Leak Shows PlayStation 4 Neo Is Expected To Have Twice The Graphics Horsepower (hothardware.com) 99
MojoKid writes from a report via HotHardware: Following rumors of a more powerful console in Sony's not-too-distant future -- one that will be capable of playing games at a 4K resolution -- the Japanese electronics maker last month opted to confirm it is indeed in development. Called PlayStation 4 Neo, the upgraded system will bring better hardware to the console scene to meet the needs of gaming on a television with four times as many pixels as a Full HD 1080p display. What's it going to take to game at 4K in the living room? A leaked internal document outlines some very interesting specs of the new model PS4 console. Assuming the leaked document is up to date with Sony's current plans, the PS4 Neo will use the same Jaguar cores as the original PS4, but clocked 500MHz faster, with 8 cores at 2.1GHz (up from 1.6GHz). The more significant upgrade will be the GPU. According to the slide, the PS4 Neo will use an improved version of AMD's GCN compute units (CUs), with twice the number of CUs at 36 instead of 18. They'll also be clocked faster -- 911MHz versus 800MHz. The net result is a 2.3x improvement in floating point performance.
Pokemon Go (Score:2)
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Current PS4 does good to hit 30fps in most games.
30fps isn't enough for VR. They will have to downgrade graphics with software to make it work.
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This link is a list of PS4 games that currently do 1080p@60fps. This is good enough for VR, as reprojection will double that to 120fps for the PSVR headset, and a good indication of what PSVR graphics will be like on the current PS4.
http://www.videogamerplus.com/... [videogamerplus.com]
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That was never a goal of the system. The "4K" is referring to video playback and support for 4K content, not games. This should, however, get them to 1080P @ 60FPS for pretty much every game in the library, and they've said that there will be an update path for developers to allow their games to support the new hardware performance. I think it's one of the biggest wins in consoles, that we've reached the point where it's possible to have nearly perfect backwards compatibility with older games while hardw
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That was never a goal of the system. The "4K" is referring to video playback and support for 4K content, not games. This should, however, get them to 1080P @ 60FPS for pretty much every game in the library, and they've said that there will be an update path for developers to allow their games to support the new hardware performance. I think it's one of the biggest wins in consoles, that we've reached the point where it's possible to have nearly perfect backwards compatibility with older games while hardware continues to improve, with only a patch update to the games to support ever-expanding hardware performance. It's straight out of the PC playbook, to be certain, but at console price-points, with console-level reliability and ease of use.
Do you really think that Sony will be able to keep it at console price points? I'll believe it when I see it. I'm willing to bet that we will also see an increase in console pricing.
I have the Sony PS4 so that I can play and share games with my Brother-in-law. But anything that I want to play in high definition graphics, such as Far Cry or Fallout, I buy for the PC. There is just no getting around the fact that as soon as these consoles have their hardware specs set, they are out of date. For the same
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Strictly from a business standpoint, it makes sense for there to be two-tiers of PS4s. Having a high-end and a low-end does a better job of capturing money from different segments of the market. By creating a console for 4K TVs (and remember it doesn't have to do 4K to look better on 4K TVs), they've created a product that is ta
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It's not beyond the realm of possibility that the Neo could be introduced at current console price points. The new gpu will be using ATI's new 14nm FinFET tech, down from 28nm in the current PS4 gpu. That'll make production costs cheaper for each gpu, even with a probable increase in transistor count and percentage fai
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I'm not an graphics expert, but I'm gonna guess that's not nearly enough?
No, you certainly are not a graphics expert. I am not either, but at least I know that scenes are not composed and rendered for each pixel. So, when you go from 1080p to 720p which has 2.25 times less pixels, you never get 2.25 times more frame rate. It depends heavily on the game of course but at best you get something less than 2x, while at worse something like a 25% frame rate benefit.
So you don't need 4x the performance for 4x pixels and 2.3x may be enough. More accurately, it will have to be enough, be
Re:I don't think that's enough (Score:4, Informative)
No, you certainly are not a graphics expert. I am not either, but at least I know that scenes are not composed and rendered for each pixel. So, when you go from 1080p to 720p which has 2.25 times less pixels, you never get 2.25 times more frame rate.
Probably because there's some kind of setup time/synchronization between different types of rendering passes. But if you think of a 3840x2160 image as four 1920x1080 quadrants you'd think each step would take roughly 4x to do with the same level of detail. Just grabbing a few benchmarks from Anandtech [anandtech.com], Dirt Rally (DX11):
1920*1080*132 = 274 million pixels/s
2560*1440*91 = 335 million pixels/s
3840*2160*49 = 406 million pixels/s
Clearly there's some scaling here, if it can render four quadrants at 49 fps ideally it should be able to render one at 49*4 = 196 fps. So if we take 132/196 = 2/3 as a rough number for the scaling benefit it should probably take around 4*2/3 = 2.7 times the horsepower to go from 1080p60 to 2160p60. Same setup/synchronization overhead, 4x runtime on each part, I'm sure you could try doing a linear regression and use Amdahl's law to see if this makes sense. Now I'm making a ton of assumptions here, but from my napkin calculations it doesn't look all that bad.
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Frame rate is a complicated beast, depending on the *worst* performing aspect among many. But for graphics rendering, you absolutely do need shader computational ability proportional to the numbers of pixels on the screen. A fragment / pixel shader is a tiny program that's executed on every pixel, every frame. There's no getting around that requirement, except by reducing the complexity of the shaders as much as you can.
Another bottleneck when increasing screen size is memory buffers used for off-screen
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No, you certainly are not a graphics expert. I am not either, but at least I know that scenes are not composed and rendered for each pixel. So, when you go from 1080p to 720p which has 2.25 times less pixels, you never get 2.25 times more frame rate. It depends heavily on the game of course but at best you get something less than 2x, while at worse something like a 25% frame rate benefit.
Actually you can get a much higher frame-rate from a small performance boost depending on the game. Generally you have a fixed amount of time to draw a picture, so if you miss the mark by only a little bit, you only need a little bit of extra power to not miss the mark. This is why many modern engines slightly decrease the resolution when they know their drawing is going to come in slightly late.
A console that's twice as powerful, really should be able to have twice the frame rate at the same resolution. BU
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Or maybe not. How many current PS4 games get 60fps at 1080p?
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It's on the limit, but it actually should be okay. Why? Because fragment shading (the act of determining the colour of a pixel on the screen) is not the only operation that a GPU does. Lots of time is also spent in compute shaders, vertex shaders and tesselation shaders. Directing all this extra horsepower to the need to deal with 4 times more fragments should be fine.
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You are indeed not a graphics expert. People assume that display resolution is a strict relationship of pixels to GPU power, but *actually* from a non-mathematical, non-graphical viewpoint - it's more like a big array of wibbly wobbly... pixel-y shaded... stuff.
On Par (Score:2)
So will it be on par with PC graphic? If not, let me know when consoles catch up.
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Well no, obviously not. With the current generation 1080s and the like theres no comparison. But the consoles are not for the PC Master Race. They are for folks who want to hook up an affordable game box to their TV set and blap bad guys with friends over beer and pizza.
And anyway, tuning games to be able to perform well on the consoles buys us a whole lot of free optimizations that make the PC versions scream along at high spe
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And anyway, tuning games to be able to perform well on the consoles buys us a whole lot of free optimizations that make the PC versions scream along at high speeds and res
But tuning games to be able to perform well on consoles also means completely screwing up control latency and accuracy. The rubber band controlled movement requires optimization because of all the extra frames and smoothing, and it ends up being more sluggish than a pure PC twitch game.
Until consoles get controls where the user controls the full speed of movement, and not only the direction and low speeds, this will always be the case - more frames rendered, and more power spent on animation and smoothing
Analog stick > WASD (Score:2)
Until consoles get controls where the user controls the full speed of movement, and not only the direction and low speeds
An analog stick controls speed of movement by how far the stick is tilted from center. WASD is like a D-pad: either a key is pressed or it isn't. That's why some games for PlayStation 3 and 4 let the player plug in a USB mouse, use the mouse to control aiming, and use the DualShock's left stick to control movement.
Re:Analog stick WASD (Score:2)
I don't understand why no-one has made an analog "keyboard" yet to solve exactly that.
Maybe not a 105 key one but one with some keys at-least, 20?
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The 360 controller isn't made to be used with one hand though.
It would better be some joystick with multiple buttons for the fingers or whatever. But I think a four button layout for directions is ok too but they could be analog.
Maybe something like a flater trackball with buttons around it?
But well, maybe joystick with buttons for all fingers are best combined with mouse, one got room for lots of buttons on the mouse too anyway.
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Like a Logitech g13?
That's exactly what it is...
It's totally not an analog keyboard. It's a keyboard with an analog joystick for the thumb.
I meant analog WASD input so you for instance didn't had to hit the walk key (or crouch) and change the outcome like that but rather could just push down the key a little to walk slowly.
I'm not sure the thumb joystick is as precise, maybe it is.
I assume there's some joysticks with buttons on the shaft too.
http://img.directindustry.com/... [directindustry.com]
https://flyawaysimulation.com/... [flyawaysimulation.com]
Games would of course also need to either have n
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Rumors peg it at about RX480 level, probably a bit lower (power/heat constraints and all that). That's "on par" with the middle ground recent PC. A 1080 (and probably the Vega stuff AMD will eventually release) will trounce that easily, let alone SLI/Crossfire.
Doubtful. I'll wait to see the actual specs, but I'll bet it'll be in the range of a 2yr old mid-range PC. The PS4 and Xbox one were both the equivalent of 5 year old PC's at release. The reality is consoles are always behind at least a couple of years if not more even when it's "top of the line."
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The average PC has Intel graphics or an old midrange or low end graphics card. In fact the average new PC is likely behind that 5 year old top of the line PC.
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The average PC has Intel graphics or an old midrange or low end graphics card. In fact the average new PC is likely behind that 5 year old top of the line PC.
Your average intel graphics card and low-end card can easily pull the same settings that consoles do. Not at the same fidelity, but they can pull 720p and 902p which are what both console use at medium settings in many cases.
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Your average intel graphics card and low-end card can easily pull the same settings that consoles do
No, not even close. Intel’s top end HD GPUs are still extremely underpowered. Definitely good enough for the average user though.
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Yeah really close. The average GPU on both the xbox one and PS4 count in the 680-900Gflops range. The average IntelHD card is in the 500-900Gflops range. Not talking about the combination APU/CPU/GPU stuff, straight up graphics processing power. Oh and that's from the last 4 years on those IntelHD integrated graphics chips. You enjoy that reality. Those consoles are low-powered PC's and any type of reality that they're not comes crashing down when real numbers come into play.
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The average PC yes.
The average PC gamer doesn't have RX 480 performance either.
However the RX 480 is having the graphical performance of about one of the most bought graphics cards for those who built new machines for gaming.
I guess the PS4 Neo may end up performing just above RX 480. What's interesting is that they are shooting for 4K, are accepting lower resolutions but not as low as WQHD and also demand higher frame-rates than the PS4 1080p or lower resolution version of the game. To get close to or 4K p
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Well my PC graphics are powered by an nVidia GT 630 so they're already more than on-par with them!
It's not too late... (Score:2)
Makes sense (Score:2)
Weren't these exact specs going through the console gaming news cycle some 2-3 months ago? I believe this is the OFA: http://www.giantbomb.com/artic... [giantbomb.com]
But yes, this makes a lot of sense for Sony. It is not going to be technologically feasible to release a gaming system with at least 10x more GPU power than the original PS4 within the foreseeable future. Certainly not at a reasonable price point. It is feasible to do a 2x upgrade next year because the PS4 was somewhat underpowered to begin with. Then there c
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Intel is not remotely interested in gaming consoles, and would never partner with AMD anyway.
Intel is no doubt in search of a new area of focus. So that could change.
Intel will probably not want to license technology from AMD, but they might at some point buy AMD and chop it up for parts.
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Intel is no doubt in search of a new area of focus. So that could change. Intel will probably not want to license technology from AMD, but they might at some point buy AMD and chop it up for parts.
Intel doesn't want AMD to actually fail, just be failing like they've been the last decade. If nobody else could supply x86 processors they'd have to work a lot harder to avoid anti-trust problems. The console business is low margin, you can tell that by AMDs financials despite powering every console of this generation and not at all the kind of market Intel is looking for. Heck, at this point I'm not surprised if they intentionally priced themselves out of the Playstation Neo / Xbox Scorpio to keep AMD on
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Yeah, Nintendo has seen that their audience has gone over to mobile gaming. There is probably no point in trying to fight that.
By the way Nintendo and Niantic may finally have found a way to prompt Apple and Samsung to put bigger batteries in their phones. Games like Pokemon GO where you keep your screen on will suck the battery dry in 2-3 hours on most phones.
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Intel is not remotely interested in gaming consoles
Not even a Skylake NUC running Steam in Big Picture mode?
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AMD seem to just want to use more GPUs.
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This makes no sense. The PS Vita is not selling well, but the PS4 is. If they give up on a platform, it's going to be mobile. Home consoles aren't going anywhere. People are still going to own TVs and want to play on the couch, and VR, be
The console wars are back! (Score:2, Troll)
This is awesome, I really hope we start another console war of technology jumps every year and real innovation this time. Xbox360/PS3 was boring as hell. I want to see a console that will run the new Unity Engine at a full 4 K at 120fps and maxed out on polygons and texture mapping settings.
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I want to see Steam Machines come down in price, and if more fancy-pants new hardware comes out and drives costs of existing stuff down, then I'm happy. I'm over consoles with proprietary operating systems. I'm not over the moon about Steam DRM but it seems like a massive win compared to being beholden to Sony or Microsoft... or Nintendo for that matter.
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Lol. My master, best master!
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Lol. My master, best master!
The best master is no master, but I'm not in charge of how games are distributed. At least it's possible to buy DRM-free games from Steam. You can't do that on any console.
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one of the best things about a steam machine is that it is as expensive as you want it to be.
you can build one, cheap as dirt and it will be just fine for a lot of games. certainly if you are into indie gaming, for example.
or you could go nuts and spend a few thousand €/$ on one.
the choice is yours.
#NotAllGames are pixel shader bound (Score:2)
Pixel shaders probably do take four times longer to render at twice the pixel density, with texture caching perhaps mitigating a bit of that. But not all games are pixel shader bound. With geometry, you can usually get away with less than x4. This is especially true of games whose art style isn't "brown" enough to need photoreal shading, especially games as stylized as Nintendo's first-party games.
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I'm out of the games biz now but if I wanted to go from 1080p to 4K with VR on the horizon I'd prefer 10x performance minimum. Too bad Sony likes to fuck over the programmers with generally shitty hardware.
Is Nintendo's or Microsoft's or Apple's any less shitty? Or are GPUs for the mass market just not ready for 4K yet?
Games already cut back to 900p (Score:2)
Who's to say the capability of the hardware doing 1080P didn't have headroom to do more
Though PlayStation 4 has 1080p on a lot of games where Xbox One needs to upscale [ign.com], several PlayStation 4 games still end up running at 900p on PS4, such as Battlefield 4 [cinemablend.com]. But what you say about headroom is likely for any game that's 1080p on both consoles.
Re: Not Enough Performance (Score:2)
1080p to 1080p VR is only 2x though, and probaly more relevant.
PC first, consoles later (Score:2)
But in the end, fuck consoles. They are holding back PC game development.
How so? A developer can choose to target PC first and then streamline the game later for a port to consoles. It worked for SimCity and The Sims and Skyrim and Diablo 3.
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Haha you're a fucking idiot. Why do you think PC exclusives that will never go near a console don't look like the second coming of christ, as they should according to the logic of you PC masturbators?
Because the only thing holding back the PC is the fragmented PC market itself, games are crippled by the need to make everything scalable across the infinite number of configurations and specs that are out there. It's only BECAUSE of consoles that you're getting most of the triple-A games you're getting at this
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I only see one idiot here. I'm guessing you're either too young to remember the early days of PC gaming, or you simply forgot because of the past decade of Apple lauding their monoculture as a panacea.
In the late 80's and early 90's, fragmentation was a bit more of a problem. Going from the internal PC speaker to actual audio cards was a mess, with games needing code written for several popular cards, until we ended up with "Sound Blaster Compatible" becoming the de facto standard before Windows 95 gave us
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Finally, cross-platform development has brought its own cancers to the PC side. I could have a bad encounter with a table saw and still be able to count on one hand how many AAA games released in the past two years allow for dedicated servers. (...) dedicated servers were a standard component for multiplayer PC games for over a decade, but are now an endangered species. Games used to frequently ship with level editors and modding kits, that allowed for new characters and maps to be community created (DLC used to be DIY, and free). Again, this is a highly exceptional state of affairs now, and I'm patently unconvinced it's a positive direction for PC gaming.
I'm quite sure the first one got nothing to do with being "cross-platform" and everything do with control. The market that doesn't have an always-on/cheap/reliable Internet connection has dwindled to the point where they don't care and by tying everything to central services they have control both over piracy and swinging the ban hammer. Any major organized LAN party will have a fat pipe to the Internet, heck if I wanted to pay $1750/month I could have 10 Gbps fiber at home today. I'd agree more with moddin
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Just play a flight simulator then you get to enjoy the realistic sound effects...
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It's warning you that you are about to be jumped. Listen to the fan.
4K my ass (Score:3)
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Strange how you don't hear PC gamers complaining BluRay films are nigh on unwatchable at 1080p 30fps......
Well actually it isn't, ramming more pickles onto the screen has long been a faux fidelity crutch for how poorly the render pipline simulates a real optical system. I'd much rather see a shift towards oversampling and exposure simulation at much lower resolutions than keep waking down this dead end road. What are we going to do when games hit 8k @ 90+ fps and finally and unequivocally exceed the capabil
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The rest of your comment is just a stream of nonsense. Ray tracing isn't any more special than rasterization, and movies make extensive use of textures and nobody bats an eye.
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"Leaked" press release (Score:1)
Neat advertising gimmick to make it on the front page. Works every time...