To begin with, let's take a look at the choices we made for our target platforms. We suspect that the results would have influenced decisions elsewhere in the design of the consoles - for example, in Sony's decision to pour resources into GPU compute. The shaping of the GCN architecture and its predecessors would have been highly informed by their performance running actual games. There's another compelling reason for the testing too: when it came to designing the next-gen consoles, the majority of the available performance data available to Microsoft, Sony and AMD would have been derived from how the GCN hardware is utilised in game engines running on PC. We should expect to see much the same arrangement in the PS4. What we're looking at is more tightly integrated PC technology, with the CPU and GPU incorporated into a single chip on the right, surrounded by the memory modules. The question is, what is the impact in actual gameplay conditions?" Wired's shot of the Xbox One internals. "Factoring out other differences in the system, Sony's rendering tech has 50 per cent more raw computational power than the Xbox One equivalent. Also, this is an "In Theory" exercise, so commonality in the API at least means that the graphics tech for both test platforms is being tested on a like-for-like basis - and above all, this is a hardware experiment. On the other hand, we know that next-gen launch games are developed initially on PC, with ports currently in progress for the new consoles. On the one hand, this has its disadvantages - the closed box environment of the consoles promises significant boosts over PC, while each machine uses its own graphics API which, presumably, introduces another performance differential. We decided to put the major issues to the test by utilising equivalent PC hardware based on the same AMD architecture as the next-gen consoles. As a result of that you have an opportunity, you could say an incentivisation, to use that ALU for GPGPU."Īn interpretation of Cerny's comment - and one that has been presented to us by Microsoft insiders - is that based on the way that AMD graphics tech is being utilised right now in gaming, a law of diminishing returns kicks in. "It has a little bit more ALU in it than it would if you were thinking strictly about graphics. "The point is the hardware is intentionally not 100 per cent round," Cerny revealed. It's a topic we raised briefly with PS4 chief architect Mark Cerny when we met up with him a couple of weeks ago: The question is, what is the impact in actual gameplay conditions?īehind the scenes, developers have suggested to us that we shouldn't jump to conclusions about the extent of the PlayStation 4's superiority, and that the 50 per cent boost in GPU power emphatically won't result in a likewise boost to in-game performance. Both systems utilise AMD's GCN ( Graphics Core Next) architecture, but Sony's rendering tech has 50 per cent more raw computational power than the Xbox One equivalent - and that's factoring out other differences between the systems. PlayStation 4 graphics spec comparison is stark to say the least.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |