Teraflops are NOT a Measurement of Gaming Performance

[Pemalite]

ArchangelMadzz said:

GPU's are far more complicated than that. In the context of supercomputers, then Tflops can be used to ranked the sheer calculation performance.

Teraflops only tell us the single precision floating point capabilities.

So even on a super computer it doesn't tell us the actual performance of super computing tasks outside of that. (I.E. Quarter/Half/Double Precision) Or other types of calculations such as Integers.

Mr Puggsly said:

I disagree with you essentially blaming MS. This whole teraflop thing started with X1 and PS4 around 2013.

I believe Sony touted 4TF even before we heard about X1X's 6TF. It also made sense given all these specs were relatively the same, so the teraflop comparison had validity for 8th gen consoles.

I think MS has thrown out the teraflop figure for Series X for two reasons. First, to the average person that simply means significantly more GPU power and it certainly has that. Second, MS may be confident they have a more powerful machine for the next gen and want to boast.

Started gaining traction during the 7th gen, mostly to try and compare the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3...

It was always hilarious how people were touting the Cells Gflop number without actually understanding the circumstances required for those flop numbers to actually come about.

The fault lays in every camp, even during the "bit" wars, companies were using it to 1-up each other, despite it being ultimately irrelevant.

kirby007 said:
But you can compare TF between same manufacturer

No.

A Radeon 5870 at 2.72 Teraflops is SLOWER than a Radeon 7850 at 1.76 Teraflops. Almost a Teraflop difference.

drkohler said:

You can always compare TF within the same system architecture.

No.

A Geforce 1030 for example can be otherwise identical in terms of Gflop/Tflop, but the DDR4 variant will be half the speed of the GDDR5 variant.

A Radeon 7850 DDR3 variant with the same Glop, will be half the speed of the GDDR5 variant.

Moral of the story? A GPU is allot more than just flops... And the sooner people wake up to that fact, the better.

Mr Puggsly said:

Ah, okay.

Either way TF was already being discussed in 2013, especially as we started seeing resolution disparities.

But it's relevant given the consoles with more TF have also had more power in practice. Consoles are essentially using the same tech.

Not exactly the same tech.

The Playstation 4's GPU has more ACE units, so in asynchronous compute scenarios it would have a substantial advantage over the Xbox One.

The Xbox One by comparison thanks to the ESRAM and lower latency DDR3 DRAM is able to pull ahead in CPU based scenarios... And thus show advantages on the GPU side which relies heavily on draw calls.

victor83fernandes said:

Wrong, everything else being equal, graphic card with same architecture, one being 4TF and the other 12TF is a huge difference. Thats like comparing an xbox S to an xbox X, but a bigger difference because the power of the X was not pushed in any way, games were not design for it.

Next gen, if base PS5 is 9 TF then games will be design for it, and those games will struggle on 4TF, major cuts, and would have slight advantages on 12TF.

We are not comparing teraflops from graphics from different years, those consoles will launch the same year, most likely the same week.

If the Playstation 5 is chasing 4k and Lockhart is chasing 1080P... Then by extension Lockhart needs less resources.

victor83fernandes said:

Wrong, I follow console gaming news every day, without miss, and I haven't heard about teraflops being talked until they announced the power of the X.

But this generation, both the X and pro were under-utilised, because games were build for the base consoles, next gen if the games are build for the 9TF ps5, then 4tf will struggle a lot.

People might say 1080p, fair enough, but you can't even buy 1080p TVs anymore, most gamers have upgraded to 4k TVs or the next gen consoles will make a lot of people upgrade.

People who don't upgrade are the ones who won't jump to next gen so early as games will be too expensive.

ESRAM, GDDR5, Flops, ACE Units were the big talking points at the start of the 8th gen, especially on these forums.

Lockhart will do fine, if you don't think it will be a suitable console... Then as a consumer the solution is simple.
Do. Not. Buy. It. Buy the Xbox Series X or Playstation 5 instead.