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Your PC is a random collection of off-the-shelf stock parts, while each component of a game console is entirely custom-designed. This isn't the same as any regular x86 PC.

The PS4 is a x86-64 PC with some custom kit. This isn't much more powerful on paper than my current Workstation at work.

Sorry this just isn't that impressive.

Edited 2013-02-21 19:58 UTC

As 8 core Jaguar core CPUs are not out yet to be benchmarked, you can't say you have a better CPU.

As the next AMD graphic hardware isn't released yet, you can't say you have a better GPU.

And PS4's RAM is GDDR5. The best memory you can have is DDR3 which is much slower.

yes you can
no matter what they will call their gpu it will still bei a radeon hd 7850 oc
just compare cores, bus, throughput and performance
but they will manufacture it in a newer process to get powerconsumption down

I/O these days is the bottle neck.

My ancient nforce P5N-SLI machine with a Core 2 duo 8400 machine is playing Crysis 3 just off ultra settings.

I have maxed out this machine, and the only speed improvement I got going is overclocking the CPU (which means better RAM, since the multiplier is locked on intel chips).

My motherboard was purchased 6 or 7 years ago, the CPU is a E8400 and I am running 8GB of DDR2. Both of which is ancient by today's standards.

My best upgrade to my battle-rig ... two raided SSD drives. VS2012 opens instantly from cold boot. Win8 takes a few seconds to load once I am past the BIOS screens.

Processing power, ram and latency isn't a problem. Disk I/O is.

Edited 2013-02-21 20:08 UTC

Given AMDs track record the past many years, it's a pretty safe bet though.

Jaguar is the successor to the Bobcat core found in Brazos APUs. This is AMD's competitor to Atom, it won't be a particularly high performance part. It's supposed to be a substantial improvement over Bobcat, but it's not meant to compete with more power hungry desktop cores.


Sony has stated that the GPU is capable of 1.84 TFLOPs which is a little more than a Radeon 7850 (1.76 TFLOPS). AMD isn't introducing a radically new micro-architecture with Sea Islands so I think it's fair to say one of the high end Soutern Islands GPUs (like the 7870 GHz Edition or higher) will easily outperform it.


This is true, but it's also shared between the GPU and CPU whereas in a typical gaming PC the video card will have it's own dedicated pool of GDDR5. There are certainly advantages to a unified memory architecture. In particular, there are certain tasks that would be well suited to running on a GPU if it were not for the cost of shuffling data between main and video memory, but there are other tasks in which the greater aggregate bandwidth of a system with separate main and graphics memory wins out.

I'm not sure what the big deal is though. Apart from certain classes of problems for which the Cell was particularly well suited, the PS3 was not terribly impressive compared to PCs of the time.

You have a PC that is equipped with GDDR5? Wow, you must be a millionaire or something and have a completely custom system all the way up from the motherboard.

Your current PC is highly constrained by it's memory bus. Your CPU will spend the majority of it's time waiting whilst reading or writing RAM. Caching helps this a bit, but doesn't avoid the problem. If you have a decent GPU then that will have it's own VRAM on a wider memory bus, but that too is a constraint since the separation of system (CPU) RAM and video RAM requires transfers between the two, which will be conducted at system RAM speeds.

The new PS4 will have a radically faster memory bus than your PC, and a unified memory architecture. The CPU and GPU will spend an order of magnitude less of their time waiting for RAM, so they get to run at closer to their full potential speed significantly more of the time.

Not necessarily, the amount of wasted cycles depends on the workload as well. Incidentally, gaming workloads tend to have higher computational densities than IO-bound workloads, e.g. databases. Which means gaming processors tend to have high utilization rates.

Furthermore, unified memory models usually lead to an even bigger central bottleneck. Which means that a faster memory bus is required, just to keep up with "traditional" distributed/multi bus designs. However, the PS4 memory bus, albeit faster than the one found in off the shelf PC parts, is not orders of magnitude faster than a commodity part. So the claim of "orders of magnitude" increase in performance is baseless. The use of DDR5 does address some of the issues with traditional AMD's APUs crippled by DDR3 channels though.

Unified memory architectures are usually done for cost reasons, not performance. In this case, the goal of the PS4 is to offer a comparable level of performance to a modern PC, with lower overall cost (smaller motherboad, reduced amount of components, higher levels of integration, etc).

Edited 2013-02-21 20:06 UTC

Mine too but, on the other hand, it's also more expensive -- even assuming that the PS4 will debut at $499/$599 like the PS3 did back at the time.

Comparisons are a bit pointless if price is not taken into account, don't you think?


RT.

Edited 2013-02-22 08:53 UTC

The PS4 specs ARE pretty impressive because they have used the PS3 resources incredibely well: dynamic processing to alter priorities of processes, reallocating resources from lowest to highest.

Imagine what they will do with 8GB of GDDR5 Shared Memory GPU/HOST interface, considering the PS3 had hardwired 256MB GPU and 256MB HOST.

Btw: "The native operating system of the PlayStation 3 is CellOS, which is believed to be a branch from the FreeBSD project." Quote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_system_software

Another point I would like to make: 'BOTTLENECK'
The only bottlenecks today are CPU speeds and your personal budget for your computer builds.

CPU only plays a 15%-20% role in slowing down even the finest GPU.

Disk I/O? hogwash. Enter "RAID CALC" in a google search and then tell me again how Disk I/O limitations are the cause. You can build a disk subsystem that will saturate your meager 4GBs of RAM in a hurry.

There is no problem in this world that cannot be overcome by throwing enough money at, and fix it quickly. Oh no, sorry, I'm wrong: GREED! We can't fix GREED.

Wait, you're saying the PS4 is impressive because the PS3 was impressive?



Wow, no shit, Sherlock.