Pemalite said:
elektranine said:
How is this gen different than last gen, other than PlayStation being in first place, where PCs can massively outperform consoles but with single parts costing more than all the consoles combined. Or did you just not notice the power difference until now?
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Last generation the consoles launched with high-end GPU's, relative to the PC. Yes that was true back then as it was true this gen.
This generation... The GPU's in the consoles were only mid-range relative to the PC. What APU was more powerful than the PS4's APU in 2013? Seriously I want links. You are wrong.
There has always been a power difference between Console and PC, with the PC in favour, but I don't think the difference has *ever* been this catastrophically massive, which is extremely depressing as developers tend to build games for the lowest common denominator. (Consoles.) Its always about the money and console gamers tend to spend more on software then PC gamers.
elektranine said:
I find it interesting that even with DirectX 12 the PS4 still significantly outperforms the xbone in almost all fronts. Kept on hearing how ddr3 was supposedly superior to gddr5 in terms of latency but that's clearly not true.
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Direct X 12 isn't a magic bullet.
The Xbox actually has another API which allows for closer-to-the-metal made games with even more performance than Direct X 12, which was available since the consoles launch, it's just more difficult to build stuff for.
The Playstation 4 offers something similar, it uses OpenGL (Or a variation-of) as it's high-level API and a lower-level API for maximum performance as it's closer to the metal.
The reason why Direct X 12 was championed was mostly because of the PC, the PC had no low-level API like consoles for software to be built close to the metal... Direct X 12 helps to allow the PC get some Console-like efficiency whilst still retaining a degree of abstraction.
The Xbox One wins because developers who don't have the time/resources to build their games close to the metal will see some performance advantages. (Think Indie/low budget and games relying on 3rd party engines like Unreal.)
It was never set-out to change the Xbox landscape which many people thought it would. (Not really as devs will not want to limit themselves to 1-2 platforms. PS4 currently supports OpenGL/ES, DirectX 9-11.2 so most games will target OpenGL or DirectX10 to target all platforms.)
As for DDR3, it does have a latency edge over GDDR5, it's not stupidly massive... But it is there. (Wrong again. This and other benchmarks prove that the PS4 has significantly less memory latency than the xbone. The xbone memory controller is slower, GDDR5 is the winner here there is no debate. The numbers don't lie. In many cases PS4 latency is only 50% of xbone.)
However, GPU's love bandwidth, they can hide latency really well (Can you link to any siggraph papers that support your claims?)... And Graphics is what people see instantly when they see a game running, it is what helps sell games and it is why console manufacturers tend to focus on GPU performance rather than the CPU.
The CPU will gain a small advantage from using DDR3, on top of it's already high-clock speed, the result is that tasks which rely on the CPU will have a small advantage, think: RTS games with hundreds/thousands of units on screen, the PS4's performance will fold quicker than the Xbox One in those scenario's. (Can you prove that?)
Plus the ESRAM can also give the Xbox One a farther latency edge when data needs to be retieved from RAM. (So a seperate memory module can reduce the latency of the main system RAM? I'm sure you have some interesting research in that area.)
In the end though, the faster CPU isn't going to be noticed in your graphics trailers or posters at Gamestop/EB Games like a better GPU would, which ultimately helps shift more consoles/games. (No its about better performance. The CPU based world is pretty much over. As a computer scientist I have noticed a massive shift away from CPU to a focus on exploiting GPU power. CPUs have peaked and they wont get much faster in the future, that's why Sony decided to focus on GPU tech.)
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