AMD: PS4 performance advantage over XB1 bigger than many expect thanks to hUMA

[zarx]

Adinnieken said:

zarx said:

Not true AMD's GCN has native support for tiled resources they called it Partially Resident Texture you can read about it here http://developer.amd.com/wordpress/media/2012/10/Partially%20Resident%20Textures%20on%20Next-Generation%20GPUs.v04.pps (The implementation in DX 11.2 is the same) and Meagexture is actually a tiled bassed system implemented in software http://renderingpipeline.com/2012/03/megatextures-in-rage/.

No, they're not the same thing at all.

A Partially Resident Texture is the same thing as a MegaTexture.  The difference is that unlike a MegaTexture, a PRT uses virtual memory to store a texture in rather than reloading it.  Both are like laying laying a large room rug down, then laying a smaller run down, and then finally laying a small rug down.

A Tiled Resource uses a film strip-like image file, made up of small texture tiles, that are mapped to a reference ID, so that like a paint-by-number painting, the geometry is tiled with the appropriately referenced texture tile.

PRT gains efficiency by using virtual memory, rather than re-reading necessary texture resources from the HDD.

Tiled Resources gains efficiency by using small image files, reusing texture tiles, and neither building nor texturing geometry that isn't visible.

All three are methods of splitting up large textures into small tiles so that only only the peices of the texture that are actually needed are loaded into memory. All of them load in the tiles based on visability and distance from the camera.

Oh and by the way from AMD's "Gaming Engineering Manager"

Partially Resident Textures now available as DX11.2 feature called "Tiled Resources".