Official *Consoles Are For Losers* thread

[Cerveza mas fina]

http://x-surface.tumblr.com/

12/10

Amazing job 

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I can't believe any journo could take that email seriously with such horrible editing!

Hello there, yagagagagagagga

should be

Hello,

fjdhjshfkjskfjsk

[Eel O'Brian]

I really hope both next-gen consoles have Bluetooth stereo A2DP capability. I was bummed when I found out PS3 couldn't do it. Bluetooth headsets are awesome.

[MCD]

Haven't seen anything Bluetooth in that Durango spec pic leak.

[Eel O'Brian]

It's just dumb to have wireless controllers and then have a headphone cord dragging across your living room.

[MCD]

You could always buy something like Astro gaming wireless 5.8 mixamp.

[Eel O'Brian]

i'd rather just pair the cheap best buy bluetooth headphones i already own

[MCD]

Oh, good point.

Well, Sony is more pro Bluetooth so they might do it.

[hampster]

Oh god, I hate the vita's rear touch  :'(

Instead, the Orbis' controller features a capacitive touch pad, like you find on the back of a Vita (presumably it's also on the back of the PS4's controller), that can recognise two-point multi-touch. The entire pad can also be "clicked" for an additional input button.

http://kotaku.com/5977849/the-playstation-4-has-a-new-controller-fancy-user-accounts-and-impressive-specs-so-far

 

[Eel O'Brian]

don't worry, will go the way of the vita rear touchpad pretty quickly

although the click button might get some use

[maxy]

Seems like another sixaxis is in the making.

The information you're about to read comes from official Orbis documentation, a hive of more than 90 PDFs about the forthcoming console. The details of the files were shared with Kotaku by an individual known as SuperDae, the same person who last year attempted to sell a pair of next-gen Xbox development kits on eBay.

NDA :'(

That being the case, here's what we know is inside PS4 development kits—model # DVKT-KS000K—as of January 2013. As you'll see, some things have changed since earlier kits became available in March 2012.

System Memory: 8GB
Video Memory: 2.2 GB
CPU: 4x Dual-Core AMD64 "Bulldozer" (so, 8x cores)
GPU: AMD R10xx
Ports: 4x USB 3.0, 2x Ethernet
Drive: Blu-Ray
HDD: 160GB
Audio Output: HDMI & Optical, 2.0, 5.1 & 7.1 channels

The PS4's controller will again be capable of motion-sensing, like its PS3 predecessors, only now with improved technology like tilt correction. It will also feature vibration, which Sony has thankfully learned is a next-gen feature you need to launch with. It'll also have an RGB LED light in it.

While there have been reports of the PS4 controller featuring "biometric" technology, there was no mention of it in the information we were provided.

There's one other addition to the PS4's pad you won't find on a DualShock 3: a "Share" button. We're not exactly sure what it does.

[hampster]

PS4 to ship with the Oculus Rift confirmed.

Joking aside all the previews out of CES seemed great. I hope next gen consoles are taking a serious look at supporting it

[cool breeze]

Occulus Rift support would be awesome.  Occulus Rift exclusivity of some kind would be fucking awful. 

[Cormacaroni]

Is Oculus stereoscopic 3D? If so, support might be as half-assed at this gen's support of 3D...lower res and 30fps max. Hard to make an impressive 2D game AND an impressive 3D game on a console i think...

[cool breeze]

yeah, oculus rift is a single large screen with optics (unlike Sony's headset that uses a two small screens per eye).  According to wiki it's a 1280x800 screen, and the consumer version is shooting for 1080p.  Can't imagine any console using a headset for VR.  At best a way for the 3D image to fill your field of view.
 
I think one of the forza games (2?) had multi-monitor support, but it required multiple 360s. 

[MCD]

OLD MAN DRINKY U LIED TO ME

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=510076

[maxy]

Don't worry MCD,this is all a part of big master plan.MS and Nintendo have teamed up again Sony...no prisoners allowed

Timothy is certainly a very smart tech head but I don't think he understands how gaming internet works.People know his full name and his employer(nvidia)...not exactly the best combination even if he is like 100% true

[Huff]

MS is abandoning gamers! Abandon ship

[MCD]

Good thing I only shill for Surface and WP8 now!

[Diunx]

But will you shill for Surface [__]?

[Phoenix Dark]

So it's possible the Xbox will be on par with the WiiU huh. Didn't see that coming

[Van Cruncheon]

OLD MAN DRINKY U LIED TO ME

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=510076

dude may have created fxaa but he's off his meds

[Don Flamenco]

maybe he's been paid to leak false info

[Tasty]

Sounds like a Sony fan. Also, maybe I'm missing something but he seemed to have been purely speculating.

[Beezy]

So is the 720 doesn't deliver, Drinky is the Bore's scapegoat, right?

[maxy]

I spend most of my days in frustration knowing damn well what I could do with the hardware, but what I cannot do because Microsoft and IHVs wont provide low-level GPU access in PC APIs. One simple example, drawcalls on PC have easily 10x to 100x the overhead of a console with a libGCM style API....

This statement is pretty hilarious.Either he is playing stupid or he doesn't really understand why PC APIs are the way they are.

libGCM = used on PS3

[Mupepe]

This sounds a lot like the "Xbox 360 can't handle *exclusive ps3 game*" that we heard the whole first year or two of this Gen (hello VF and Final Fantasy!). MS has proven that it knows how to provide the right tools to developers to easily make games. No one cares about the potential crazy results of overly complicated hardware if it takes too much time/effort to code for it and the difference in sales isn't worth it (hello there ps3 multiplatform games!). It honestly sounds like Sony hasn't learned their lesson and fanboys are revving up for the next gen again

[Himu]

God I can't wait for new consoles. fuck. Nipples getting so rock hard they'd act as a penis in vaginal intercourse.

Meltdowns. Conspiracies. New tech. New gadgets.

Unf.

Fuck.

[maxy]

This sounds a lot like the "Xbox 360 can't handle *exclusive ps3 game*" that we heard the whole first year or two of this Gen (hello VF and Final Fantasy!). MS has proven that it knows how to provide the right tools to developers to easily make games. No one cares about the potential crazy results of overly complicated hardware if it takes too much time/effort to code for it and the difference in sales isn't worth it (hello there ps3 multiplatform games!). It honestly sounds like Sony hasn't learned their lesson and fanboys are revving up for the next gen again

The fun part is that this time Durango seems to be much more complicated than PS4.
According to rumors PS4 is following traditional PC design and Durango is something...different,something that has made one Nvidia employee go into overdrive

AMD GPUs are in all three consoles,Nvidia is out...

If I was a conspiracy theorist,I would say there is some fire there.

[MCD]

I just hope they retain BC in some shape in both because fuck dropping it again.

[Cerveza mas fina]

Why would ms change the guts of the durango after xbox and 360 both had this simple approach?

It just doesnt make sense.

[BlueTsunami]

Whichever console has built in support (gaming and programing side) for Oculus Rift has my money

[maxy]

Why would ms change the guts of the durango after xbox and 360 both had this simple approach?

It just doesnt make sense.

Trying to address real world GPU problems?Something that simply cannot be done in PC space(breaking compatibility).
Consoles are perfect tool for that,everything depends on software.

[MCD]

Eh...both consoles are simple off the shelf PC parts. Nothing fancy other than some secret sauce in Durango or PS4 fast RAM.

zzz

[cool breeze]

just skimming over it the guy makes next gen power differences sound greater than this generation's.  for the most part this gen had parity between the only two consoles.  360 edged out almost every time on multiplatform releases, but it wasn't nearly as significant as the xbox's advantage of the ps2.  I'd rather have all two consoles on equal ground.

[maxy]

Eh...both consoles are simple off the shelf PC parts. Nothing fancy other than some secret sauce in Durango or PS4 fast RAM.

zzz

Not quite,young padawan...

Full post from someone that has been working for a long time in games industry(ironically he is at SCEA now)

Question:What are the cases where cache misses are common ?


A lot of compute jobs.
Any Shader with unpredictable access.
Any Shader with enough inputs that the cache can't handle it.
Any unswizzled input

My guess would be that it's designed the way it is for a reason, MS do a lot of measurement of 360 titles and GPU utilization, and I'd guess that they found that a lot of the compute resources were under utilized because of data stalls.
There isn't much you can do on a PC to fix this, you need API support for something like a fast memory pool, all you can really do on a PC is increase the size of register pools to increase the number of threads in flight and increase the caches, and that might be more expensive for a given performance gain than throwing more CU's ar the problem.

As I said I wouldn't like to posit how much CU's are underutilized in the average modern renderer because of data stalls. If I were guessing I would GUESS it is a significant amount.
I do know it's stupidly easy to write a compute job that you think will run 100x faster than your trivial CPU solution, benchmark it and discover it's actually slower, because the ALU's are all sitting there waiting for data. It's one of the reasons I've been saying that FLOPS are not a useful performance metric.

And as I said before the danger with the solution MS has come up with is you need to schedule moves of source data to the fast RAM, that eats bandwidth, and if you can't get it there fast enough the entire rendering pipeline stalls.

I also have questions as to how deferred renderers are best handled with such a small fast memory pool. It wouldn't be unusual for a deferred renderer to write 28 bytes/pixel, and that won't fit in 32MB at 1080P. Can you split the MRT's to different pools? Does MS provide guidance for devs trying to do this?

To me it's an interesting approach, How effective it is will depend on how ALU bound vs Data bound shaders are in modern games, I just haven't looked at enough data or spoken to anyone who has to have a good idea.

Bold part is for Nintendo fans.

I'm not saying Durango is something magical or whatever just that there is more than one way to skin a cat.

[MCD]

Still not exciting. Lazy generation.

[Tasty]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=510374

PS4 only has 4 GB of RAM?

[Momo]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=510374

PS4 only has 4 GB of RAM?

Yup, important to note it's very different (better) than the 8GB MS are shipping

[maxy]

There is some new interesting info there.

Render backends are ROPs?
8 seems very low(PS3/360 number)

edit:People are saying it should be multiplied by 4

18 Texture units is also suspiciously low number

One week ago we published a detailed report about Durango, the next-gen Microsoft system. The company has built a powerful system, more than Wii U. Now, we would like to share with you the specs for Orbis, Sony’s alternative machine for the next-gen. After you gents and ladies.



LIVERPOOL SOC

Custom implementation of AMD Fusion APU Arquitecture (Accelerated Processing Unit)
Provides good performance with low power consumtion
Integrated CPU and GPU
Considerably bigger and more powerful than AMD’s other APUs


CPU:

Orbis contains eight Jaguar cores at 1.6 Ghz, arranged as two “clusters”
Each cluster contains 4 cores and a shared 2MB L2 cache
256-bit SIMD operations, 128-bit SIMD ALU
SSE up to SSE4, as well as Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX)
One hardware thread per core
Decodes, executes and retires at up to two intructions/cycle
Out of order execution
Per-core dedicated L1-I and L1-D cache (32Kb each)
Two pipes per core yield 12,8 GFlops performance
102.4 GFlops for system


GPU:

GPU is based on AMD’s “R10XX” (Southern Islands) architecture
DirectX 11.1+ feature set
Liverpool is an enhanced version of the architecture
18 Compute Units (CUs)
Hardware balanced at 14 CUs
Shared 512 KB of read/write L2 cache
800 Mhz
1.843 Tflops, 922 GigaOps/s
Dual shader engines
18 texture units
8 Render backends


Memory:

4 GB unified system memory, 176 GB/s
3.5 available to games (estimate)


Storage:

- High speed Blu-ray drive

single layer (25 GB) or dual layer (50 GB) discs
Partial constant angular velocity (PCAV)
Outer half of disc 6x (27 MB/s)
Inner half varies, 3.3x to 6x


- Internal mass storage

One SKU at launch: 500 GB HDD
There may also be a Flash drive SKU in the future


Networking:

1 Gb/s Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n WIFI, and Bluetooth


Peripherals:

Evolved Dualshock controller
Dual Camera
Move controller


Extra:

Audio Processor (ACP)
Video encode and decode (VCE/UVD) units
Display ScanOut Engine (DCE)
Zlib Decompression Hardware

hehe

[Diunx]

[Cerveza mas fina]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=510374

PS4 only has 4 GB of RAM?

I hope that's enough for some hand me down wii u ports.

[Don Flamenco]

so the PS4 cpu is equal to about 8 jaguars duct taped together

[maxy]

more details

UPDATE: some people is confused about the GPU, here you have more info about it:

Each CU contains dedicated:

- ALU (32 64-bit operations per cycle)

- Texture Unit

- L1 data cache

- Local data share (LDS)

About 14 + 4 balance:

- 4 additional CUs (410 Gflops) “extra” ALU as resource for compute

- Minor boost if used for rendering

Dual Shader Engines:

- 1.6 billion triangles/s, 1.6 billion vertices/s

18 Texture units

- 56 billion bilinear texture reads/s

- Can utilize full memory bandwith

8 Render backends:

- 32 color ops/cycle

- 128 depth ops/cycle

- Can utilize full memory bandwith

 :usavich



Just some random pointless comparison

- 1.6 billion triangles/s

360 GPU is  500 million triangles per second

[Tasty]

Three 360's taped together?

[maxy]

As far as the raw triangle numbers,yes.If true of course.

But the beauty is in the details...

About 6.5xRSX triangle count btw

[MCD]

so maxy...

is everything ok? can I go back to being an xfag?

[maxy]

Wait a little bit,I want to see the games first.Not a single leak about next gen games yet...meh

[Damian79]

This is the exact same sepcs as the xbox 720 specs even the 8 cpu cores clocked at 1.6ghz are the same.

[Don Flamenco]

if they were equally powerful, that might push both of them to focus on their 1st party games.

[maxy]

Posting this just for fun

If these numbers are right, the Durango GPU is actually better when it comes to pure graphics.

The triangles, and vertices rate.

[MCD]

[maxy]

One of the gaf "insiders" said that dev told him that two machines are like Xbox vs Gamecube.

[Phoenix Dark]

So is the 720 doesn't deliver, Drinky is the Bore's scapegoat, right?

I think it would demand leper status for at least a year

[Cerveza mas fina]

Thats close enough

[Fifstar]

One of the gaf "insiders" said that dev told him that two machines are like Xbox vs Gamecube.

Sounds like an Ntard that want's to imply that the Gamecube was basically as good as the XBox. Also this comparison is probably off in the way that I doubt one of the system will have advanced shaders/effects/whatever that the other can't do.

[Don Flamenco]

Nintendo and Microsoft fans should just lay down their weapons and make way for the return of the rightful heir to the throne of #1 in the NPDs.  Never corner a station.  A play station.

[DCharlieJP]

i know the dual camera thing is true from last year for a start and that's one of the more leftfield details on the lists.

BE-LIE-VE

[cool breeze]

what does dual camera even mean?

the controller has a camera on the front and back to do AR stuff? or an eyetoy with depth perception / kinect through different means?

[Momo]

You can now see your own penis and facial expression while fapping