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Xbox One architecture
Seems people haven't really reported on here about how the Xbox One CPU architecture isn't what everyone first thought it was.
MS recently during a non-gaming conference went into great detail about the architecture behind the CPU and GPU. Most of it is beyond me but from what I can gather MS have done a serious amount of work themselves on the CPU and GPU.
More or less, the console is a lot more powerful than everyone first thought. Maybe someone with more knowledge can explain it better. But here is a link to one of the many articles going into it:
http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/164934-xbox-one-bus-bandwidths-graphics-capabilities-and-odd-soc-architecture-confirmed-by-microsoft
MS recently during a non-gaming conference went into great detail about the architecture behind the CPU and GPU. Most of it is beyond me but from what I can gather MS have done a serious amount of work themselves on the CPU and GPU.
More or less, the console is a lot more powerful than everyone first thought. Maybe someone with more knowledge can explain it better. But here is a link to one of the many articles going into it:
http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/164934-xbox-one-bus-bandwidths-graphics-capabilities-and-odd-soc-architecture-confirmed-by-microsoft
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Well it does certainly appear to be more powerful than first thought according to the articles that are popping up, it has taken a lot of people by surprise.
The initial problem was again the MS PR dept. They just released the basic machine spec and didn't go into more detail. So people just compared the specs with the PS4 and used real-life PC hardware as the base for determining the PS4 is 40% more powerful.
Yet it seems MS have done a lot of work to the CPU and GPU so they really can't be compared to anything on the PC as it's so different.
They didn't need to explain this during the E3 conference, but could have put out a press release after so smart people could have worked it out instead of letting this 40% figure fly about for months.
You may have spoke to soon.....
Someone is bound to come in and completely dismiss this lol
So pre-upclock the Xbox One was capable of 1.23 TFLOPS, and post-uplock from memory I think it is now 1.31 TFLOPS.
The PS4 is capable of 1.84 TFLOPS.
As you heard Mark Cerny discuss back in February the PS4 is a super-charged PC, and likewise so is the Xbox One.
If either shoved a stock Jaguar in they'd be dead in the water. A conventional PC CPU has to perform an array of tasks but with a console the idea is you tailor your hardware to the needs.
Nothing disclosed has made the Xbox One more powerful than was already known, really what they've shown is more of how you go about leveraging the power it does have.
Yet, many sites going into great detail over this are discussing it is a lot more powerful than first thought. That while the numbers game show the PS4 as being way more powerful, with the new knowledge of the internal workings now released the Xbox One closes the gap.
As I say - they've shown what they've done to make utilising the power as geared to game development as possible so that they can get closer to the theoretical performance (the 1.23/1.31 TFLOPS figure).
It is kind of like traffic management. You could argue that it makes it more powerful by virtue of the fact that it can do things in the best way - but in the context of the 40% PS4 advantage it doesn't.
The recent news of these new features from what I can gather seems to suggest that while the GPU isn't as powerful, the rest of the system is incredibly clever and can make up for the lower performance of the GPU.
So yes, the PS4 may be capable of more TFLOPS, but that doesn't mean it's 40% more powerful it seems.
However, much like the MPG quotation your car manufacturer will give you, that is only when a set of circumstances are met.
To use your GHz example even - if you took a single core, single thread CPU clocked at 3GHz then took one of the latest Intel CPUs geared up with many cores and threads but clocked to a lower speed it would not outperform on a task designed to only utilise a single core and thread, but making something to utilise the design features of the latest CPUs allows you to do more than one thing at once and have your operations complete quicker.
And by the way, the PS4 has pretty much identical optimisations, too. Key among them here is that both consoles are doing some pretty neat things with memory in terms of how both CPU and GPU access them.
So does that not go against your point? If the developer utilizes these new design features wouldn't that improve the performance?
Unfortunately, until the consoles are released, no one really knows how this is going to effect games.
At the moment its a bit like saying 'my car is faster than yours' just because mine has more raw horsepower. Not until we put them on the track against each other will we see a difference.
At the end of the day, the Xbox one is (on paper) around 10x more powerful than the 360 a console thats pumping games out like the new GTA. People who are looking to upgrade to the next gen should be very happy, i know i am.
But if a developer makes use of the extra features, while the amount of TFLOPS doesn't improve, wouldn't the overall performance of the console improve as these extra cores are being used as they were designed for?
So while in terms of TFLOPS it's still 40% faster, wouldn't the overall performance of the console improve. I mean calculating the power of a console isn't solely based on the amount of TFLOPS it can compute, right?
This all reminds me of the Cell processor. One side claiming their console is more powerful than the other, while the other side claiming that once the developers can understand the new processor it will win.
Only warning I add to you is, the PS4 also has these enhancements you speak of.
To our knowledge it hasn't got some bits the Xbox One has, but likewise the Xbox One doesn't have some bits the PS4 has.
Quite fitting you bring up the Cell. They had some insane claims for the PS3 in terms of performance, but ultimately we ended up with a bit better graphics than the 360 when people tried to take advantage of the unique PS3 features.
Even our Lord and Saviour Mark Cerny described it as a struggle and a test!
(Falls to the floor in a worship position)
I don't think that the difference between PS4/XB1 is going to be that great, not on screen anyway. I can see cases where the resolution on XB1 games will be dropped a little compared to PS4, but not to the extent that games are '40% better'. Either way, regardless of console, the games will look great.
I don't know on paper how much more powerful the PS3 is compared to the 360 the end products were mostly pretty close in terms of gameplay and graphics.
All I know is at this moment in time no one can say how the upcoming generation will ultimately compare even though the PS4 is more powerful on paper.
Remember though that multi-plats have to make a business decision on if it is financially beneficial to spend time on tailing a game.
(I also get the impression Microsoft have been winning on PR here. They keep coming out with new hardware and system articles, talking about how things are improved. Arguably that actually means they were behind the curve on getting their system finished.)
How did you come to that conclusion?
Just because they're only now talking about the system in more detail doesn't mean they are "behind the curve".
Oooh lovely possible Crossfire Goodness!!!!!
Source?
No source, it's a rumour, but there is plenty of chatter all over the net about it.