Xbox One in trouble.

[Garson007]

More complexity = more things that can go wrong.

So like a modern day OS then?

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

Both were flat, but MS did get out of it worse. E3 went better for Sony, but not because of games. MS had more exclusives at E3. Fact.

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.

MS cannot compete digitally when physical media exists. Steam never had to.

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?

You can keep on ignoring the CPU if you wish.

Edit: Okay, let me clarify a bit. The dedicated GPGPU stuff cannot do heavy logic and is very limited in its scope. With HSA you can use the CPU to interpret the numbers that have been crunched by the GPU and feed those results back into the GPU. To do this you'll need more memory than just the cache will provide, hence the need for embedded RAM. If you don't do that the GPU will first store the information on the RAM and the CPU has to fetch it, because there is not enough cache space for everything - and you lose the advantage of what HSA offers you. This is why the XBO could possibly have better physics and AI (because of HSA), even if it's not likely to ever win graphical fidelity. The XBO is less likely, but still possible, to also be better at CPU intensive tasks.

 

[Garson007]

MS had to put the eSRAM buffer in or they would of been screwed.

I'd argue that the eSRAM is the reason that the GPU cores are limited - not the other way around. Die only has so much space.

 

[Ancalagon]

Thank you for confirming that you work for MS. Now I understand why you so zealously defend the XBO.

So like a modern day OS then?

The question is why put unnecessary complexity into it? I dont want to my console to crash, and making it more complicated than it needs to be, increases the likelihood that it will.

MS cannot compete digitally when physical media exists. Steam never had to.

Uhh Steam still does compete with physical media! I can go into a store today and buy a physical PC game.

You can keep on ignoring the CPU if you wish.

How am I ignoring it?

In all 3 cases, data needs to be transferred between the CPU and GPU. Only the path by which that is done changes.

 

[Garson007]

Thank you for confirming that you work for MS. Now I understand why you so zealously defend the XBO.

I don't. ;/

The question is why put unnecessary complexity into it? I dont want to my console to crash, and making it more complicated than it needs to be, increases the likelihood that it will.

Fair enough, you want only the game-playing OS. The XBO is not for you. If I was to buy a console, it would need to be a media centre as well.

Uhh Steam still does compete with physical media! I can go into a store today and buy a physical PC game.

No it doesn't. Those physical copies activate on Steam. Valve wants you in their ecosystem and they succeed in that with activation based physical media.

How am I ignoring it?

In all 3 cases, data needs to be transferred between the CPU and GPU. Only the path by which that is done changes.

Read my edit.

 

[Mike Hoxbig]

Fair enough, you want only the game-playing OS. The XBO is not for you.

See, this is the problem. It is a gaming console. It should do that well first, and then accommodate everything else. A higher price tag might then be justified.

You can't just tell the core market "well if you want better games then this isn't for you".

 

[Ancalagon]

Edit: Okay, let me clarify a bit. The dedicated GPGPU stuff cannot do heavy logic and is very limited in its scope. With HSA you can use the CPU to interpret the numbers that have been crunched by the GPU and feed those results back into the GPU. To do this you'll need more memory than just the cache will provide, hence the need for embedded RAM. If you don't do that the GPU will first store the information on the RAM and the CPU has to fetch it, because there is not enough cache space for everything - and you lose the advantage of what HSA offers you. This is why the XBO could possibly have better physics and AI (because of HSA), even if it's not likely to ever win graphical fidelity. The XBO is less likely, but still possible, to also be better at CPU intensive tasks.

In either case, bandwidth to memory is high enough and latency low enough for it not to matter. The benefits offered by the ESRAM - and remember, this is with far lower bandwidth - are not enough to make any significant difference.

GDDR5 latency will only be a real problem if the latency is more than a frame, which it wont be, else they would not use GDDR5 in GPUs.

Why would you need the ESRAM for HSA? You dont.

I don't. ;/

So are you affiliated with MS in any way? You really dont want to answer that question, do you?

No it doesn't. Those physical copies activate on Steam. Valve wants you in their ecosystem and they succeed in that with activation based physical media.

Uhhh - how do copies that I can buy in a store and then activate on Steam benefit Steam? Does Valve get any money from them?

With physical copies, MS benefits from any sale, physical or not.

 

[Garson007]

See, this is the problem. It is a gaming console. It should do that well first, and then accommodate everything else. A higher price tag might then be justified.

You can't just tell the core market "well if you want better games then this isn't for you".

It does accommodate gamers first and foremost. That's what most of the money is being sunk into. From exclusives to its hardware. If all MS wanted to do was a media box they could have slashed the hardware and sell a $199 box for all your media needs. No, what MS is looking for here is convergence. If the gamers are incapable of wanting convergence in their console then it really is not made for them.

 

[Maverick Jester]

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.

Totally, totally agree with you... It's a fantastic idea, albeit nothing new.

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.

Yeah, and graphic fidelity is a large part of the gaming landscape. While some will say it's not all about graphics- a large part of it is...

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.

For all intents and purposes it's two OS's. It's a great concept, and in time, greater scalability will see this come to the PC space. It is actually a really great achievement, that Microsoft could develop this approach. It may look useless at the moment, and in the context of a gaming console it largely is... But the possibilities are fantastic.

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

Yip, they forgot their core market there. But it is easier to force this on consumers who have a dedicated reason behind purchasing the console, than trying to attract consumers looking for something more than that.

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?

That is my question. Whilst I appreciate the Steam-esque approach, who is to say that Microsoft's way will work?

 

[Garson007]

In either case, bandwidth to memory is high enough and latency low enough for it not to matter. The benefits offered by the ESRAM - and remember, this is with far lower bandwidth - are not enough to make any significant difference.

GDDR5 latency will only be a real problem if the latency is more than a frame, which it wont be, else they would not use GDDR5 in GPUs.

Again it's about HSA. I can't drill this home any more than I already have. It's also certainly something that has nothing to do with framerate. It's about being capable and not being capable.

Why would you need the ESRAM for HSA? You dont.

You need a large cache to use it affectively. eSRAM goes a long way towards doing that.

So are you affiliated with MS in any way? You really dont want to answer that question, do you?

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

Uhhh - how do copies that I can buy in a store and then activate on Steam benefit Steam? Does Valve get any money from them?

They get you in their ecosystem. You'll see their adverts. You'll participate in their sales. You'll even post on their forums.

With physical copies, MS benefits from any sale, physical or not.

Irrelevant, it does nothing to lock people into the digital ecosystem.

 

[Maverick Jester]

It does accommodate gamers first and foremost. That's what most of the money is being sunk into. From exclusives to its hardware. If all MS wanted to do was a media box they could have slashed the hardware and sell a $199 box for all your media needs. No, what MS is looking for here is convergence. If the gamers are incapable of wanting convergence in their console then it really is not made for them.

That, and they probably expected that sales of a dedicated media box would be rather low.

Their hardware and system implementation were never an issue for me. Their policies were.

 

[Mike Hoxbig]

It does accommodate gamers first and foremost. That's what most of the money is being sunk into. From exclusives to its hardware. If all MS wanted to do was a media box they could have slashed the hardware and sell a $199 box for all your media needs. No, what MS is looking for here is convergence. If the gamers are incapable of wanting convergence in their console then it really is not made for them.

If they did that, it would have flopped badly. The Xbox is a successful product so it would make sense for them to channel their media ideas into it. Unfortunately it seems like while this may not have taken precedence over gaming, it has affected the type of product that they can release, at a slight cost to gaming. The problem with this approach is that pure gamers would be upset at getting a bunch of things that they don't want, rather than have them as add-ons.

The Xbox 360 succeeded last gen for this reason, while the PS3 didn't do as well as expected for the same reason. The roles have reversed this time, but the difference is that MS doesn't have the huge market that Sony had when they tried this with the PS3.

 

[Maverick Jester]

You need a large cache to use it affectively. eSRAM goes a long way towards doing that.

Could you expand on this?

 

[Maverick Jester]

If they did that, it would have flopped badly. The Xbox is a successful product so it would make sense for them to channel their media ideas into it. Unfortunately it seems like while this may not have taken precedence over gaming, it has affected the type of product that they can release, at a slight cost to gaming. The problem with this approach is that pure gamers would be upset at getting a bunch of things that they don't want, rather than have them as add-ons.

The Xbox 360 succeeded last gen for this reason, while the PS3 didn't do as well as expected for the same reason. The roles have reversed this time, but the difference is that MS doesn't have the huge market that Sony had when they tried this with the PS3.

+1.

 

[Chevron]

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.

This is it pretty much right there.

Not sure what Garson007 is smoking or how much he is getting paid.

 

[Garson007]

Could you expand on this?

To effectively use the number crunching ability of the GPU and the logical ability of the CPU affectively from within the same data set, it is best if the entire dataset can be hosted locally where it can be fetched in a low latency environment when and if required. Passing between the CPU and the GPU is not a bandwidth intensive task, but a latency intensive task.

 

[Mouse]

Seems like a few new electronic engineers pop up whenever there's a console announcement

 

[Ancalagon]

Again it's about HSA. I can't drill this home any more than I already have. It's also certainly something that has nothing to do with framerate. It's about being capable and not being capable.

You need a large cache to use it affectively. eSRAM goes a long way towards doing that.

No, I think you actually dont know how ESRAM would affect HSA, which is why you refuse to explain.

Again, both the PS4 and the XBO support HSA. It is not XBO exclusive. You are arguing that the implementation of HSA will be superior in the XBO, but you have nothing to back that up besides saying it has to do with the ESRAM. How? How exactly does the ESRAM make HSA so much better on the XBO?

The answer is, it doesnt.

They get you in their ecosystem. You'll see their adverts. You'll participate in their sales. You'll even post on their forums.


Irrelevant, it does nothing to lock people into the digital ecosystem.

You are failing to explain to me why Steam and XBL differ in this regard. Buying a game at retail does in no way lock me into Steam - some games can be activated on Steam even when they dont require Steam to run. No such case exists for XBL.

To effectively use the number crunching ability of the GPU and the logical ability of the CPU affectively from within the same data set, it is best if the entire dataset can be hosted locally where it can be fetched in a low latency environment when and if required. Passing between the CPU and the GPU is not a bandwidth intensive task, but a latency intensive task.

Gah!

It depends on what you want to do with the data.

How much worse is the latency of GDDR5 compared to the ESRAM?

AND

What is the latency tolerance of tasks that will be run on the GPU, considering your desired frame time?

Also, if the dataset that needs to be computed by the GPU is larger than 32mb - considering especially that during this time, other tasks may require the ESRAM - you are out of luck.

And that is another problem - the ESRAM acts as a bottleneck.

 

[Maverick Jester]

To effectively use the number crunching ability of the GPU and the logical ability of the CPU affectively from within the same data set, it is best if the entire dataset can be hosted locally where it can be fetched in a low latency environment when and if required. Passing between the CPU and the GPU is not a bandwidth intensive task, but a latency intensive task.

I understand that part... Why is it needed for effective HSA functionality? I think that is too broad a statement.

It is needed for Microsoft's iteration of the HSA solution, yes. The addition of eSRAM is seen more as an act to address the large imbalance in bandwidth. Latency was never the issue for the XBO.

 

[Ancalagon]

I understand that part... Why is it needed for effective HSA functionality? I think that is too broad a statement.

It is needed for Microsoft's iteration of the HSA solution, yes. The addition of eSRAM is seen more as an act to address the large imbalance in bandwidth. Latency was never the issue for the XBO.

Pretty sure the ESRAM was added to try to address the fact that the PS4 is using GDDR5, which offers much higher bandwidth.

 

[Maverick Jester]

Again, both the PS4 and the XBO support HSA. It is not XBO exclusive. You are arguing that the implementation of HSA will be superior in the XBO, but you have nothing to back that up besides saying it has to do with the ESRAM. How? How exactly does the ESRAM make HSA so much better on the XBO?

The answer is, it doesnt.

This is how I understand it as well. ESRAM should help the bandwidth for the computational tasks (which is needed given the dual-OS on hypervisor setup) but the GDDR5 RAM is far superior for graphics. And with the additional shaders as well, I wonder what the difference in fidelity would be (if ever).