. I have spent thousands over the years on video cards and I really would rather not do that anymore.
This guy....Your basically saying new generation of hardware is worse....Yeah thats why all the top end graphics cards use gddr5 ram and all the **** ones use ddr3....think about your words mate
*Yawn* No-one cares.... Your PS3 won't suddenly stop playing PS3 games, and your PS4 will stream PS3 games from the cloud if the worst comes to the worst. Yes, engineers at Sony are now reading your post and thinking, "Sh*t! we forgot about latency, now what are we going to do!"
You forget that a CPU isnt a GPU. GPUs can hide better the latency issues, result of years of developing high bandwidth buses at all costs. Shader programs are relatively simple so there isn't many instruction fetches around. Data gets passed in bulk all the time around the GPU, thus higher bandwidth is more effective than lower latency. CPUs are very susceptible to high latency. Miss a branch prediction and you'll have to go to memory again to fetch more instructions. Operate on many small sets of data (typical CPU workload) and you will have to go to main memory all the time, which is bad if your latency is high. That's exactly why you don't see GDDR in consumer PCs. It doesn't suits CPU architectures well. This isn't a set-in-stone thing, otherwise all consoles would have exactly the same hardware. Tradeoffs have to be made all around. They obviously wanted an unified memory, and their tradeoff was between low latency memory and starve the GPU of bandwidth, or let the developers hack their way around high latency memory and have good bandwidth all around. gamerk is right. You are the one who spits out things without knowing what you're talking about.
Nope. It has VERY high latency compared to DDR3 RAM, which means for small memory reads, it is going to be slower. GDDR is meant to push a very large amount of data across a bus, so the low latency is acceptable in exchange for the higher bandwidth. It is NOT a good choice to use as main memory for that reason.
Same CPU architecture. Same Windows API. Therefore, it works. PS4 is different CPU architecture, different API. Therefore, it doesn't work. Simple.
8 GB of unified system/graphics memory on the PS4 means that developers can allocate how much they like to graphics. That is a 16X increase over the PS3 and rumours are that the Killzone 4 demo was only using 1.5 GB of that 8 GB of memory so the potential is there for some richly textured, highly detailed games with huge levels/worlds. I suspect this may result in early games that actually look better than on the PC since those games have to cater for systems with graphics cards that have only 1 GB of VRAM. The PC will again take the lead eventually though, it always does, thanks to its ever evolving hardware.
Yah I wouldn't be surprised to see games using a ton of texture memory... they could likely get by with 1.5 to 2GB application memory. Allocate the rest to texture memory, we could see games using 4-5GB of textures!
Nope, the OS is going to use a lot. Likely around 4-5gb left for games. Also, like the ps3, they might reduce the usage over time.
Honestly as many others here I'm a bit disappointed by that approach. I'm afraid that could be a real bottleneck for the CPU. My main concern is the AI. If well done this requires a lot of memory (most of the time using small accesses) and with the GPU and CPU accessing at the same time the memory the performance could decrease a lot. Therefore we will have an even more stupid AI than we have in today games (I'm maybe exaggerating a bit ) but I do not think we will see an improvement there.
The GDDR5 access time argument is overstated by those with little knowledge of the components are overheads involved. While GDDR5 does pay for its speed with significantly higher access time, it is still orders of magnitude lower access time than pulling data from system RAM into separate GPU RAM, then having the GPU access it, and constant back and forth back and forth across the GPU bus. Not only that, but there is a real money savings there too, a PC has 8GB of system RAM and 1-6GB of video RAM. Why? You can cut the cost in half if you just give it 8GB of all-purpose RAM. The cost savings there, alone, are huge. Further, the weak CPU cores are almost entirely on account of the GPU being a big compute unit. You will see a lot of things, physics especially, offloaded to the GPU where, again, GDDR5 makes a big difference. You will see the CPU in the PS4 as kind of a general purpose overseer, making sure everything goes well and cleaning up around the edges while the bulk of the work will be done on the GPU. Couple those facts with the concept that GDDR5 can be tuned toward lower access time at a cost to speed, and the fact that every PS4 will be the same, allowing them to perfectly balance speed/access time ratios... You start to find that the argument about access times against the PS4 is largely one made up by armchair circuit designers, and not one based in reality.
