EA Exec: Xbox One and PS4 Are "A Generation Ahead" Of PC
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
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That is the biggest out and out lie I have ever read from an executive, and that is saying something. We KNOW what is in the PS4 and xbone, with the PS4 having the more powerful hardware.
What is in there is an AMD APU, a low power, multicore CPU with a GPU on the same die. They are equivalent, in raw power, to a midrange current gen system. Compared to even a stock clock i7 and 7970/Titan/GTX680, they are slower.
Sure, developers will squeeze more out of that on the consoles than they would on a PC b/c they don't have to deal with the overhead of Windows and APIs like DirectX but at best that means that practically they are six months ahead of PC, as substantially more powerful 20nm graphics cards will be out either end of the year or early next year.
But what did anyone expect from Xbone marketing speak? The god's honest truth? Or self promoting lies?
What is in there is an AMD APU, a low power, multicore CPU with a GPU on the same die. They are equivalent, in raw power, to a midrange current gen system. Compared to even a stock clock i7 and 7970/Titan/GTX680, they are slower.
Sure, developers will squeeze more out of that on the consoles than they would on a PC b/c they don't have to deal with the overhead of Windows and APIs like DirectX but at best that means that practically they are six months ahead of PC, as substantially more powerful 20nm graphics cards will be out either end of the year or early next year.
But what did anyone expect from Xbone marketing speak? The god's honest truth? Or self promoting lies?
*Reads Title* .... AAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
*Reads article* ..... BWAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
No seriously, is this guy still running on Windows XP with 2 GB of RAM? Or is he talking about the computer he uses to go on Facebook and Twitter? Yeah, I can totally understand Xbone and PS4 beating that type of computer, but please. They won't even come close to "High end PC's that are currently on the market". I think my mom's old HP laptop can still beat the Xbone.
Oh EA, usually I hate it when you talk straight out of your tight ass, but considering how hard I was laughing at this, I'll forgive it this time. Made my day.. Ahhh... *wipes away tears*
*Reads article* ..... BWAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
No seriously, is this guy still running on Windows XP with 2 GB of RAM? Or is he talking about the computer he uses to go on Facebook and Twitter? Yeah, I can totally understand Xbone and PS4 beating that type of computer, but please. They won't even come close to "High end PC's that are currently on the market". I think my mom's old HP laptop can still beat the Xbone.
Oh EA, usually I hate it when you talk straight out of your tight ass, but considering how hard I was laughing at this, I'll forgive it this time. Made my day.. Ahhh... *wipes away tears*
See the thing is that even if they do pull something miraculous and overpower current gen PCs, which I doubt anyway...
The big benefit to PC gaming is that in a year most PC gamers will have the potential to upgrade far above the consoles.
That PC upgrades are more of a diagonal line, where as consoles are like stairs, sure that could outclass PC's for a little while, but they then have the same hardware for another 6-8 years (It was predicted this gen would last a decade... maybe).
So even if it is true, it's still laughable that he doesn't realize that any gap they can create would be easily closed within a short amount of time.
I'm worried about the lack of knowledge about the industry and market that some of these CEO and PR people have had lately... I'm hoping to hell that they never get their hands on Steam...
The big benefit to PC gaming is that in a year most PC gamers will have the potential to upgrade far above the consoles.
That PC upgrades are more of a diagonal line, where as consoles are like stairs, sure that could outclass PC's for a little while, but they then have the same hardware for another 6-8 years (It was predicted this gen would last a decade... maybe).
So even if it is true, it's still laughable that he doesn't realize that any gap they can create would be easily closed within a short amount of time.
I'm worried about the lack of knowledge about the industry and market that some of these CEO and PR people have had lately... I'm hoping to hell that they never get their hands on Steam...
What makes me laugh is the fact that Computers have things that are faster, hardier and just plain BETTER within the week. So, a computer's generation is a week. Maybe a month, just to be sure.
So the XBone and the PS4 will be top-of-the-line... for a week.
The thing's gonna be out of date by the time it hits store shelves =p
So the XBone and the PS4 will be top-of-the-line... for a week.
The thing's gonna be out of date by the time it hits store shelves =p
The man is technically correct, the AMD Jaguar chips being used are technically "one generation ahead" of what PC's have at the moment. But nowhere did he say that they will OUT-PERFORM PC's, he only stated they are one generation ahead. He's only trying to say that they're equipped with the absolute newest tech possible.
So anyone who is drawing conclusions like "so he's saying next gen consoles will out-gun PC's?" is an idiot. He didn't say that. It's like claiming a GTX650 is better than a GTX580 purely because it's one generation ahead (the 580 would destroy the 650 btw, for those who don't know)...and that's not what MS has said here.
Meanwhile, over at the PC Gaming Master Race who are currently celebrating GTX 780's release...
So anyone who is drawing conclusions like "so he's saying next gen consoles will out-gun PC's?" is an idiot. He didn't say that. It's like claiming a GTX650 is better than a GTX580 purely because it's one generation ahead (the 580 would destroy the 650 btw, for those who don't know)...and that's not what MS has said here.
Meanwhile, over at the PC Gaming Master Race who are currently celebrating GTX 780's release...
OK. Well. I can't say for sure WTF this EA goon is getting at. However. If the rumored shared memory architecture is what we're talking about, then yes, they could actually be right. Don't get me wrong. I hate consoles. They're DRM in a box. Loathe the glacial hardware cycle that completely ignores Moore's Law, and tries to sell us the cheapest crap for the most money -- They sell "at a loss" but that's just an illusion, they wouldn't do it if you didn't fall for Rent seeking, and inflated hardware prices down the road (not reflecting reduced MFG prices well).
However, I do write code, sometimes for games, and when I want to do crazy stuff, like use very fine structural voxels smoothed with marching cubes and DOF, where each "atomic" unit of the world can have different physical properties, corrosiveness and interactions (don't put out the chem fire with water!), the wall I usually run into is the memory bandwidth. Specifically, shuffling all the data back and forth between main memory and GPU RAM. Oh, I can run the physics, on the GPU with but GPU has no direct way to get control input, GPU RAM is sometimes too valuable to waste on extra collision geometry, and readback buffers are slow -- Triggering sound effects by looking up which pixels in an offscreen texture were updated is uuuuugly, and slow. Doing that with enemy AI and physics to update network states is even worse. Typically the games will have two copies of the geometry in memory. The low res hitboxes and collision geometry in Main RAM, to do physics on the CPU (where the input and sound system are also controlled), and another high quality set of mesh data in the GPU for rendering. Positioned to match the CPU side physics stuff. There's a bit of crossover into GPU with physics, but mostly it's particle systems and effects, not stuff that directly affect gameplay, because, well, you'd have to synch that fine detail over the network for multiplayer, trigger sound effects, react to input, etc. and GPU to CPU memory bandwidth is the pinch point. It's doable, but man it sucks, and if the bottle neck were removed, a lot more cool gameplay stuff can happen.
With a shared memory architecture you might still use the lower res collision geometry as faster approximates the physics, but the physics code can just update anything in RAM, and there's no readback latency. You can avoid transferring data in and out, it makes everything easier, even networking code. It also means you can stream load much easier, and with FAR more data, because you have all of main memory to play in. I can load some new models as I have spare cycles and get them ready for rendering, then BLAM, No slow transfer to the GPU to actually start rendering them. That's one less stage of streaming to perform, and one less copy of data that must exist in RAM at once... The physics code can then be parallelized on the GPU and the CPU code can directly read the results without copying the stuff across the bus.
If that's what they're hinting at, then yeah, most PC hardware today is not as "next gen" as this. However, I'm not aware if that's actually what these consoles will have. I DO KNOW that by the time the consoles come out, my new development PC will have shared memory architecture, and far more RAM to play in. 'Heterogeneous computing' is the future. Right now CPU code uses one FPU for floats. Data is VERY segmented across cores to prevent race conditions, but what would be nice is single threads that can run lots of data through the same instructions: SIMD. The speed increase you get utilizing SIMD techniques on GPU / APU hardware is awesome for nearly all software. It'll be better for everything as the line between GPU and CPU are blurred, and they combine. Shared memory architecture is a key component to this, and so is "integrated" GPU -- WOAH, calm down discrete GPU fans, it'll just mean you upgrade a motherboard or chip instead of a discrete card. It's no big deal, just progress. Prices will adjust, it'll end up about the same.
Being able to rely on this type of stuff standard will be HUGE. It'll be standard on mid to high end PCs soon enough, and even mobiles eventually, it's just so much more efficient. The fragmentation argument against PC isn't really a big issue, That's why we have optional details and minimum system requirements. Fragmentation is much less an issue on PC platforms than across consoles.
What irks me is that these consoles are just neutered 'media center' PCs. What's best for gamers and gamedevs is if all the games run everywhere forever. What's best for console sales is if games run on one device for the shortest period of time tolerable. I have a single cross platform dev chain that lets the same engine code compile across all major PC OSs, even BSD. I have an abstraction layer so my Android games can run on Desktop Java too (why not?). I port games between Linux, Mac, Windows, Mobile, with one line command: "git pull & make release" There's really nothing technical about the hardware that's preventing it from having a common API across the consoles too. No, there's not. The difficulty is due only to Vendor Lock-In and console maker hopes of more exclusivity, by making it harder to port, thus giving them advantage over the others, when no, it's the same thing as the competition or a PC. Console makers are basically exactly opposed to the progress of the game industry, by their very nature. It's dumb. They need to die. They're all just General Purpose Computing devices -- Yes, even mobiles are.
1980's Mk.II feels like it's right around the corner. It gets closer the slower the console hardware cycles.
However, I do write code, sometimes for games, and when I want to do crazy stuff, like use very fine structural voxels smoothed with marching cubes and DOF, where each "atomic" unit of the world can have different physical properties, corrosiveness and interactions (don't put out the chem fire with water!), the wall I usually run into is the memory bandwidth. Specifically, shuffling all the data back and forth between main memory and GPU RAM. Oh, I can run the physics, on the GPU with but GPU has no direct way to get control input, GPU RAM is sometimes too valuable to waste on extra collision geometry, and readback buffers are slow -- Triggering sound effects by looking up which pixels in an offscreen texture were updated is uuuuugly, and slow. Doing that with enemy AI and physics to update network states is even worse. Typically the games will have two copies of the geometry in memory. The low res hitboxes and collision geometry in Main RAM, to do physics on the CPU (where the input and sound system are also controlled), and another high quality set of mesh data in the GPU for rendering. Positioned to match the CPU side physics stuff. There's a bit of crossover into GPU with physics, but mostly it's particle systems and effects, not stuff that directly affect gameplay, because, well, you'd have to synch that fine detail over the network for multiplayer, trigger sound effects, react to input, etc. and GPU to CPU memory bandwidth is the pinch point. It's doable, but man it sucks, and if the bottle neck were removed, a lot more cool gameplay stuff can happen.
With a shared memory architecture you might still use the lower res collision geometry as faster approximates the physics, but the physics code can just update anything in RAM, and there's no readback latency. You can avoid transferring data in and out, it makes everything easier, even networking code. It also means you can stream load much easier, and with FAR more data, because you have all of main memory to play in. I can load some new models as I have spare cycles and get them ready for rendering, then BLAM, No slow transfer to the GPU to actually start rendering them. That's one less stage of streaming to perform, and one less copy of data that must exist in RAM at once... The physics code can then be parallelized on the GPU and the CPU code can directly read the results without copying the stuff across the bus.
If that's what they're hinting at, then yeah, most PC hardware today is not as "next gen" as this. However, I'm not aware if that's actually what these consoles will have. I DO KNOW that by the time the consoles come out, my new development PC will have shared memory architecture, and far more RAM to play in. 'Heterogeneous computing' is the future. Right now CPU code uses one FPU for floats. Data is VERY segmented across cores to prevent race conditions, but what would be nice is single threads that can run lots of data through the same instructions: SIMD. The speed increase you get utilizing SIMD techniques on GPU / APU hardware is awesome for nearly all software. It'll be better for everything as the line between GPU and CPU are blurred, and they combine. Shared memory architecture is a key component to this, and so is "integrated" GPU -- WOAH, calm down discrete GPU fans, it'll just mean you upgrade a motherboard or chip instead of a discrete card. It's no big deal, just progress. Prices will adjust, it'll end up about the same.
Being able to rely on this type of stuff standard will be HUGE. It'll be standard on mid to high end PCs soon enough, and even mobiles eventually, it's just so much more efficient. The fragmentation argument against PC isn't really a big issue, That's why we have optional details and minimum system requirements. Fragmentation is much less an issue on PC platforms than across consoles.
What irks me is that these consoles are just neutered 'media center' PCs. What's best for gamers and gamedevs is if all the games run everywhere forever. What's best for console sales is if games run on one device for the shortest period of time tolerable. I have a single cross platform dev chain that lets the same engine code compile across all major PC OSs, even BSD. I have an abstraction layer so my Android games can run on Desktop Java too (why not?). I port games between Linux, Mac, Windows, Mobile, with one line command: "git pull & make release" There's really nothing technical about the hardware that's preventing it from having a common API across the consoles too. No, there's not. The difficulty is due only to Vendor Lock-In and console maker hopes of more exclusivity, by making it harder to port, thus giving them advantage over the others, when no, it's the same thing as the competition or a PC. Console makers are basically exactly opposed to the progress of the game industry, by their very nature. It's dumb. They need to die. They're all just General Purpose Computing devices -- Yes, even mobiles are.
1980's Mk.II feels like it's right around the corner. It gets closer the slower the console hardware cycles.
Has Kaz Hirai spiked Microsoft and EA's water coolers because their staff are coming out with some absolutely outrageous statements. Have IQs dropped sharply while I was away?
Thank you.TheEvilCheese said:
on topic, he did say the Architecture was a generation ahead of current high-end PCs, I'm at best a rookie when it comes to more advanced knowledge of hardware and its inner-workings, than the basic setup knowledge of how to assemble a desktop, so exactly how much does the architecture affect performance?
with the way he words things it sounds like it affects performance by a considerable amount, though i get the feeling that's wrong and i think the other posts with statistics prove it.
Eh. Whichever you slice this, it's still condescending of EA. It's condescending and it's a little useless. It's been said a hundred times before - yes, the Xbone is one step ahead. *Right now*. It won't be in a year or two. All this is is EA and Microsoft trying to give each other a leg-up in marketing.Gaijud said:
Give it a while and I guarantee we'll start hearing about the frustrating proclivities of the Xbone, and of how the indie scene is desperately struggling to have any sort of presence on that platform.
It's all fine and dandy to talk about ghz and tbs and blah blah blah blah. Listen, these guys are idiots who fired the entire PR department last Friday, but hes got a point. Kind of.
Consoles are dedicated machines... I mean, less so since they're just so massively eager to try to be PCs... but they're still dedicated. They don't have to worry about running unsupported virtual machines or programming software or whatever. They can dedicate more of their hardware to specific functions, so their 8gb can be used more effectively than our 8gb. Hell... probably more effective than our 16gb. I mean, it was impressive what they were pulling off with just mere 512mb of RAM. You try playing Bioshock Infinite on a PC with only 512mb of RAM.
That's why it's even more important for them to be focusing on console gaming and not surfing the web and shit. The guy would've had a point if most of those new 7.5gbs weren't being spent on background nonsense.
Consoles are dedicated machines... I mean, less so since they're just so massively eager to try to be PCs... but they're still dedicated. They don't have to worry about running unsupported virtual machines or programming software or whatever. They can dedicate more of their hardware to specific functions, so their 8gb can be used more effectively than our 8gb. Hell... probably more effective than our 16gb. I mean, it was impressive what they were pulling off with just mere 512mb of RAM. You try playing Bioshock Infinite on a PC with only 512mb of RAM.
That's why it's even more important for them to be focusing on console gaming and not surfing the web and shit. The guy would've had a point if most of those new 7.5gbs weren't being spent on background nonsense.
So the Playstation 4 and the Xbox One are more powerful than any PC currently on the market?
Just wait six months.
Incidentally, when do the PS4 and Xbone arrive in stores?
Just wait six months.
Incidentally, when do the PS4 and Xbone arrive in stores?
My laptop outperforms my sister's 360. And it's older than the 360. And this elected spokes-whore from EA thinks we're gonna believe a word blindly? EA barely knows their asses from their elbows half the time. I'm not gonna feed into this spokesperson song and dance routine and I pray you guys don't either.