Xbox One vs. PS4 Graphics Showdown: The Rematch

[Zappykins]

errorpwns said:

Adinnieken said:

errorpwns said:

The Cell had power, but the rest of the console was one big joke. 512MB of memory and essentially only 256MB of it was allowed for the graphics. The 360 had more available graphics memory and in some multi platform games that showed to help it. The graphics chip and memory bottlenecked the cell. It's all about bottlenecks. I could put a couple titans into my system, but in the end my Athlon II x4 2.8ghz would bottleneck the graphics chips. I'd need to upgrade into a faster processor to see frame increases in some games. See why consoles have 8GB of memory now? They don't want to run into the terrible bottleneck. Even in 06 systems dedicated for gaming were getting 2-4GB of memory. So putting 512 in was flawed from the beginning. Especially when they planned a 7-8 year console cycle.  

The thing that has changed between this generation and the previous generation is the fact that the bottle necks have become smaller and less obvious.  They require a greater deal of understanding systems and how data is used on those systems, than looking at numbers.

What's the point of having GDDR5 memory when your memory block is 256Mb wide and you only have 4Mb to fill that space?  A block size is an addressible area, only one thing can fit into a single block.  So, having a larger block size as GDDR 5 does, become a disadvantage when you're dealing with smaller files.  Soon, most of your memory is consumed with small files because these 256Mb blocks are now consumed by sub 256Mb files.  Memory density, if you will.  DDR3 memory has a smaller block size, I think 64Mb?  So while it may take more blocks for a larger file, I'm not wasting as much memory on a smaller file.  That 4Mb file is only wasting 60Mb of memory in a block, not 252Mb.

Likewise, as I said before.  GDDR and DDR memory work differently.  In GDDR memory you need to flush the memory before writing to it.  You can't append the memory.  Where as in DDR memory you can.  Which is why I believe the PS4 relies on virtual memory (HDD cache file).  The cache file is used to read and write active data from/to memory as it's being used. 

The thing is the memory bandwidth/amount of memory only comes into play when you bump up to a higher resolution. The Xbox One has more than enough capability at 1080p. Considering that the current gen cosnoels will most likely never exceed 1080p for games it is safe to assume that both consoles will  hit a peak eventually after optimization and stuff is factored in. Neither console needs more than 4GB of memor dedicated to video. Anything more than 3 is absurd for games running at 1080p. Which is why it would be a joke to bring up the fact one has more usable memory than the other. Since in the end IT DOES NOT MATTER AT 1080P. PC benchmarks would verify that perfectly. The fact is 2GB of GDDR5 seems to handle 1080P in games perfectly fine should be more than enough proof of that. I don't get why people think the way they do about hardware. The fact one produces more flops than the other has no real standing in games. Drivers have increased graphics cards performance by large amounts. So if Microsoft can out write Sony driverwise their graphics chip could end up working out to be the more powerful one even though on paper the one in the PS4 is more powerful. People have severely underestimated what a graphics driver rewrite can mean for the Xbox One. It has been rewritten and that alone could boost the Xbox Ones performance. The 50mhz bump up not as much.

Thanks for bringing some thoughtful points to this discussion.  It reminds of how during the 80's Lotus was able to optimize a 4 cylender engine that would out perform just about everything on the road.

And I don't want to point out yet the differeance between OpenGl and DirectX.  I know Sony is working on their of version of DirectX 11.1, but as with many things, we have yet to see what it will be able to do.