Strazdas said:
As a person who has a stronger CPU than GPU, i curse every developer that thinks like that.
The needs of the many...
Going forward you've really got to invest more in the GPU. While it won't matter for the consoles, this does mean that games will be designed with offloading in mind. That really isn't being caused by consoles, the consoles are just catching up with the times, but these will expedite the transition in computer software that was already heading that way. So whether wanted or not this will end up impacting pc owners. Fortunately, the CPU does pick up the slack if other resources get maximized but you're also talking about crusing for a burnout if your GPU is running on the highest settings all the time.
I can't think of any reason why developers wouldn't go this route. It is extremely efficient and GPU/RAM is a lot cheaper and/or a lot more upgradeable than the CPU is nowadays. I still regret having gone for a new i7 over a comparable i5. I could have spent that $100 on a second video card at the time to double my performance. Now I can't find the same video card for sale even though my motherboard would allow me to bridge three. So I'm loaded up on 16GB of 1866 mhz of RAM that I can turn into 32GB as needed with a decent video card that will end up being my weak point in another four years. So why do you think developers should go the least efficient and most expensive route?
Glaice said:
My 2012 video card (7850 HD 2GB) pulls about 1.7 TFLOPS, you aren't impressing this PC gamer Microsoft.
Why is it console systems are always behind the times with PC architecture?
Designing a console isn't about designing a cutting edge console. It's about designing the best machine they can within a price range consumers will buy it in. It is a terrible idea to roll out a $600+ machine and expect consumers to go for it as Sony already learned. That one video card you're talking about is around $180 bucks by itself. That would be almost half the price of the ps4.
People who expect to be shocked or impressed by consoles don't get what the point of a console is. It's an affordable all in one gaming system that you can plug and play without worrying about anything. The developers are able to then push the standard hardware beyond any other computer in that power range because they can optimize it whereas the number of hardware configurations on the pc level are almost infinite and so can't be optimized for.
What's important is that these machines are multiple times more powerful than the already very capable current generation. That's moving the ball significantly albeit not as significant as the leap from ps2/Xbox ->ps3\360. Still, as machines get more and more powerful you shouldn't expect to maintain the same multitude of times of improvement. Improving 10 units of whatever by ten times isn't nearly as significant as improving 100 units of something by three times.
Also, mark my words. There will come a day when the amount of available processing outstrips the demands of even the most demanding video games. Just as there was a time when word processing actually taxed computers and we eventually outstripped that, games will get to a point where innovation is the limited resource. We've been getting very impressive graphically. I expect this generation to be more about improving physics and AI than necessarily just graphics. Though improving physics actually will improve graphics as our brain knows when things aren't behaving properly.
do the thing your designed to - process stuff -.-