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Forums - Sony Discussion - PS4 'isn't quite as powerful as Epic was hoping for,' Digital Foundry reports

Raze on 05 April 2013
Hynad said:

The PS4 uses an APU with 8GB of GDDR5. It doesn't have an other type of RAM for system. It's all unified. Literally.

Maybe you should consider catching up to 2013.

So 8 Gb to process the graphics, the physics, store texture for LOD, manage I/O, sound, and network buffering? Sounds reasonable for a console, the unfied system should keep the LOD lag down. Will balance out the studders that the last gen had in high visual spots in-game. I'd be interested to see the clock speed in-game compared to a mid-range rig that is available at the same time.

People are weird, when the PS4 specs came out, they all said "this is SO much better than a gaming pc!" When those statements were realized to be far fetched, they then said "why are you comparing a console to a PC, it's not in the same market!"

Oh, and Hynad? You should consider not ending every response with snarkiness. You had a solid response without it. All you did was discredit yourself in that process, where you thought you were being witty.



The Carnival of Shadows - Folk Punk from Asbury Park, New Jersey

http://www.thecarnivalofshadows.com 


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fedfed on 05 April 2013

guys Sony has to contain the price somehow. I am not dooming PS4 for this at all!



Switch!!!

Hynad on 05 April 2013
Raze said:
Hynad said:
 

The PS4 uses an APU with 8GB of GDDR5. It doesn't have an other type of RAM for system. It's all unified. Literally.

Maybe you should consider catching up to 2013.

So 8 Gb to process the graphics, the physics, store texture for LOD, manage I/O, sound, and network buffering? Sounds reasonable for a console, the unfied system should keep the LOD lag down. Will balance out the studders that the last gen had in high visual spots in-game. I'd be interested to see the clock speed in-game compared to a mid-range rig that is available at the same time.

People are weird, when the PS4 specs came out, they all said "this is SO much better than a gaming pc!" When those statements were realized to be far fetched, they then said "why are you comparing a console to a PC, it's not in the same market!"

Oh, and Hynad? You should consider not ending every response with snarkiness. You had a solid response without it. All you did was discredit yourself in that process, where you thought you were being witty.


I didn't think I was being witty. I was thinking you should already know this at this point and time, and provided a link to make sure you finally get in the know. Spending time on gaming forums and websites like you do, I found it rather interesting that you didn't already know the PS4 specs. Take it however you want. 



Raze on 05 April 2013
Hynad said:


I didn't think I was being witty. I was thinking you should already know this at this point and time, and provided a link to make sure you finally get in the know. Spending time on gaming forums and websites like you do, I found it rather interesting that you didn't already know the PS4 specs. Take it however you want. 

I did know about the general specs, like the 8GB GDDR, though when I see a G beofre DDR, it usually refers to video ram, so I figured there was more actual DDR3 ram in the system. That said, I lightly skim through the news when I'm bored and have to be at the computer, like when I'm rendering video files in After Effects. I do thank you for helping me understand that the spec refers to the entire system, thus why they're working harder to bake it down to the metal.



The Carnival of Shadows - Folk Punk from Asbury Park, New Jersey

http://www.thecarnivalofshadows.com 


ethomaz on 05 April 2013
Raze said:
So, PS4 is 2 PS3's duct taped together? ;) 

More like 8x or 10x PS3's duct taped together.

Even more if you put the crazy GPU stufs shared in GDC 2013...

PS4 full overview: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=158228



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VGKing on 05 April 2013
Raze said:
VGKing said:
Raze said:
So, PS4 is 2 PS3's duct taped together? ;)

It's a console, its not going to match a PC, not even a mid-range PC. This is expected. My 2 yr old $600 gaming rig is slightly more powerful than a PS4, that's the way technology goes in console land.

I'm pretty sure you're wrong. PS4 will match or even surpass mid-range PCs. The reasons for this are obvious, but I feel like you need to hear them.

-PS4 is a clsoed-sytem. Specs will remain the same throughout its life.
-Performance will improve over time as devs push the console more and more.
-APU design w/  unified 8GB GDDR5 RAM. GAMES WILL ACTUALLY BE BUILT TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS.

PS4 isn't a mid-range PC. It's much more. It is a high-end console. There isn't a direct comparison to PC. So no, your 2 year old $600 gaming rig isn't more powerful than the PS4 unless you're counting pure unoptimized raw power. Can I ask you to post your specs? Screenshot would be best.

I wrote that backwards, I meant PS4 is slightly more powerful than my 2 yr old PC.

I can answer you quicker than I can get screen grabs at the moment,as the buidl is still fresh in my mind:

AMD Phenom II X6 3.2ghz

16 GB DDR3

Radeon 6790 2GB 256-bit GDDR5

3TB SATA 6

I do love how you feel "I need to hear them", reminds me of the people that "need" to come to my house on Saturday mornings because I "need" to hear about their faith. =D

Telling me that the PS4 is a closed system is simply telling me its a console, they're all closed systems. This is why when they are manufactured, the PC market has already surpassed them. When they commit to specs, it takes about 2 years to get the finished product ready to be mass produced, which means that the best computer 2 years ago is what they're basing their tech off of. This has always been the case.

Of course, as with all consoles, the quality will improve over time, this has been going on for 20+ years now.

How much ACTUAL ram is in the PS4? The 8GB GDDR is nice and all, but how about the bottleneck to the processor via the actual RAM, which I believe is DDR3?

8GB GDDR5 UNIFIED memory. This is the only RAM that is available to PS4 and is shared by eveything.(This is a positive thing in case you don't understand)



VGKing on 05 April 2013
GameAnalyser said:

"Digital Foundry does note that the differences can be the result of the relative newness of PS4. "The DirectX 11 API is very mature while the PS4 tools and APIs are still in their initial stages of development--it's going to take time for devs to fully get to grips with the new hardware."

This. And Power never satisfies.

I don't think "new-ness" should matter very much. It's all about the documentation. Here's hoping Sony provides the best documentation ever and its easy to understand and IN ENGLISH.



richardhutnik on 05 April 2013
Hynad said:

When did Epic say that, exactly?

That article is misleading and missed something really important in Digital Foundry's analysis.

A nice update directly from Epic themselves:


Update: Brian Karis, senior graphics programmer at Epic Games adds some more insight in the comments below, explaining some of the more obvious differences - particularly in terms of the very different lighting schemes. At the technical level, the two demos are closer than it seems:

"The biggest changes actually came from the merging of two separate cinematics, the original Elemental and the extended Elemental we showed at PS4's launch event. Each had different sun directions and required some compromises to join them. This resulted in some major lighting differences that aren't platform related but were due to it being a joined cinematic. Another effect, in the original you could see the mountains through the door where in the merged one we made the view through the door white since the mountains outside were no longer the same. Same deal with the mountain fly by. The old mountain range doesn't exist in the new one. These changes from the merge make direct comparisons somewhat inaccurate.

"Feature wise most everything is the same, AA resolution, meshes, textures (PS4 has tons of memory), DOF (I assure you both use the same Bokeh DOF, not sure why that one shot has different focal range), motion blur.

"Biggest differences are SVOGI has been replaced with a more efficient GI solution, a slight scale down in the number of particles for some FX, and tessellation is broken on ps4 in the current build which the lava used for displacement. We will fix the tessellation in the future."

So yeah, this article is bullcrap, and fishing for clicks at the expense of integrity.

Moment someone shows some site with total integrity that is still around, and not fishing for clicks, please post it.  Until then the Internet videogame journalism is a mouthpiece for companies who have products to sell.  Oh, it may not be intentional, but it ends up that way by the monetary forces that be.



Hynad on 05 April 2013
richardhutnik said:
Hynad said:

When did Epic say that, exactly?

That article is misleading and missed something really important in Digital Foundry's analysis.

A nice update directly from Epic themselves:


Update: Brian Karis, senior graphics programmer at Epic Games adds some more insight in the comments below, explaining some of the more obvious differences - particularly in terms of the very different lighting schemes. At the technical level, the two demos are closer than it seems:

"The biggest changes actually came from the merging of two separate cinematics, the original Elemental and the extended Elemental we showed at PS4's launch event. Each had different sun directions and required some compromises to join them. This resulted in some major lighting differences that aren't platform related but were due to it being a joined cinematic. Another effect, in the original you could see the mountains through the door where in the merged one we made the view through the door white since the mountains outside were no longer the same. Same deal with the mountain fly by. The old mountain range doesn't exist in the new one. These changes from the merge make direct comparisons somewhat inaccurate.

"Feature wise most everything is the same, AA resolution, meshes, textures (PS4 has tons of memory), DOF (I assure you both use the same Bokeh DOF, not sure why that one shot has different focal range), motion blur.

"Biggest differences are SVOGI has been replaced with a more efficient GI solution, a slight scale down in the number of particles for some FX, and tessellation is broken on ps4 in the current build which the lava used for displacement. We will fix the tessellation in the future."

So yeah, this article is bullcrap, and fishing for clicks at the expense of integrity.

Moment someone shows some site with total integrity that is still around, and not fishing for clicks, please post it.  Until then the Internet videogame journalism is a mouthpiece for companies who have products to sell.  Oh, it may not be intentional, but it ends up that way by the monetary forces that be.

What an over-sensitive reply. Did you sleep well last night?

User was banned for this post - Kantor



Raze on 05 April 2013
VGKing said:

8GB GDDR5 UNIFIED memory. This is the only RAM that is available to PS4 and is shared by eveything.(This is a positive thing in case you don't understand)

Yeah, got that from a previous post. I'm curious to see how the 8GB will be split up for high resource games, like how it will prioritize the lion's share of RAM in a scene with a ton of particle systems going, LOD, mutiple character models, physics, and everything else. There has to be some sort of pecking order as to who gets first dibs to the RAM resources.



The Carnival of Shadows - Folk Punk from Asbury Park, New Jersey

http://www.thecarnivalofshadows.com