PlayStation 4 is "Essentially a PC" in Terms of Tech

So the ps4 will be sporting hardware similar to pc's. This time it will do away from broadband cpu's like cell and rely on a conventional x86 cpu. Amd is confirmed to be working on the gpu tech and most probably, it will be based on GCN.

Without an os abstraction as with consoles, expect this to give jaw dropping visuals as seen on pc and really be next gen. Experts say development will be far easier and harnessing the console's full potential will be easier than its previous iterations.

Everything is confirmed to be unveiled in this year's E3.

Source

Interesting. I hope they delay the PS4 for a while

just got my PS3 a year back

But I think the successive generation will be the one to wait with bated breath, by then 4k resolutions might kick up.

It will be interesting to see how things shape up then.

So, AMD GPU in all three consoles. Nice.

Amd is also working on the cpu with sony. :razz:

What ibm did for ps3, amd will do the same for ps4. Atleast it looks like this now.

I guess it should be in console section.

Wow AMD is really doing something.

Only concerned about quality PC ports. Hope the scenario will improve.

And what the CPU will be, Piledriver based, or something different?

You mean PC to Console ports or Console to PC ports.

I will till then assume you are refering to the current scenario of Xbox to PS3 porting and then from Console to PC porting.

Pity the monster called gaming PC :))

Damn!

When ps3 was released it was very fast but then after these years its nothing compared to modern high end pc. So its obvious that ps4 would be comparable or faster than modern day pc.

It's never about speed. It's the games.

Xbox trumped PS3 with a (little) inferior hardware due to it's software catalogue.

Of course your point is pretty valid in itself.

But the above given reason is why Sony shifted back to x86 despite Sony having recently bought the entire Cell factory from Toshiba and much before IBM. Quite a turn around from what was rumoured.

I hope it doesn't cost 50k again though :))

Skud said:
Only concerned about quality PC ports. Hope the scenario will improve.

And what the CPU will be, Piledriver based, or something different?

Not sure mate. Maybe piledriver or something customized specially for the ps4.

Excellent!!! May be next gen consoles start appearing in the market by Q2 2013.

Sarath said:
It's never about speed. It's the games.

Xbox trumped PS3 with a (little) inferior hardware due to it's software catalogue.

Exactly why PS3 sales have boosted now vs. X360? :razz:

You could interpret this as a sign that everyone owns an X360. I need a media centre more than a console, so I have a PS3, not to mention the better exclusives. not to mention I find the X360 to be puny.

Does someone looks at the downside of x86 in PS4? There will be no backward compatibility..

hellknight said:
Does someone looks at the downside of x86 in PS4? There will be no backward compatibility..

That's a massive downside. Not sure what they are thinking.

I have umm the PS3 already so no needs of backward compatibility

Plus it might push the price north

^^ Yup. It better to move on to new things rather than stick around for backward titles.
With new ip's and franchises, people tend to forget old gen titles. Then again, old gems always have a chance of getting digitally remastered for next gen hardware.

This gen we've seen lots of these in form of "God of war collection", "Ico & Shadow of the colossus" and so on. So its no big deal imo.

I like compatibility. I was sad that my PS3 cant support PS2 games (i wanted to play syphon filter's PS2 titles).

AMD should also add X86_64 extensions so that memory wont be a limitation.

Extreme Gamer said:
I like compatibility. I was sad that my PS3 cant support PS2 games (i wanted to play syphon filter's PS2 titles).

Didn't the phat one have the emotion engine or in other words PS2 compatibility?

The advantage of this will be:
1. The console will be massively cheaper to produce.
2. It will be easier to develop games for it

Both are the points which really held PS3 back the last time around.

Sarath said:
Didn't the phat one have the emotion engine or in other words PS2 compatibility?

No. Only the first 20,40,60 GB had true compatibility (lasted 1.5 years). After that the 80GB removed some some compatibility due to partial emulation. my model (160GB) and the later 80GB models did not.

4k resolutions on a 6670? Doubt it, why are they using such a cr@p GPU? Some says its gonna be fusion, then that's the cr@ppiest solution possible, atleast a HD7770 type GPU(2228nm low power consumption and heat).

You mean 28nm? 22nm is for CPUs after IB IIRC.

Extreme Gamer said:
You mean 28nm? 22nm is for CPUs after IB IIRC.

Yeah, typo.

tkin said:
4k resolutions on a 6670? Doubt it, why are they using such a cr@p GPU? Some says its gonna be fusion, then that's the cr@ppiest solution possible, atleast a HD7770 type GPU(2228nm low power consumption and heat).

Are you sure about 6670? I've heard its gonna be GCN and will be custom made.

Remember, these will perform better than their pc counterparts because of lack of an os abstraction.

vickybat said:
Are you sure about 6670? I've heard its gonna be GCN and will be custom made.

Remember, these will perform better than their pc counterparts because of lack of an os abstraction.

That's make old consoles to play games on monster screen. So a 6770 in consoles can handle 4K Resolutions.

@vicky: "lack of an OS abstraction"? so you are saying that in consoles devs get low level access to the hardware while making games?

This is not true: nowhere in the article is it mentioned that an OS abstraction wont be there. how on earth would people play their games without an abstraction? after all, this is not the huge arcade box at your local timezone/timbaktoo/amoeba/whatever.

Besides, PS3 used PS3GL (derived from openGL) and Xbox used a modified Direct3D library.

Did you mean that the OS will allow low level access? If that is the case, could you show links supporting this? Your article does not mention any such thing.

There is no such thing as no abstraction, not possible, console have abstraction, but faster as the hardware is uniformed, its tailored for the hardware, like say optimization for game code for nVidia GPU on PC by developers.

Erm clearly he meant lower level of abstraction.

Liverpool_fan said:
Erm clearly he meant lower level of abstraction.

I do not agree. He said "no OS abstraction." I'll wait for him to clarify his position.

^^ Ok it does have an os but it has much less abstraction than a pc. In other words it has much better access to the underlying hardware.

The reason behind this is while developing for a console you harness a particular hardware. But with a pc, you need to program accordingly for getting the performance out of different set of hardware. Thus low level access is possible only for consoles as of now.

But in a console, it isn't required as there's no change of its innards. So developers can directly access lets say the gpu at low level . So there's less abstraction. Those api's are also customized for consoles.

Did you get my point now or i need to clarify more?

Btw found an interesting article:

Low level and API-free programming seems to be the future of game development and graphics programming on the PC.

Do you know that graphic hardware on PC is limited to few thousand of draw calls per frame (around 2,000 to 3,000) while the number of draw calls on a console can be 10,000 up to 20,000?

According to Richard Huddy (AMD’s head of GPU developer relations), the limiting factor on PC is the performance overhead of the 3D API (mainly DirectX) while on consoles, game developers can use low level code to process more triangles than on PC. More render calls allow more creativity freedom for game designers. The solution would be to have a low level access to PC graphics hardware (direct-to-metal programming).

Either way, it looks as though DirectX’s future as the primary gateway to PC graphics hardware is no longer 100 per cent assured, especially when it comes to cutting edge graphics.

Maybe there’s an opportunity for an API like OpenGL: thanks to extensions, hardware vendors could offer new OpenGL extensions to have low level access to the GPU…

vickybat said:
^^ Can you tell me what os does a ps3 use while running games? The answer is none.
What you mentioned are api's and they have low level access with the underlying hardware and in case of a pc, the os is an intervention in between.

Did you get my point now or i need to clarify more?

Cell OS: PlayStation 3 system software - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Its a full fledged OS with a native graphics API like direct x.

vicky, every device has an operating system. After all there has to be some software to hold the device all together.

Games do not interact directly with hardware. It is correct that consoles have less layers of abstraction and as a result games can take better advantage of the hardware but that doesn't mean "no abstraction".

^^ Ok post edited.

tkin said:
Cell OS: PlayStation 3 system software - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Its a full fledged OS with a native graphics API like direct x.

Yup i was wrong there. Thanks for correcting mate.

@vicky's post on page 1:Thats quote is old (late 2010/early 2011 IIRC). It is just an AMD suit speaking personally and his opinion does not reflect the company's stand. There was also a clarification post by AMD a few days later (i've forgotten the links).

So there well be access to more lower level features in the console? That would be nice. But no links= user opinion.

^^ Here goes your link :wink:

Source

vickybat said:
^^ Here goes your link

Source

Its completely correct, but never gonna happen, each game has to support billions of variations, its the reason directx, glide, opengl was born, there will always be an api, but dx is very slow compared to latest opengl(carmack said, not me, bite him), ms has to make dx faster.

vickybat said:
^^ Here goes your link

Source

That was not what I meant. I meant that you have not shown any proof of this happening to the PS4. So, low-level access, to the extent of reducing the number of layers of abstractions on the console, is only your opinion.

I doubt major developers would be head over heels if there was such access. They would have to learn more about the architecture, find ways to port this to other consoles because the codebase is not even remotely close.

^^ What are you really?? No really i want to know?

Isn't it obvious? Everybody( not only me) is saying here that in consoles, game code have low level access with the underlying hardware than a pc. It was with the ps2, ps3, xbox , xbox 360 etc and same gonna with the successors of the respective consoles.

You wouldn't be blabbering if you would have read tkin's post. He gave an example that the ps4 might get something like a 6670 or 7770 ( speculation only). Now what i said is if you compare a consolized 6670 with a discrete 6670 in a conventional desktop, there will be immense performance difference.

The reason behind this is a console hardware gonna remain constant in its entire lifecycle and the game codebase is to harness the potential of that particular hardware and yes level of abstraction is far lower what you see in pc because the os (system software and api's) are primarily designed for a particular hardware.

Lets say in a pc, windows 7 and directx has to comply for a wide range of hardware and developers cannot optimize their code for everything. So abstraction layer is more than a console.

And you didn't even comprehend the link i gave cause it was not about consoles at all. It was about the pc. :wink:

Either you are smart enough to understand this or.... :lol:

Extreme Gamer said:
That was not what I meant. I meant that you have not shown any proof of this happening to the PS4. So, low-level access, to the extent of reducing the number of layers of abstractions on the console, is only your opinion.

I doubt major developers would be head over heels if there was such access. They would have to learn more about the architecture, find ways to port this to other consoles because the codebase is not even remotely close.

What vickey means that console offers lower lever hardware access to the games, observe the term lower, not direct hardware access, there is an API, all games are written in codes like C(for faster execution), to allow games to access hardware using C is a nightmare, so the API transforms the calls to hardware calls, but in consoles the API is faster, why? Because there isn't a $hit ton of programs running on a console, there is nor qord processing, no complex networking stacks, no multicore schedulers(part of OS), not to mention the programs we run on PC, the api in PC has to take care of all that, so its slower.

Here is an example, ever heard the term, "Jack of all trades, master of none?"
That is directX.

PS: This is a very coarse simplification, there is a lot more going on here, pain to explain everything, so take this as it is and don't judge this for accuracy.

vickybat said:
^^ What are you really?? No really i want to know?

Isn't it obvious? Everybody( not only me) is saying here that in consoles, game code have low level access with the underlying hardware than a pc. It was with the ps2, ps3, xbox , xbox 360 etc and same gonna with the successors of the respective consoles.

You wouldn't be blabbering if you would have read tkin's post. He gave an example that the ps4 might get something like a 6670 or 7770 ( speculation only). Now what i said is if you compare a consolized 6670 with a discrete 6670 in a conventional desktop, there will be immense performance difference.

The reason behind this is a console hardware gonna remain constant in its entire lifecycle and the game codebase is to harness the potential of that particular hardware and yes level of abstraction is far lower what you see in pc because the os (system software and api's) are primarily designed for a particular hardware.

Lets say in a pc, windows 7 and directx has to comply for a wide range of hardware and developers cannot optimize their code for everything. So abstraction layer is more than a console.

And you didn't even comprehend the link i gave cause it was not about consoles at all. It was about the pc.

Either you are smart enough to understand this or....

You should have read an earlier post... that link you gave me was of early 2011 (I mentioned that in my previous post). Isaid that it has no bearing on AMD's position. That was clarified in a later article.
I read that link and I posted that it was not relevant to what you said for consoles. I asked for a link which explicitly says that the PS4 will move beyond the conventional API (openGL/PSGL/whatever).

As for the low level access on the console, it is not all that low- OpenGL and DirectX got slightly modified. It is true that PS3 allows cell CPU access but you cant go past the hypervisor (comparable to the kernel of windows in terms of level).

Extreme Gamer said:
You should have read an earlier post... that link you gave me was of early 2011 (I mentioned that in my previous post). Isaid that it has no bearing on AMD's position. That was clarified in a later article.
I read that link and I posted that it was not relevant to what you said for consoles. I asked for a link which explicitly says that the PS4 will move beyond the conventional API (openGL/PSGL/whatever).

As for the low level access on the console, it is not all that low- OpenGL and DirectX got slightly modified. It is true that PS3 allows cell CPU access but you cant go past the hypervisor (comparable to the kernel of windows in terms of level).

Dude seriously what are you upto? What the heck a hypervisor gotta do with this? Do you actually know what a hypervisor is or again using terms as usual? And what kernel level you're talking about?

And what link of mine are you pointing at? If you are asking about the link regarding developers lowering abstraction level in pc's , then its obvious that it has no relevance with consoles. I guess everybody has got that except you.

And what position of AMD you want to clarify? Are you saying they aren't making hardware for ps4? If this is what you meant then.... :lol:

This thread is going in circles. Closed.

funny thread.