Xbox One in trouble.

[Ancalagon]

A lot of people seem to be saying this is Steve Ballmer's fault. He hasn't exactly hit any home runs lately - when was the last time MS announced something that you made you go "Woah thats cool!". The last MS product that was well received, that I can remember, was Windows 7.

Windows 8 - Turkey.
Surface tablets - I dont know where you would get one, even if you wanted one.
Windows Phone 8 - admittedly the best of their recent products and actually has a chance in the market place.
Xbox One - overpriced, focusing on features most of us dont care about, initially having super strong always on DRM, which MS had to backtrack on. Weaker than the PS4 while also much more expensive.

$100 difference will probably be about R1000 in SA - R1000 is nearly two games. And you get a weaker console if you pay the extra cash.

 

[Maverick Jester]

A lot of people seem to be saying this is Steve Ballmer's fault. He hasn't exactly hit any home runs lately - when was the last time MS announced something that you made you go "Woah thats cool!". The last MS product that was well received, that I can remember, was Windows 7.

Windows 8 - Turkey.
Surface tablets - I dont know where you would get one, even if you wanted one.
Windows Phone 8 - admittedly the best of their recent products and actually has a chance in the market place.
Xbox One - overpriced, focusing on features most of us dont care about, initially having super strong always on DRM, which MS had to backtrack on. Weaker than the PS4 while also much more expensive.

$100 difference will probably be about R1000 in SA - R1000 is nearly two games. And you get a weaker console if you pay the extra cash.

I do agree with the assertion that Ballmer's time at the helm has been sub-par.

 

[B3ns]

Glad MS has seen there mistake and turned it around. There is competition in the console market again. Which is good for us all. Might be buying the Xbox one after the PS4 now. Hopefully they will release a version without the kinect.

 

[Garson007]

Based on what?

Low latency memory. It will allow for better use of a mixture of CPU and GPU compute (HSA). Not everything is about raw power. If it was AMD would be beating Intel right about now.

 

[Garson007]

They won't release a kinect-free console. All first party games will likely be online, use kinect and have smartglass features.

 

[Ancalagon]

Low latency memory. It will allow for better use of a mixture of CPU and GPU compute (HSA). Not everything is about raw power. If it was AMD would be beating Intel right about now.

I dont think it will be enough to matter.

Yes, DDR3 has marginally lower latency than GDDR5 - however, the bandwidth of GDDR5 is triple that of DDR3. That is why it is used in graphics cards! If graphics cards are not sensitive to the latencies of DDR3, why would a gaming console that is doing mostly graphics work?

Yes, the Xbox has that 32mb embedded ESRAM, which obviously will have pretty high latency. However, even the bandwidth to that, is lower than the PS4's bandwidth to main system memory!

The 10mb die in the 360 provided anti aliasing practically for free, but I dont see how the 32mb ESRAM can do much else. As games will now be rendered in higher resolutions, their framebuffers need to be larger, which is going to take up most of that 32mb anyway.

EDIT: If Forza 5 is online only, there is literally zero reason for me to have any interest in this console.

Garson, why do you like MS so much?

 

[Mike Hoxbig]

All first party games will likely be online, use kinect and have smartglass features.

Doubt that now, not after the sh*tstorm they created. In any event, it's one of the reasons why I will not be buying anything at launch, but rather wait to see how both companies approach things.

 

[Maverick Jester]

Low latency memory. It will allow for better use of a mixture of CPU and GPU compute (HSA). Not everything is about raw power. If it was AMD would be beating Intel right about now.

Yes, but you also have to look at why they took the different approaches. My take:

Microsoft sacrificed the higher memory bandwidth for lower latency, because they are running a more task-oriented dual-OS and hypervisor on the XBO. This is in line with their proposed all-in-one solution that the XBO is meant to provide.

Sony didn't need to concern themselves with that approach, and have produced a more powerful gaming machine.

I still don't think that the XBO will have better AI and physics- the APU's are very much the same from what they have shown.

 

[Maverick Jester]

Garson, why do you like MS so much?

If I may:

Because despite the flawed execution of their idea, the XBO all in one concept is a very good one in the long term. It just seems that Microsoft, similar to Sony before them, had to learn the hard way that the market is not yet ready for it.

Seriously- with the removal of the 24 hour check-in and shared gaming restrictions, I have to make a choice again

I'm just disappointed that they cut off their noses to spite their face, in their retraction of the original policies. They should have left some of the options available to those that wanted and could have made use of them.

 

[Ancalagon]

If I may:

Because despite the flawed execution of their idea, the XBO all in one concept is a very good one in the long term. It just seems that Microsoft, similar to Sony before them, had to learn the hard way that the market is not yet ready for it.

Seriously- with the removal of the 24 hour check-in and shared gaming restrictions, I have to make a choice again

I'm just disappointed that they cut off their noses to spite their face, in their retraction of the original policies. They should have left some of the options available to those that wanted and could have made use of them.

But gees, they did a bad job in the execution! Like wow, they screwed it up badly. They practically handed victory to Sony on a silver platter.

My take on it:
1. Hopefully the memory architecture will be similar to that of the 360 and thus not requiring as much of a learning curve. If the PS4 is easier to program for, its games will look better, and this is not counting the massive 50% shader advantage it has. I think they might have overcomplicated the memory system in order to save money by using DDR3.
2. The operating systems used - 3 of them! - also sounds like complete overkill, and more things that could go wrong. And is anyone going to want to have a game on one half of the screen while the sport is on the other? I cant think of that being useful in practice.
3. The all in one stuff is nice, but in their initial presentation, they focused on it far too much. People want games!
4. Everyone says they want to do a Steam, but they have never had good sales in the marketplace as it exists now. What reason is there to believe that the XBO will have sales, or would have had sales if MS had their way with DRM?

 

[madtza]

Well looking at the online reactions, a lot of people are still bashing MS. I presume a lot of these angry people are PS fanbois who feel like they've lost some kind of leverage against Xbox fanbois?


Companies make wrong decisions all the time and personally I'm glad they listened.

Sony themselves have backtracked on a couple things with the PS3 and their handling of the PSN hacking wasn't particularly a positive one. You can even take the MTN uncapped BIS reinstatement as another example.

Who knows, they might even reduce the price or come out with other cheaper base models.

 

[Garson007]

Yes, DDR3 has marginally lower latency than GDDR5 - however, the bandwidth of GDDR5 is triple that of DDR3. That is why it is used in graphics cards! If graphics cards are not sensitive to the latencies of DDR3, why would a gaming console that is doing mostly graphics work?

Yes, the Xbox has that 32mb embedded ESRAM, which obviously will have pretty high latency. However, even the bandwidth to that, is lower than the PS4's bandwidth to main system memory!

Bandwidth is not everything. You're forgetting that the CPU on a console still has to do a lot of work. Given that there will be 8 CPUs, I highly doubt all the logic it will perform will be available in its limited on-die cache. That is it will have to fetch regularly from a high latency ram like DDR5, rather than ridiculously low latency ram like eSRAM. If you want to employ any reasonable amounts of HSA level computing you'll have to fetch from ram and it will cripple the PS4 in those situations. HSA can be used for things like AI and physics, much better than just the CPU you can do.

The proof will be in the pudding, but I seriously can't believe people still take raw numbers as the proof. AMD is releasing a 5Ghz CPU. You think that means anything?

 

[Ancalagon]

Well looking at the online reactions, a lot of people are still bashing MS. I presume a lot of these angry people are PS fanbois who feel like they've lost some kind of leverage against Xbox fanbois?


Companies make wrong decisions all the time and personally I'm glad they listened.

Sony themselves have backtracked on a couple things with the PS3 and their handling of the PSN hacking wasn't particularly a positive one. You can even take the MTN uncapped BIS reinstatement as another example.

Who knows, they might even reduce the price or come out with other cheaper base models.

<- Current Xbox360 owner, never owned a Sony game console.

I dont have a dog in this fight - I dont care which console anyone else buys. I'm going to buy the console that makes the most sense for me. And we are debating the pros and cons of the various decisions that both MS and Sony have made in this generation.

 

[Garson007]

I still don't think that the XBO will have better AI and physics- the APU's are very much the same from what they have shown.

You can perform more data-intensive HSA calculations without having to fetch from system memory. That's huge.

 

[Ancalagon]

Bandwidth is not everything. You're forgetting that the CPU on a console still has to do a lot of work. Given that there will be 8 CPUs, I highly doubt all the logic it will perform will be available in its limited on-die cache. That is it will have to fetch regularly from a high latency ram like DDR5, rather than ridiculously low latency ram like eSRAM. If you want to employ any reasonable amounts of HSA level computing you'll have to fetch from ram and it will cripple the PS4 in those situations. HSA can be used for things like AI and physics, much better than just the CPU you can do.

The proof will be in the pudding, but I seriously can't believe people still take raw numbers as the proof. AMD is releasing a 5Ghz CPU. You think that means anything?

Why would GDDR5 cripple in it when that is exactly what ALL current existing GPGPUs cards, such as the Tesla, use?

Are you affiliated with MS in any way?

 

[Garson007]

2. The operating systems used - 3 of them! - also sounds like complete overkill, and more things that could go wrong. And is anyone going to want to have a game on one half of the screen while the sport is on the other? I cant think of that being useful in practice.

It's really only two OSes. While the third one is what handles the switching and running of the other two. I think it's brilliant and has a lot of potential for the PC industry. Especially if you can then dedicated an OS to a certain task. Remember that Windows is built for -everything-, dedicated performance will be better. Yes, more RAM is likely to be used, but RAM isn't really an issue today.

3. The all in one stuff is nice, but in their initial presentation, they focused on it far too much. People want games!

They only showed games at E3. What exactly did Sony do?

4. Everyone says they want to do a Steam, but they have never had good sales in the marketplace as it exists now. What reason is there to believe that the XBO will have sales, or would have had sales if MS had their way with DRM?

What was the reason to believe that Steam would ever have sales? Steam was adopted before it had any.

 

[Garson007]

Why would GDDR5 cripple in it when that is exactly what ALL current existing GPGPUs cards, such as the Tesla, use?

Are you affiliated with MS in any way?

So Tesla also has a CPU it shares memory addresses with?

No, no MS affiliation. I also have never owned an XBox.

 

[Ancalagon]

It's really only two OSes. While the third one is what handles the switching and running of the other two. I think it's brilliant and has a lot of potential for the PC industry. Especially if you can then dedicated an OS to a certain task. Remember that Windows is built for -everything-, dedicated performance will be better. Yes, more RAM is likely to be used, but RAM isn't really an issue today.

More complexity = more things that can go wrong.

They only showed games at E3. What exactly did Sony do?

Which announcement was better received? Sony's or MS's? Do I really need to dig up news articles for this one?

What was the reason to believe that Steam would ever have sales? Steam was adopted before it had any.

The landscape has changed and MS should know that. Back when Steam launched, there was nothing like it. Now Steam is old news. The landscape is different.

And still you cant explain to me why A) Ms is unable to have similar sales on its current XBL store, and B) why MS cannot have sales on its next gen XBL store even without always online DRM.

 

[Ancalagon]

So Tesla also has a CPU it shares memory addresses with?

I'm going to ask again, are you affiliated with MS in any way?

Even worse than that, Tesla must copy all of its memory across the PCI-E bus, and they STILL use GDDR5. Going from the PCI-E bus to GDDR5 will reduce latency massively, so how could GDDR5 be a bad move?

 

[B3ns]

In terms of hardware there is no doubt which the stronger system is.

The PS4 has stronger hardware compared to the Xboxone, whether it will be used is the question though.


CPU: Both consoles are using pretty much the same cpu, no advantage here either way.

GPU & RAM: Here we have the major difference, the consoles are both making use of graphics cards comparable to Radeon HD 700 series. You might think they are similar but they are not, the PS4 has 1152 GPU cores compared the the Xboxone of 768. The peak shader throughput is obviously different as well. The ps4 does 1.84 TFLOPS vs the xboxones 1.23 TFLOPS. That already is a pretty big difference before even considering the Ram

They both have 8gigs of RAM, however ps4 has GDDR5 vs DDR3, now guess what the G stands for in GDDR. Thats right "Graphics". This is why GDDR5 is on gaming pc graphics cards, this ram is best suited for graphics while ddr3 is more for system memory. MS had to put the eSRAM buffer in or they would of been screwed.

In terms of bandwidth the ps4 has 176 GB/s compared to the xboxone of 68.3 GB/s.

This is not a surprise though, the ps4 has been focused more towards gaming while the xbox has been focused more towards a entertainment system. Hence the hardware differences.