PS4 and Xbox One resolution / frame rate discussion

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

There is lots of room for speed in the SDK...

That small high performance RAM is a nice cache but complicated to manage... but if the SDK handles this automatically and also gets optimized more, then the XBO will get as fast as or faster than the PS4.

Also DX12 will provide lots of performance gains in the future :-)

 

I hold back with buying a console till they sorted out their stuff and more games get released... then i might buy one of them or both...

 

Phil Spencer recently said this about DX12

 

It will help developers on XBOX One. It?s not going to be a massive change but will unlock more capability for devs.

 

http://www.dualshockers.com/2014/06/17/phil-spencer-directx-12-not-a-massive-change-for-xbox-one-explains-expectations-from-1st-party-studios/

 

Like the cloud if people do not rein in their expectations realistically, you're only going to let yourself down with unrealistic expectations.

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

It seem that Microsoft has been boosting the GPU speed on the console to try to keep up the performance of the PS4 because of the DDR5 ram. I don't see this a big deal to get it as fast as ps4 because it can do 1080p at 30fps while PS4 does it at 60fps with small drops at times. It's great that Microsoft want to get more power out of the system but both can't do 4k gaming and I can see these boost will burn/crash the system.

 

The Xbox One can do 1080p @ 60fps as seen in Forza 5, however a lot of games are currently 900p (ish) @ 60fps so that 10% boost might just get them to 1080p 60fps, especially as devs get to grips with developing for the console more.

 

Just look at the PS3, that was really hard to develop for and it showed in the beginning, yet we have ended up with some great looking games once devs got used to developing for it.

[trooper11]

The Witcher 900/30 XB1

 

 

 

The Witcher 1080/30 PS4

 

 

 

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-06-18-witcher-3-e3-gameplay-demo-combat-was-deliberately-easy-cd-projekt-says

It sure sounds like they are still working on the release as they seem adamant about trying to hit 1080p on the X1. Unlike most announcements like this, this one seems to be the least set in stone.

Also, its interesting that they claim that both MS and Sony consider 900p to be the sweet spot. That is the first I have heard that to be claimed. If they are both telling developers that, that is an interesting bit of news.

[Showan]

I'm not sure if I'm properly understanding the concerns of the OP.  Are they concerned with the CPU/GPU performance increases shorting the consoles lifespan?  Or is the OP disappointed that the X1 can't do 4K gaming?

 

If you are concerned with over heating and fizzling out.  I believe MS programmed the One to be able to under clock itself if begins to get a little to hot.  http://gizmodo.com/the-xbox-one-can-tell-when-its-overheating-and-power-1122442616

 

As far as 4K gaming goes, I don't believe that's going to on peoples mind for this gen. Unless the cost of 4K TV's drastically drop all of a sudden.  

[Astra.Xtreme]

4K gaming won't happen for a long long time on any console, so there's no point in even discussing it.  You need an extremely powerful powerful PC to even reach that mark, so there is a LONG LONG way to go to get it to a console level.

[LaP]

It seem that Microsoft has been boosting the GPU speed on the console to try to keep up the performance of the PS4 because of the DDR5 ram. I don't see this a big deal to get it as fast as ps4 because it can do 1080p at 30fps while PS4 does it at 60fps with small drops at times. It's great that Microsoft want to get more power out of the system but both can't do 4k gaming and I can see these boost will burn/crash the system.

 

A good PC can't do 4k gaming. Even a sli 780ti will struggle with 4k.

 

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/gtx_780_ti_sli_geforce_review,23.html

[JonnyLH]

The esram is too small to be of significant value to the performance, plus the fact that the GPU plays the main part in graphics processing.. I don't see the X1 ever matching or exceeding the PS4 graphics capabilities unless they made some hardware changes.

A scratchpad which dedicates all of it's triple figure BW speed to the GPU is not at any help at all to the performance? You do realise that for example processes like shader calculations all will go on there and help significantly. Crytek have already stated an example of this for what they did it Ryse. Have you ever wondered why PS4 games are starting to lack AF? AF is a RAM heavy process which doesn't use a lot of GPU time but a hell of a lot of RAM BW for texture streaming because it has to keep filtering the textures. When you have one pool of RAM which also holds the assets, frame buffers and everything the CPU needs you're going to struggle to put aside the BW to be able to perform a decent amount of AF. Not slamming the PS4 here but I'm just outlining some of the advantages eSRAM can have. Obviously there's disadvantages involved.

 

What is this thread? It's already been shown that Destiny and SO has improved significantly after this update so how is it pointless?

[eddman]

Apparently no one exactly realizes what SRAM or eSRAM's main purpose is, and not just in X1.

 

SRAM's main advantage is its very low latency that DRAM can never match; unless MS used a cheaper kind of it.

 

If utilized properly by game developers, the eSRAM should be able to help X1 match PS4 in the memory department.

 

On the CPU side, both consoles are pretty much the same, although X1 seems to have a slight edge thanks to its higher clock speed.

 

The GPU, however, is a totally different matter. PS4's GPU is about 40-45% faster on the hardware side. I don't see how MS could close the gap through software/API changes. Doesn't seem doable.

 

 

In the end though it's not really about the hardware. Consoles were never really and only about the hardware. Look to the past generations. The ones with better hardware were not necessarily the best console. X1 might not be as powerful as the PS4 on the GPU side, but it's good enough. Not great, but very adequate.

 

It comes down to many factors; the controller, the UI, non-gaming features, online features, quantity and quality of games, and many other.

 

Both consoles are quite good in what they do and you won't go wrong with any of them.

[LaP]

Phil Spencer recently said this about DX12

 

 

http://www.dualshockers.com/2014/06/17/phil-spencer-directx-12-not-a-massive-change-for-xbox-one-explains-expectations-from-1st-party-studios/

 

Like the cloud if people do not rein in their expectations realistically, you're only going to let yourself down with unrealistic expectations.

 

It is different than the cloud.

 

The cloud was magical. It was like a product created by Apple. Something that would magically make your games 10x better. To this day outside of things like private servers, physic/weather computations not in relation to gameplay and persistant world features nobody was able to clearly explain me how the cloud would make games better without the latency affecting the gameplay.

 

Now AMD already proved that Mantle can improve the fps specially on systems with average cpu. I think it's not unreasonable to expect a 15% boost because of direct x 12. This said Sony can probably counter this by using Mantle.

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

I have a feeling a whole lot of people around here are going to be really disappointed once it is officially determined just exactly how much more power is going to be achieved by freeing up the Kinect Depth and infrared resources. I think people's expectations are just not realistic whatsoever.

 

If you happen to be in the market for a next gen console, and your one and only criteria is technical specifications, the console you would choose is the PS4. This fact is clear by now to anyone who has no reason or ulterior motives to believe otherwise. While the 10% gained may tighten the gap some, it is not going to completely close it. Anyone who feels otherwise is just delusional. No other way to put it really.

 

If you are in the market for a next gen console and are concerned about which games you prefer, or what your friends are playing on, or any number of the other reasons people purchase consoles, then really just take a look at the exclusives each console has currently and in the future, find out what your friends are going to be playing on, and take it from there. Neither console is the wrong choice if you keep in mind the things that actually make playing games fun.

 

Or if you are fortunate enough, do like I did, and purchase both. This way you get the best that both companies have to offer.

[George P Global Moderator]

If all you want to do is get games that already look good from 900p/60 to 1080p/60 or from 1080p/30 to 1080p/60 then this June XDK update gets you either to your resolution or framerate goal or gets you half way there.  DX12, if it's anything like Mantel performance wise (it could be better or a bit behind) will give you another good boost when it comes to framerate at least, no doubt about it, we've seen what it can do in games using it on AMD cards already. 

 

I mean heck, if we're to believe the numbers then if all developers had were 90% of the GPU to work with and could get 900p/60 out of their games now then as MS has said with the June XDK, having access to 100% of the GPU should be enough to get you the extra 180 lines, I don't see how it wouldn't. 

 

There's also the fact that they're going to keep working on other things, more optimization and so on.  The final res and frame goal isn't something so distant they can't match it with the June update plus the future DX12 update.   We're already seeing progress as developers work on the hardware more, more 900p games and so on, it's not like every game is stuck at 720p and hasn't been able to go higher. 

 

Only time will tell but again, the goal isn't that far out ahead that you can't hit it.

[Guest]

There isn't any real value in either console doing 4K

 

Sure there is. Didn't you get the memo? Interactive movies are the next-gen games.

 

I guess the devs / pubs didn't get the other memo that we had interactive movies on the PC in the 80s and 90s.

[JonnyLH]

If you are in the market for a next gen console and are concerned about which games you prefer, or what your friends are playing on, or any number of the other reasons people purchase consoles, then really just take a look at the exclusives each console has currently and in the future, find out what your friends are going to be playing on, and take it from there. Neither console is the wrong choice if you keep in mind the things that actually make playing games fun.

This. Can't emphasis this enough. People pick consoles based on what they like and what their friends play. If you pick the PS4 because it's GPU is stronger and that's what you like then, go you.

 

I don't understand why this has blown up as much as it has. Anything which increases the resource available for developers is good. To me it seems the only people who are complaining about "the gap closing" are people who primarily voice for Sony. People who are techy and own X1s understand it has the slightly weaker GPU. 

 

There is advantages to the X1 to the PS4 although, this is what people don't understand. There is a device which offloads all audio processing from the CPU, eSRAM having some very beneficial advantages for the GPU. It isn't all in the favour of the PS4 per se. There's just a grade difference between the GPUs.

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

Spencer has said himself even the move to DX12 won't increase the performance much, but it does make sense to free to 10% resources up depending on what type of game you're making.

 

Unfortunately with the change comes confusion, as seen in the news yesterday from Harrison/Lobb/Spencer all adding to the story with some conflicting insight. Unless in the know about these things, gamers aren't going to understand why certain Kinect features aren't responding. The examples they gave included ID sign in and gestures, but voice commands will always be active. I suppose they could make developers add a splash screen notice at the start of their games.

 

Either way, the OS footprint will reduce further still as the console matures. That's nothing new for any console, but resourcement management vs brute strength is an uphill battle, especially when the other console is making it's own resource / SDK changes.

[BajiRav]

It seem that Microsoft has been boosting the GPU speed on the console to try to keep up the performance of the PS4 because of the DDR5 ram. I don't see this a big deal to get it as fast as ps4 because it can do 1080p at 30fps while PS4 does it at 60fps with small drops at times. It's great that Microsoft want to get more power out of the system but both can't do 4k gaming and I can see these boost will burn/crash the system.

 

If X1 is 1080p@30fps, then PS4 won't be able to do 1080p@60fps for the same IQ. PS4 hardware is not twice as powerful as X1. 

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

 

The Witcher 900/30 XB1

 

 

 

The Witcher 1080/30 PS4

 

 

 

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-06-18-witcher-3-e3-gameplay-demo-combat-was-deliberately-easy-cd-projekt-says

 

 

So much for the "Sony PR differentiation" comment. If that's the case, why feed into it with your own game's status.

 

Developers...Say one thing, do the opposite.

[vcfan]

the 10% reservation release is actually a pretty big boost for performance. it was a time sliced reservation,so imagine your car engine performance where it runs 90% then goes completely dead for the next 10%. a car with a 10% smaller engine running 100% of the time would perform much better.

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

It sure sounds like they are still working on the release as they seem adamant about trying to hit 1080p on the X1. Unlike most announcements like this, this one seems to be the least set in stone.

Also, its interesting that they claim that both MS and Sony consider 900p to be the sweet spot. That is the first I have heard that to be claimed. If they are both telling developers that, that is an interesting bit of news.

Unfortunately no evidence to back it up, GAF have been wondering if Sony have even mentioned 900p at all.

[trooper11]

I have a feeling a whole lot of people around here are going to be really disappointed once it is officially determined just exactly how much more power is going to be achieved by freeing up the Kinect Depth and infrared resources. I think people's expectations are just not realistic whatsoever.

 

If you happen to be in the market for a next gen console, and your one and only criteria is technical specifications, the console you would choose is the PS4. This fact is clear by now to anyone who has no reason or ulterior motives to believe otherwise. While the 10% gained may tighten the gap some, it is not going to completely close it. Anyone who feels otherwise is just delusional. No other way to put it really.

 

I agree with the sentiment that no one should be over playing this, but lets not completely push it aside either.

If games are going from 900p to 1080p because of this relatively small change, then that is a good thing.

It just seems like the news surrounding this has been followed by some over playing it and some attacking it, both reaching unreasonable conclusions. There is nothing but good news here, with better looking games being the result. Leave out all of the console war bs and your left with that positive reality. Yes, you do have to remind some people that the ps4 is still more powerful, but I have to say that it seems like around here, most people posting are not claiming these improvements will result in parity or and advantage for the X1. There is a minority of posters that have said that, but I really don't think the numbers are very high. Most people around here seem to accept how things are and focus on the X1 improving instead of comparing it to the ps4.

 

Spencer has said himself even the move to DX12 won't increase the performance much, but it does make sense to free to 10% resources up depending on what type of game you're making.

 

Unfortunately with the change comes confusion, as seen in the news yesterday from Harrison/Lobb/Spencer all adding to the story with some conflicting insight. Unless in the know about these things, gamers aren't going to understand why certain Kinect features aren't responding. The examples they gave included ID sign in and gestures, but voice commands will always be active. I suppose they could make developers add a splash screen notice at the start of their games.

This should really not be shocking to anyone though. If your going to remove the requirement for reserving resources attached to Kinect, your going to lose functionality. This is what people wanted, so that means something else is lost in the process.

Losing things like ID sign-in, controller pairing, and controller profile switching is pretty crappy in my opinion, but hey, this is a casualty of the choice that most wanted to see happen.

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

This should really not be shocking to anyone though. If your going to remove the requirement for reserving resources attached to Kinect, your going to lose functionality. This is what people wanted, so that means something else is lost in the process.

Losing things like ID sign-in, controller pairing, and controller profile switching is pretty crappy in my opinion, but hey, this is a casualty of the choice that most wanted to see happen.

 

Like I say, not shocking for those in the know, but unless you announce it at the start of the games, Joe Bloggs isn't going to understand why his Kinect which is plugged in can do 1 thing and not another. "June 2014 SDK" might as well be a foreign language. It probably won't affect the majority of gamers now because early adopters / sales are the hardcore / in the know. Fast forward 2/3/4 years and little Timmy is going to be confused though :p It can be easily worked around with a splash screen or printed on the back of the box though.

[trooper11]

Unfortunately no evidence to back it up, GAF have been wondering if Sony have even mentioned 900p at all.

It wouldn't be shocking to find out that both might have been hinting to developers that 900p was a good target. Of course this would be kept very quiet considering how the public would react to it.

Still, without more sources, its just one developer saying it.

[George P Global Moderator]

You only lose things at select periods of time, a game dev can request the resources and lose a few things in the core game experience but once you're, say, back at the main screen those can turn back on.  The developers have control, and they all come back on once you go back to the dash automatically, which shows that it's a flexible setting.  So say for a fighting or sports game where you'd want controller tracking for player one and two, that can come back on when you're at the main screen/character select screen and so on, when controllers changing hands is going to happen, and not in the middle of a match when it's not.

 

I wouldn't worry about it at all, the key features that get used the most, the voice commands, are still there regardless.

[trooper11]

Like I say, not shocking for those in the know, but unless you announce it at the start of the games, Joe Bloggs isn't going to understand why his Kinect which is plugged in can do 1 thing and not another. "June 2014 SDK" might as well be a foreign language. It probably won't affect the majority of gamers now because early adopters / sales are the hardcore / in the know. Fast forward 2/3/4 years and little Timmy is going to be confused though :p It can be easily worked around with a splash screen or printed on the back of the box though.

Well if most users weren't interested in using Kinect in the first place, then removing these features won't really matter. I kind of doubt that there will suddenly be an influx of users that want to use it.

So any warning would be for the smaller group that already uses those features, since they are use to them being universally available.

I wouldn't worry about it at all, the key features that get used the most, the voice commands, are still there regardless.

I can think of one scenario where it will be disappointing for me. When someone else walks into the room while I'm playing, that person will no longer be logged in automatically.

[George P Global Moderator]

I can think of one scenario where it will be disappointing for me. When someone else walks into the room while I'm playing, that person will no longer be logged in automatically.

 

 

Until you head back to the dashboard or maybe, if the developer codes it right, pause the game or go to the main menu for some reason.  Again, they're flexible, it's not either always on or always off in a game, they're on the fly.

[George P Global Moderator]

900p games tend to look very close to their 1080p counterparts as has been said a few times, it really comes down to what the post processing turns out to be more than the res at this point.  But this game is a long way off, Feb 2015, who knows what will happen by then.