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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Debunking the Myth that Next Gen Consoles are too weak

lucidium said:
freedquaker said:

a) Those Consoles come with octo-core processors, which is well beyond the main stream pc with dual core. It's true that those cores have relatively poor single threaded performance but with the sufficient level of parallelism and low level calls, CPUs had never been this fast in relative terms (compared to PCs). So the CPU performance will never be an issue. Also keep in mind that the CPU performance improvements have slowed tremendously at the last decade.

Average gamer these days has a quad core or higher, and many have hyperthreading thus creating twice as many logical processors, take for example my 6 core cpu, it has 12 logical processors, the average PC cpu also has more L1 and L2 cache.

b) The amount of RAM (8 GB) is well beyond the main stream PC (4-6 GB) today, which had never happened. Most games are not even programmed to run on more than 3 GB, and this is the first time in history, where the console ports don't have to be downsized at all. In comparison, 1 GB was the mainstream RAM when the 7th Gen consoles arrived with only 1/2 RAM including the graphics, and 128 MB was the mainstream when PS2 arrived with 32 MB! Also today we have so much RAM on our PCs that the capacity increases came to a crawl.

Mainstream Pcs generally have 8GB of ram and at least 1GB ram for GPU, totalling 9GB of usable ram for the average PC, enthusiast pcs have much higher, mine for example has 64gb system ram and 6gb vram, PS4 has to share its ram between gpu, cpu and OS, with around 2-3gb reserved for the OS, developers generally get only about 5 to 5.5gb to use on actual games.

c) 500 GB, although still may be not much for today's games, is relatively abundant compared to the debut with the 7th Gen. consoles.

And relatively small to all but pre-2010 laptops.

d) The GPU seems to be archiles heel, at least with the XB1. However, it's unfair to the PS4 as it seems to be just fine with 1080p and up to 60 fps. We know that the graphics will improve over time, squeezing either better graphics or more stable performance. Given that most TVs today are not capable of producing resolutions greater than 1080p, there really is no point in putting a higher GPU than what PS4 has over the long run.

You went from trying to prove consoles arent weak to bashing the xbox one in the not-so-subtle way, good job.

e) PS4 employs a super fast GDDR5, equivalent to the PC tech, but just much more of it. Games, which are not designed with this in mind will not magically look better, but they will come in time. Couple this with many exciting technologies, none of which has been implemented yet, which are more likely to see on consoles than on the PC.

Most modern PC gpus are PCIE, and can handle way higher, had the Xbox One used 128mb esram  we wouldnt be having this discussion.

In short, PS4 is the most balanced machine out there for the long term, and is more than capable to serve as long as PS3 did. XB1, on the other hand, although similar, is crippled by its inefficient design, with respect to the RAM Bandwidth. If only XB1 had incorporated GDDR5 instead of DDR3 + ESRAM (or at least a DDR3+GDDR5 solution similar to PS3), ditching the Kinect, things would be much rosier for it now.

Steamboxes say hi, and all the Xbox one needed was 64mb, ot 128mb of esram and it would have been fine.

How you swang from defending "consoles" against being weak to defending the ps4 and pushing aside the Xbox One suggests to me that you werent really interested in debunking any myths but rather just wanted to talk about how the ps4 is better.

Average gamer today has A DUAL CORE CPU. Just look at the steam statistics. What you THINK average is the HARDCORE, my friend. Please do not make up stories out of your mind!

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

STEAM SURVEY RESULTS:

Most Common Gamer PC (Not an average PC, which is way lower!):

OS Version
Windows 7 64 bit
System RAM : 8 GB (Average is way lower)
Intel CPU Speeds
2.3 Ghz to 2.69 Ghz

Physical CPUs : 2 cpus
Video Card Description
Intel HD Graphics 4000
VRAM :1024 MB
Primary Display Resolution
1920 x 1080

Free Hard Drive Space

250 GB to 499 GB
Total Hard Drive Space
250 GB to 499 GB


Playstation 5 vs XBox Series Market Share Estimates

Regional Analysis  (only MS and Sony Consoles)
Europe     => XB1 : 23-24 % vs PS4 : 76-77%
N. America => XB1 :  49-52% vs PS4 : 48-51%
Global     => XB1 :  32-34% vs PS4 : 66-68%

Sales Estimations for 8th Generation Consoles

Next Gen Consoles Impressions and Estimates

Around the Network

I can't believe that 7th gen consoles shipped with so little RAM. What were that thinking?! How RockStar managed to squeeze GTA 5 into so little RAM amazes me. No load times too, unless you count the initial load.



freedquaker said:

The CPU performance has never been the bottleneck on the consoles! So having a much faster CPU is mostly useless on a console.

Having spent much of the late 2000's juggling between quality and performance in developing games, I will say this much, CPUs bottlenecked advanced physics and AI all the freaking time, it took a couple years to get there but once we did, it became a pain in the ass, it will take a few years for this generation of consoles to hit the cpu ceiling, but they will.

freedquaker said:

You say, Consoles have 5 GB RAM available, and do you think PCs can allocate all of their RAM to the games? The mainstream PC, for which most games are designed today, have 4-6 GB RAM

PCs can allocate the entirity of its video ram to a game, and the entirity of unused system ram too, the average PC will only be using around 2-3gb of its ram for system-required resources at any given time if the only thing a person is doing is playing games, even less if you dont leave your browser open with a tonne of tabs.

Games DO use system ram as well as vram, data is loaded in to system memory for faster access from the GPU, and for games with open worlds streaming of the environment is done from system ram to vram when needed, the reason why games do not use vram heavilly is because that system ram is there to stream from, consoles have to do it all from whatever they have.

freedquaker said:

 and NOT ONE SINGLE GAME uses more than 3 GB of it.

Oh? not a single game over 3GB you say?



freedquaker said:

Average gamer today has A DUAL CORE CPU. Just look at the steam statistics. What you THINK average is the HARDCORE, my friend. Please do not make up stories out of your mind!

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Steam survey is useless because of the amount of people running steam on low end laptops to play terraria and other undemanding games.



freedquaker said:
lucidium said:
freedquaker said:

a) Those Consoles come with octo-core processors, which is well beyond the main stream pc with dual core. It's true that those cores have relatively poor single threaded performance but with the sufficient level of parallelism and low level calls, CPUs had never been this fast in relative terms (compared to PCs). So the CPU performance will never be an issue. Also keep in mind that the CPU performance improvements have slowed tremendously at the last decade.

Average gamer these days has a quad core or higher, and many have hyperthreading thus creating twice as many logical processors, take for example my 6 core cpu, it has 12 logical processors, the average PC cpu also has more L1 and L2 cache.

b) The amount of RAM (8 GB) is well beyond the main stream PC (4-6 GB) today, which had never happened. Most games are not even programmed to run on more than 3 GB, and this is the first time in history, where the console ports don't have to be downsized at all. In comparison, 1 GB was the mainstream RAM when the 7th Gen consoles arrived with only 1/2 RAM including the graphics, and 128 MB was the mainstream when PS2 arrived with 32 MB! Also today we have so much RAM on our PCs that the capacity increases came to a crawl.

Mainstream Pcs generally have 8GB of ram and at least 1GB ram for GPU, totalling 9GB of usable ram for the average PC, enthusiast pcs have much higher, mine for example has 64gb system ram and 6gb vram, PS4 has to share its ram between gpu, cpu and OS, with around 2-3gb reserved for the OS, developers generally get only about 5 to 5.5gb to use on actual games.

c) 500 GB, although still may be not much for today's games, is relatively abundant compared to the debut with the 7th Gen. consoles.

And relatively small to all but pre-2010 laptops.

d) The GPU seems to be archiles heel, at least with the XB1. However, it's unfair to the PS4 as it seems to be just fine with 1080p and up to 60 fps. We know that the graphics will improve over time, squeezing either better graphics or more stable performance. Given that most TVs today are not capable of producing resolutions greater than 1080p, there really is no point in putting a higher GPU than what PS4 has over the long run.

You went from trying to prove consoles arent weak to bashing the xbox one in the not-so-subtle way, good job.

e) PS4 employs a super fast GDDR5, equivalent to the PC tech, but just much more of it. Games, which are not designed with this in mind will not magically look better, but they will come in time. Couple this with many exciting technologies, none of which has been implemented yet, which are more likely to see on consoles than on the PC.

Most modern PC gpus are PCIE, and can handle way higher, had the Xbox One used 128mb esram  we wouldnt be having this discussion.

In short, PS4 is the most balanced machine out there for the long term, and is more than capable to serve as long as PS3 did. XB1, on the other hand, although similar, is crippled by its inefficient design, with respect to the RAM Bandwidth. If only XB1 had incorporated GDDR5 instead of DDR3 + ESRAM (or at least a DDR3+GDDR5 solution similar to PS3), ditching the Kinect, things would be much rosier for it now.

Steamboxes say hi, and all the Xbox one needed was 64mb, ot 128mb of esram and it would have been fine.

How you swang from defending "consoles" against being weak to defending the ps4 and pushing aside the Xbox One suggests to me that you werent really interested in debunking any myths but rather just wanted to talk about how the ps4 is better.

Average gamer today has A DUAL CORE CPU. Just look at the steam statistics. What you THINK average is the HARDCORE, my friend. Please do not make up stories out of your mind!

All of this is worthless seeing as how there are roughly around 100 million enthusiast users. 

http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2009/03/03/just-how-many-pc-gamers-are-there





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PS4 is probably the most balanced console yet. The right kind of power for the right kind of price.



freedquaker said: 

b) The amount of RAM (8 GB) is well beyond the main stream PC (4-6 GB) today, which had never happened. Most games are not even programmed to run on more than 3 GB, and this is the first time in history, where the console ports don't have to be downsized at all. In comparison, 1 GB was the mainstream RAM when the 7th Gen consoles arrived with only 1/2 RAM including the graphics, and 128 MB was the mainstream when PS2 arrived with 32 MB! Also today we have so much RAM on our PCs that the capacity increases came to a crawl.

c) 500 GB, although still may be not much for today's games, is relatively abundant compared to the debut with the 7th Gen. consoles.

d) The GPU seems to be archiles heel, at least with the XB1. However, it's unfair to the PS4 as it seems to be just fine with 1080p and up to 60 fps. We know that the graphics will improve over time, squeezing either better graphics or more stable performance. Given that most TVs today are not capable of producing resolutions greater than 1080p, there really is no point in putting a higher GPU than what PS4 has over the long run.

b) That's just simply wrong. 8GB has been the standard in gaming PCs for at least 2 years now. Also slow DDR3 is just unacceptable for an APU where CPU and GPU share the bandwidth. So on the X1 it's actually even worse than on a PC with dedicated graphics.

c) For most of the generation last gen consoles came with 500GB. They started much lower though. For this gen the 500GB are like the 60GB we got at the start of last generation.

d) Now that is complete bull. GPUs need to do a lot more than just putting pixels on the screen. There is so much more to it that there simply is no "just fine" when it comes to GPU power. Even PS4 struggles with 1080p and 60 fps. And if it manages it will have a lot of cutbacks like reduced effects, textures and AA. The PS4 is only half as strong as it actually should be to have a comfortable start into a generation. Currently it's not even close to high end.

The standard for games has been 1080p and 60fps for at least since the conception of the new console hardware but the manufacturers decided to cheap out on it. And no I don't think we will see a major improvement over the next 6 years. GPGPU has potential but it is no holy grail. It will be used on PCs as well and those not only have the GPGPU power but pure uncut rendering power as well, which both consoles lack. It's just the start of the generation and the consoles already put out only midrange level graphics.



If you demand respect or gratitude for your volunteer work, you're doing volunteering wrong.

lucidium said:
freedquaker said:

The CPU performance has never been the bottleneck on the consoles! So having a much faster CPU is mostly useless on a console.

Having spent much of the late 2000's juggling between quality and performance in developing games, I will say this much, CPUs bottlenecked advanced physics and AI all the freaking time, it took a couple years to get there but once we did, it became a pain in the ass, it will take a few years for this generation of consoles to hit the cpu ceiling, but they will.

freedquaker said:

You say, Consoles have 5 GB RAM available, and do you think PCs can allocate all of their RAM to the games? The mainstream PC, for which most games are designed today, have 4-6 GB RAM

PCs can allocate the entirity of its video ram to a game, and the entirity of unused system ram too, the average PC will only be using around 2-3gb of its ram for system-required resources at any given time if the only thing a person is doing is playing games, even less if you dont leave your browser open with a tonne of tabs.

Games DO use system ram as well as vram, data is loaded in to system memory for faster access from the GPU, and for games with open worlds streaming of the environment is done from system ram to vram when needed, the reason why games do not use vram heavilly is because that system ram is there to stream from, consoles have to do it all from whatever they have.

freedquaker said:

 and NOT ONE SINGLE GAME uses more than 3 GB of it.

Oh? not a single game over 3GB you say?

 

First I was referring to the system RAM. We all should know that games usually require a substantial amount of VRAM for resolutions over 1080p, especially with AA enabled. But you know what, PS4 has 8GB GDDR5, so it's not a problem for PS4, but it IS a problem for 95% of the PCs out there, hello! You're not ignoring the fact that This generation is the most relatively abundant generation and has more RAM than the majority of PCs out there, do you? Just take a look at the STEAM Survey (which is biased towards gamers, who have more than average RAM), you'll see that the average RAM is 6GB, and the Median RAM is 4 GB. SO PS4 has more than or equal to RAM as 88% of Steam Users, but probably 95% of all PC Users.

Second, CPU is always a bottleneck when it comes to the AI and Physics, and this is where the parallelization & GPGPU come into play! So if developers want it, it's there to be utilized, otherwise, nobody seems to be using it. AI is mostly a software issue, we just don't have a real program routine to write genuine AI, instead of just faking it.



Playstation 5 vs XBox Series Market Share Estimates

Regional Analysis  (only MS and Sony Consoles)
Europe     => XB1 : 23-24 % vs PS4 : 76-77%
N. America => XB1 :  49-52% vs PS4 : 48-51%
Global     => XB1 :  32-34% vs PS4 : 66-68%

Sales Estimations for 8th Generation Consoles

Next Gen Consoles Impressions and Estimates

vivster said:
freedquaker said: 

b) The amount of RAM (8 GB) is well beyond the main stream PC (4-6 GB) today, which had never happened. Most games are not even programmed to run on more than 3 GB, and this is the first time in history, where the console ports don't have to be downsized at all. In comparison, 1 GB was the mainstream RAM when the 7th Gen consoles arrived with only 1/2 RAM including the graphics, and 128 MB was the mainstream when PS2 arrived with 32 MB! Also today we have so much RAM on our PCs that the capacity increases came to a crawl.

c) 500 GB, although still may be not much for today's games, is relatively abundant compared to the debut with the 7th Gen. consoles.

d) The GPU seems to be archiles heel, at least with the XB1. However, it's unfair to the PS4 as it seems to be just fine with 1080p and up to 60 fps. We know that the graphics will improve over time, squeezing either better graphics or more stable performance. Given that most TVs today are not capable of producing resolutions greater than 1080p, there really is no point in putting a higher GPU than what PS4 has over the long run.

b) That's just simply wrong. 8GB has been the standard in gaming PCs for at least 2 years now. Also slow DDR3 is just unacceptable for an APU where CPU and GPU share the bandwidth. So on the X1 it's actually even worse than on a PC with dedicated graphics.

c) For most of the generation last gen consoles came with 500GB. They started much lower though. For this gen the 500GB are like the 60GB we got at the start of last generation.

d) Now that is complete bull. GPUs need to do a lot more than just putting pixels on the screen. There is so much more to it that there simply is no "just fine" when it comes to GPU power. Even PS4 struggles with 1080p and 60 fps. And if it manages it will have a lot of cutbacks like reduced effects, textures and AA. The PS4 is only half as strong as it actually should be to have a comfortable start into a generation. Currently it's not even close to high end.

The standard for games has been 1080p and 60fps for at least since the conception of the new console hardware but the manufacturers decided to cheap out on it. And no I don't think we will see a major improvement over the next 6 years. GPGPU has potential but it is no holy grail. It will be used on PCs as well and those not only have the GPGPU power but pure uncut rendering power as well, which both consoles lack. It's just the start of the generation and the consoles already put out only midrange level graphics.

this +10



34 years playing games.

 

walsufnir said:

First to start, octa-core is nice but the cores *are* low-performance. There are 2-core CPUs which have more performance, you cannot add all cores together, especially if they share ressources by a large amount.

You can basically add the Jaguar cores toghether as they don't share most resources, like Bulldozer or others.  Still, 8 Jag cores *may* be faster than i3 chips but only lower clock i5s.

However PCs have a lot more wasted CPU.  Console graphics API >>> PC graphics API in performance, so you don't use as much CPU to do the same thing.

Mantle can do 9X the draw calls of conventional PC APIs.  Battlefield 4 runs 40% faster on Mantle compared to D3D, on a CPU that would otherwise limit the number of draw calls possible.  Mantle is a glimpse of what the PS4 can do, which has very efficient APIs.

walsufnir said:

Second, consoles have currently ~5GB of RAM available and gamer PCs easily have more and more free.

True but graphics memory is what's most needed, and that is still limited by your PC GPU typically 1~2GB, 3GB+ in high end.



My 8th gen collection