EA Exec: Xbox One and PS4 Are "A Generation Ahead" Of PC

[gorfias]

Mircosoft: "Oh dear. I dropped a few grand into your wallet. Silly Me!"

They need to get out of this mentality that all PC Gamers have some gray desktop from 1999.

All? Most? I wonder what their assumptions are?

In my salad days, I spent about $600 on desktop computers. New consoles appeared to be about twice as good (more like a $1,200 desktop of the times).

Now I am able to afford a $1,200 system. I'm hoping the PS4 can kick it's butt anyway but doubt it. But are the vast majority of gamers still in their salad days? Still at $600 desktops and laptops? I don't doubt the PS4 will, again, act like that $1,200 desktop.

I've heard a ridiculous portion of PC users are still using Windows XP. My nephew has a newer laptop that is probably less powerful than a current Xbox 360. (He just got a steam account and is just getting into PC gaming but I cautioned him to check system requirements before buying anything). I don't doubt the Xbox 1 will perform well more than double his laptop's capabilities.

If they're saying that Gen 8 will look twice as good as an I7-3770K with GTX Titan? My sides would hurt laughing. But most gamer PCs? It's possible.

EDIT: Drool Not double this, though, this isn't something virtually anyone can afford!!!

 

[sagitel]

so EA is being EA?

anyway as many others said before (and i didnt understand a word from their specs and technical things) the Xbone and PS4 are ahead in design but that wont last long. even if it would the pcs are still more powerful and faster. so whats the point?


i was wondering the the Xbone would use IE for browsing?

 

[Lightknight]

Pretty much this. Going by pure numbers on there, it then seems to be somewhere in the area of an AMD 8350 and a 7850 for the PS4 and a 7770/7790 for the Xbone... that's a decent midrange/low-end set-up but nowhere near a high-end PC.

Those numbers are making some significant assumptions that haven't been established it.

It also fails to account for GPU differences as well as significant optimizations of consoles that allow the dev kits and software to run closer to the metal, so to speak. This is how the ps3 and 360 can handle playing a game like Skyrim that in turn had minimum requirements well above the 6-7 year old machine specs. It isn't magic. It's that consoles function a little differently than pcs do because all the components are custom fit and optimized for eachother. Some parts are even customized and we don't yet know what that means. I'd say we're looking at midrange to mid-high. I would be surprised if it was high-end. I would be amazed if it somehow turned into a generation ahead. However, what is the average pc right now? This is the only reason I can think for the statement being said, that the ps4 is ahead of the average pc ownership cycle by a generation. I can stomach that.

In any event, the specs you show do shed some pretty amazing light on just how much better these consoles are than their predecessors. There's a lot to be hopeful about. Depending on the price, if it stays below $600 then we're looking at a great deal with $/performance.

The 15-20% number is based off my own tests with a setup similar to what has been mentioned. That was a 9500M GS and a 2GHz C2D in my case, which match up, roughly, to what's in a 360 on raw performance - it was an old lappy - i do actually still have some youtube videos hanging around from ages ago when i first had it and was all excitable (if you want the links i can message them you, but they're pretty awful seeing as they're from 2009 AND i was a nub at creating videos back then), but they're not all that useful for gauging performance because, well FRAPs noms the CPU.

Some games, like CoD, tend to run a bit worse than consoles at the same settings, some games, like a good number of UE3 games such as mirrors edge, run a bit better. Source games, not entirely unsurprisingly, simply run vastly better on a PC. It's a bit all over the shop, but for the most part when a game isn't simply an obvious bad port, the deficit is around 15-20% at the same settings. I honestly don't know anything from games more recent than skyrim though, since i no longer have it (i gave it to a family member) but it was a nice experiment into the claims of optimization while i did have it.

Now, since i'm not writing on an established tech site (hey, if anyone here runs one, give me some time, and i'll get a nice article written up!), i don't expect you to have to believe me. But i do implore you to have a look yourself if you get a chance so you can verify it yourself, since that's the best evidence you'll get

Hmm, It looks like your experiment, if done correctly, would be showing the 360 as having been 15-20% better than its equivalent hardware specs inside a pc tower rather than a broad comment about all consoles. Considering that consoles have moved towards an x86 format (VERY smart of them to do), I don't think we'll see consoles ever beat the pc market again. But I do think that the consoles are significantly better than their exact counterparts like you noted. 15-20% sure isn't 400%, but that's a nice improvement and I don't know how much better they'd have gotten at that over the past decade. PCs can't optimize because the pc is an idea of a collection of seperate hardware more than any one object. It's faceless without any standard. You can have a nigh infinite combinations of cpu's, motherboards, RAM, HDD/SSD/Hybrid, and video cards and so custom bridges aren't being made in between them. Even alienware just puts the things together, they don't customize the optimize anything else. You can have a great combination of hardware but one piece of crap component that brings everything down. You can have minor compatibility issues between components that slow stuff down.

 

[ninjaRiv]

I'm a console gamer and even I know that's BS. They're... not doing so well with the marketing for the next gen.

 

[xdiesp]

Sounds good, as pc generations take about 6 months.

 

[KR4U55]

He probably meant the consoles are more powerful than a PC built with the same money, or just the average PC. You can, theorically, build a high end PC that would give the consoles a run for their money (heh), but I doubd they are "a generation" ahead.

PS: Kinda off topic but "XBone", first time I see it XD.

 

[jackdaniel0001]

I see a sliver of truth in what he says. I mean I'd believe him even more if he weren't a gaming executive, but just on what he said its definitely possible. We just have to wait and see.

 

[EstrogenicMuscle]

My God, a system like that would beat out a PlayStation 5. If they're saying "A generation ahead of PC", they must surely mean, "for the same price point". Because PCs are ways ahead of the hardware that is in the XBOX One/PlayStation 4. The exact same hardware and/or power that is in the PlayStation 4/XBOX One will run you about $600 right now. Which is more than they're likely to sell these systems. But that won't last long, and before too long, you'll be able to afford this hardware for $300. For goodness sake, Intel's Haswell series and and the HD 8000 series are right around the corner.

And by the time these systems are already released, the Haswell and HD 8000 series really will be released, and for several months. Generation ahead my foot.

Also, why would you use a Rosewill PSU with such expensive hardware? I would never trust a Rosewill to a Titan. Enermax or bust at that level. Maybe SeaSonic. Definitely nothing less.

 

[tangoprime]

Oh look at the guy trying to get attention, I'm surprized he didn't talk about the Wii U to lick their boots too since they said they were not going to develop for that platform and now they do.

He would have, but he already had two holes full, and still needed the remaining one to speak.

 

[Requia]

Anandtech had an interesting article on that: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6972/xbox-one-hardware-compared-to-playstation-4

Whooo specs! Thankyou.

Also holy shit that is bad. Which is good I guess, a current High-Mid range gaming PC should still be able to play new games in 5 years, thanks to devs needing to cater to shit hardware.

Though at this rate, MS should probably worry about integrated graphics being a competitor, AMD isn't going to sit on that tech, and if PCs start being universal gaming machines by default again, I doubt consoles will hold up well.

 

[The Lugz]

i'll post a few simple tech specs for those un-initiated, and you can see the utter absurdity..

1. The fact that you think posting "tech specs" makes you look like one of the "initiated". Newsflash: the actual initiated know you're a poser. Come back to me when you've built a couple rigs and have experienced first hand how little those specs actually mean for actual performance.
2. That you either a) didn't read the article or the press release at all, or b) didn't understand it. Apparently cutting edge architecture design is equivalent to "flying cars" and "holodecks for less than £1k". I guess the idea that a company that sells electronics, and another that designs the most widely used operating system in the world, might know a thing or two about good hardware design escapes you. And lets not even talk about how an integrated, compact, stable platform mass-manufactured and sold at cost might have some room for cost-efficiency advantages over a rig built by combining standardized, generalized, premium-priced modules.

I clearly stated those specs ARE for the uninitiated, ie, the things printed on the box and or mass marketed, because that's what the XbO is.
it would be useless talking about how ati cores relate to nvidia cores and the new technology underlying the xbox soc system, what a raster engine does or how a polymorph engine works, how a 192 bit buss varys from a 384 bit bus or how gddr varys from ddr or how the von neumann architecture benefits from system on chip architecture when i've clearly stated my post is not intended for those with a master's degree in computing.
I might aswell be talking in binary. shall we try that?
01110011 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100100 01110010 01100101 01100001 01101101
so frankly, yes it's a basic overview but that's all you need to see the bald faced lies M$ is spinning.

the fact of the matter is,
I have no misconception about what the XbO is, it's a complicated mas-produced piece of consumer electronics and as a gaming device it will doubtless be fit for purpose obviously any system has advantages and disadvantages over any other, that's just life. it aught to be more efficient than running a bunch of modules in a heavily overclocked system purely because its SOC but that doesn't make it the 'next generation of computing' either, they clearly said it 'outguns' the highest end pc's which is still a plain lie. it doesn't have more of anything. it may operate more effectively but that isn't outgunning something.

now, their saving grace is the cloud distributed computing back-end design which may well make up the difference, especially in multiplayer games only time will tell but that isn't what they said.

lastly,

Come back to me when you've built a couple rigs and have experienced first hand how little those specs actually mean for actual performance.

That's just the very definition of irony, my friend
essentially, you just did this.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/comics/critical-miss/10343

 

[AlwaysPractical]

snip

I agree. The pure specs usually don't measure up and yes, it will perform better than the set-up I mentioned but you can't really say this dude has even a grain of truth in his statement that the consoles will outperform the highest of the high-end. We're a long way away from any console outperforming something like dual GTX Titans (which is a viable set up for super-high end users).

 

[Azwrath]

"systems-on-a -chip (soc) architecture that unleashes magnitudes more compute and graphics power than the current generation of consoles. These architectures are a generation ahead of the highest end PC on the market"

Right. So from his statement it seems that both AMD and Intel have already developed much more powerful and cheaper products but they are keeping them off the PC market because.... they hate money and they just want to help the little guys like Sony and Microsoft get a head start?

Guess it's just EA being EA once more...

 

[Lightknight]

snip

I agree. The pure specs usually don't measure up and yes, it will perform better than the set-up I mentioned but you can't really say this dude has even a grain of truth in his statement that the consoles will outperform the highest of the high-end. We're a long way away from any console outperforming something like dual GTX Titans (which is a viable set up for super-high end users).

As it stands, there are clearly PCs more powerful. My discussion on optimization is just to explain why they're not low-end pc equivalents and are more mid-high than they'd be low-mid. My current home pc appears to be a bit better as well. Maybe a lot better but I'll wait and see.

The are two sorts of benefit of the doubt we can give him:

1. If he's talking about the average home pc vs the specs of the console. That is the only way it could be a generation ahead of the pc.

2. This is the most likely, what he said was that the "electronics and an integrated systems-on-a -chip (soc)" architecture was a generation ahead of computers. Perhaps he's not talking about video cards or cpu but rather the way they're optimized. In which case it'd be correct.

But... eh... we don't know what he actually meant, do we? Maybe 3. He is announcing that he is leaving Microsoft to become a host on the Onion.

 

[v3n0mat3]

Hey, look at that. nVIDIA is releasing a newer, better graphics card.

And they'll continue doing so, well after the systems are released.

PC will always be one step ahead of the game, dude. However; pandering to the consoles has resulted in the downgrade of quality with PC games. Yeah, I like my consoles too, but, I would like to see the advantages of investing in a nice PC show with game developers, you know? There are some great Indie titles (I just got done playing FTL), but, Indie titles don't take full advantage of current hardware. They can't.

 

[The Comfy Chair]

A standard PC setup handles it like this:
1. CPU explicitly copies the data to GPU memory
2. GPU completes the computation
3. CPU explicitly copies the result back to the CPU

And here is how the PS4 unified architecture works:

1. CPU simply passes the point to the GPU
2. GPU completes the computation
3. CPU can read it instantly. There is no copying back to the CPU.

I thought that the GPU actually ships the image straight out now, it doesn't go back to the CPU. Well, at least not anymore. There's obviously the message to say 'i've sent the frame out', but the whole frame isn't copied back into system memory, it would simply take too long and take up too much RAM (imagine shipping 60 frames of 1920x1080 data into system RAM every second, it'd nom all the bandwidth) . It may have been that way in the past, of course, when GPUs were less advanced and frames smaller in size (also, you'll have to forgive me, my knowledge of PC architectures doesn't extend much further back than 2008 or so, when i really started getting interested in it all after getting my first laptop), but at least nowadays i don't think it's the case.

The only advantage the APU would have in that sense would be that the 'ok, the frame buffer can take another delivery of a frame to prepare' message would get there a bit faster.

Anandtech has an article which gives an overview of the graphics pipeline:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6857/amd-stuttering-issues-driver-roadmap-fraps/2

Aside from the message back to the CPU to say 'moar information please', it's a one way street.

 

[Raesvelg]

2. This is the most likely, what he said was that the "electronics and an integrated systems-on-a -chip (soc)" architecture was a generation ahead of computers. Perhaps he's not talking about video cards or cpu but rather the way they're optimized. In which case it'd be correct.

If you actually go and read the piece that he wrote, rather than the bastardized version that Chalk has foisted on The Escapist to drum up nerd rage, that is precisely what he means.

This whole affair is just cynical "journalists" selectively quoting someone to generate rage, and more importantly page hits. I'd say that they should be ashamed of themselves, but I've long since come to the conclusion that they're not capable of the emotion.

 

[LAGG]

He must be talking about the Sim City servers.

 

[Lightknight]

2. This is the most likely, what he said was that the "electronics and an integrated systems-on-a -chip (soc)" architecture was a generation ahead of computers. Perhaps he's not talking about video cards or cpu but rather the way they're optimized. In which case it'd be correct.

If you actually go and read the piece that he wrote, rather than the bastardized version that Chalk has foisted on The Escapist to drum up nerd rage, that is precisely what he means.

This whole affair is just cynical "journalists" selectively quoting someone to generate rage, and more importantly page hits. I'd say that they should be ashamed of themselves, but I've long since come to the conclusion that they're not capable of the emotion.

If that's the case then he was being entirely honest in that regard. Thanks for confirming.

 

[DarkhoIlow]

Aside from the DDR5 RAM part which is expensive as hell and I don't think it's even manufactured yet to be sold (not in my country at least), the rest of the specs aren't even close to what a "high end PC is".

I would argue that my 3 year old PC is below what the next gen consoles can put out in terms of power: i5 processor, 8GB RAM, GTX 560Ti or so I think.

The rest of the PC gamers that do have high end machines surpasses this generation by a mile in terms of their configurations.