PlayStation 4 CPU, HDD and More Detailed

iGG: We haven’t heard much of the PlayStation 4 since its announcement last month. At their GDC conference, Sony went into great detail about the hardware packed inside the console.

[aCasualGamer]

Could someone explain to me in layman terms what this means for game development tech wise?

[AnyaShroud]

low end CPU, low to mid end GPU. 8GB of RAM is great, but I would rather trade 4GB of that for better CPU/GPU

[Blackdeath_663]

i don't think that a fair way of putting it. when compared to pc's consoles always have and always will be low to mid. a console that can preform just as well or better than a high end pc will have to become a pc in its self thus defeating the purpose of a game console in the first place. compared to a pc of the same price range the ps4 does indeed have great specs (assuming that the ps4 will be cheaper than ps3 at launch).

[ABizzel1]

The CPU is really a high-end tablet CPU, but low-end when compared to PC standards. 8-cores helps somewhat, but it's still low-end, which is okay for a console since it's not running tons of programs like Microsoft Office, After Effects, and other music, video, or image editing software. And it doesn't use a OS with a large print like Windows.

The GPU is mid-range and will pick up most of the slack for the CPU when it comes to games and other task.

8GB GDDR5 RAM is amazing, and means loading will be minimal, textures will be HD, and more environmental items (trees, gravel, etc...) and effects will make games look that much better.

@AnyaShroud

How do you expect them to improve upon the GPU? It's borderline an HD7970m which is currently AMD's best mobile GPU on the market. The only way to improve would be to build a custom mobile GPU (which would raise the price of the console significantly) or go with a traditional GPU 7870+ which would turn the console into the size of a desktop.

I agree the CPU could be better, but the GPU is the best they could do for the price and size. I 100% back the GPU.

[Cueil]

Windows hasn't had a large footprint since Vista... Win7 and 8 both have substantially lower footprints... 8's kernel is smaller then the current Linux kernel

[sikbeta]

RAM is not just for games, all the social + web surf + other stuff will need RAM as well, that's why PS4 will ship with 8GB of RAM and even if they bump'd the Specs = put a better GPU in there, lack of RAM would limit the more powerful GPU + all the non gaming stuff would take resources to the gaming side.

[Ju]

a) i7 does not run 8 HW threads 4+4 hyper threaded with performance dropping steep after 6+ threads (in real world scenarios i7 saturates at 4, gets minor benefit in non memory intensive application up to 6 (around +20%) and drops off fast after neglecting any benefit when reaching 8 threads). Neither does AMD's 8xx0 (8int, 4float), btw.

b) bottom of high end cards rather than low-mid. But yeah, sure we are defining 3x XFire/SLI high end now, right? 2+GB 7850 is beyond $200 these days and plays most if not all games just fine in 1080p today.

[ProjectVulcan]

I said it and yet again nobody listened to me- The CPU isn't a native octo core.

It is indeed just two quad core Jaguars bolted together, hence the 2mb cache per 4 cores. 2 x 4 cores. It won't be as fast as a custom native 8 core.

The GPU is alright but it won't be blowing anything decent away on PC by the time PS4 does arrive.

[Ju]

This is irrelevant. 2x4 cores which run 8 threads is 8 cores running 8 threads. The only problem this setup has, is that it has 2 cache areas which are non coherent. Which again is irrelevant because it runs a 176GB/s GDDR5 RAM interface. Worst case scenario is a context switch from "block a" to "block b" has to go accros GDDR5. We know nothing about cache line locking or what else the OS can do to prevent such a scenario (e.g. lock cores to threads). It indeed has 8 cores running 8 independent threads unlike any currently known desktop CPU.

[miso_Jeff]

I don't know why people still bring this up. Even PC developers have said that's the consoles don't have to as high end as PC's because they don't have to be. They're able to get the most of it.

Take the same PC and GPU in the PS4 and put it into a PC and see if they get the same performance. You need an Overly Powerful PC to run games like Crysis 3. If you took the CPU and GPU from a PC that runs Crysis 3 on ULTRA and put it into a Playstation it would produce visuals a multitude times better than what Crysis 3 is outputting. Because the closed system of a console will allow developers to get the most out of the CPU and GPU.

[ProjectVulcan]

It isn't irrelevant when you have non coherent cache linked to high latency GDDR5 memory optimised for graphics hardware....citing main memory bandwidth is what is irrelevant when it comes to CPU performance!

CPUs don't require hugh bandwidth. They require low latency access, which is precisely what the point of on die cache actually is- reducing the amount of times the CPU has to 'fetch' off the die from much 'slower' (high latency) memory.

Lets face it, the CPU is a bit pisher than it would have been had it been a native octo core. Not really significantly more, but I was right.

Againzzzz........

I wish the guy who banged on about HSA crap to me forever was here to answer why the chip is clearly less integrated than your average ARM based smartphone.

AMD dumped what they had on one die with minimal reworking. It wasn't complicated.

It is a cheap way of making a decent console. Sony want the costs to be low, that is plainly priority here.

Its all about the costs to manufacture people, Sony aren't going to break the bank on this machine like they did with PS3.

Oh and yeah, Win 8 comfortably runs inside less than a gigabyte of RAM. Its a major fallacy that Windows is some giant memory hog for games.

[Ju]

^^ you referring to me? This coming from someone who instead of having a civil conversation threw words at me and blocked me not giving me a chance to respond? How do you have that many bubbles is beyond me. But some people sure like what you have to say. It sounds smart but doesn't really go beyond the usually crap. I actually agree more often with you than not, but it's kind of weird that you can't handle critics well.

[BitbyDeath]

"Windows hasn't had a large footprint since Vista..."

Having 2GB of resources tied up is pretty heavy imo

Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster with support for PAE, NX, and SSE2
RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) (32-bit) or 2 GB (64-bit)

http://windows.microsoft.co...

[cayleee]

Nevermind Ju he has no clue what he is on about most of the time.

Comparing a Tablet CPU to a Desktop CPU and cheering at the cores is laughable at best. AMD has 8 cores on their Desktop CPUs, The same 8 cores most of the time get beaten by 4 Core Intel CPUs even in heavily threaded applications, its barely a contest. What would make you think 8 tablet cores would stand any chance then? Its funny how desperate Ju can sometimes get to defend whats going into PlayStation hardware.

In anycase Ju, if the PS4 CPU/GPU are so good why are games like BF4 being planned for 720p. Looks like Low to mid range PC settings to me.

[stragomccloud]

Agreed. A console doesn't need that much ram. Especially since it is high latency GDDR5 ram. Good for GPU, but bad for CPU.

The CPU isn't even fast enough to really use all of that ram efficiently.

I feel like because of the bottleneck of the PS3 being its' limited RAM, they wanted to make sure it wasn't their worst enemy again. So they over compensated with the RAM, creating two other bottlenecks. The CPU and the GPU.

Oh Sony. No doubt you're going to have good games, but can you please balance your consoles?

[stragomccloud]

@ABizzel1
If you really think the GPU is from the 7900 series keep dreaming.
It's a mobile version, same features, less bandwidth, and... you know what, you can't even compare it to a fully fledged 7900 series GPU at all.

[reynod]

@stragomccloud

Completely agreed.

The 8Gigs of RAM is more of a marketing stunt. Ms had it so Sony decided to include that since RAM is cheap and people tend to see these figures. As to a lay man RAM can mean alot when deciding on hardware.

Its a known fact even today most PC games barely consume 1.5Gigs of VRAM even when running at 1080p.

Now all the 8Gigs wont be going to the game that understood, the break up might look a bit like this:

OS: 1-2 Gigs
Game: 1-2 Gigs.

This would leave anywhere between 4-6 Gigs for the VRAM.

Its already known the next KZ SF is known to only use 1.4Gigs of VRAM. Why dont Sony use more of it?

Simple fact is its the GPU that becomes to bottleneck, Hell even the RAM speed would probably end up becoming a bottleneck if more VRAM was used. Hence i would think Sony did go overboard with the RAM, It was most like a marketing stunt in order to look on par with MS and most likely games wont be using more than 1.5-2gigs as VRAM.

[TheXonySbox]

Low end CPU low end GPU 8gb ram lolol.

Talk about a crappy computer; thats all consoles are becoming more and more like computers. They may as well become desktops next gen to avoid all the confusion. 'Entry Level' gaming desktops.

[JackBNimble]

Anyone who thinks that the 7850 is a low or even med range card is either very arrogant or just plane stupid.

You can run most games on high or ultra with a 7850, maybe not with crisis3 and a few other select games.

The ps4 doesn't need to be a supercomputer to run games at the 7850 level. Hell, I only have a 7770 1gb gddr5 and 8gb of ddr3 ,and I can still run all of my games on high or ultra, granted I may not be running at 60 fps , but 30 fps with no slow down still looks pretty dam good if you ask me.

[Ritsujun]

You clowns never fail to amaze me with these pointless arguments on the internet.

[MaxXAttaxX]

They're custom built and games/software can be optimized right down to the metal. You can't optimize games the same way on PC.
Consoles DON'T need to match high-end PC specs.

I don't know why PC fanboys feel so insecure that they need to downplay the PS4 all the time.

[Letros]

@reynod

Here's a good example of 4 core Intels, beating 8 core AMDs in gaming. Sorry but AMD just hasn't been able to make an efficient CPU architecture since the K8(10 years ago) AMD, "Always MeDiocre"

http://www.anandtech.com/sh...

[badz149]

sure you can call the PS4 low end everything but as KZSF has shown it gets its job done pretty well and from the gameplay footage shown of it, there's nothing "low end" about it and try coming in here and say otherwise and you'll look kinda dumb!

Sony never said that the PS4 is aiming to be a high end gaming machine, right? so why are you people ditching it and compare it with current top of the crop PC GPU when stats from steam shows majority of pc gamers only have mid-range PCs!

what funny is, many of you guys here sound like you know how to actually design a better console than Sony when all you do is just buy pc parts and put them together! there's no "designing" part of what you do so just don't try to sound too smart over here like you know everything!

in the end, it comes down to games and like the PS3, people were saying the 8800GTX circles rounds over it but have you ever successfully play any Sony made games like Uncharted, GoW, GT5 etc on it? will it play The Last of Us? can your pc with triple SLI GTX680 or XFire HD7990 play them too? same goes for the 360. have your uber PC able to play Halo 3, Reach & 4 yet? what about Gears 2 and 3? I don't think so! yeah...Wii might have already been successfully emulated and then some but there's still none for PS3 and 360 and the next gen is already upon us!

so, this just shows that power is not everything and it's definitely nothing to discount the PS4 for! as far as we know, the PS4 is already a huge step forward from the PS3 in the right direction! knowing Sony, games not available on PC are definitely coming! A LOT OF THEM! THAT alone make the PS4 worth it!

[forcefullpower]

You guys know absolutely nothing about how hardware works together. Just because an Intel 4 core beats an 8 core amd means nothing as the is purely limited by both the windows os and that developers cannot pinpoint specific cores or pairs of cores because there is no same PC on the market that are identical.

Also the fact that the ps4 is an apu removes so many bottlenecks between ram,CPU & GPU that has plagued the PC market for years.

[aaron5829]

didnt know there are so many experts here. ya know. you guys should go work for MS or Sony. instead of wasting your time arguing here.

[ProjectVulcan]

I have bubbles because I just have common sense Ju.

@Ju

The fact that I blocked you, was between you and me and not really necessary to be made public.

Your motivations for making it public show the world exactly WHY you would be someone worth blocking, because you'll only rabbit on pointlessly, wasting my time, even when you have been shot down by simple reasoning and facts.

What exactly do you assume to gain by stating publicly I blocked you?? Sympathy?? Or just ridiculous self publicity.

Just then, why are you even talking about the amount of bandwidth PS4 has when that isn't really relevant to CPU performance beyond a relatively modest amount? Top end x86 CPUs that are preposterously faster than PS4's CPU operate at that level well inside 25GB/s raw bandwidth!!

Latency matters more....which is precisely what I said.

This isn't the usual crap.

It is unfortunate what I have to say often comes where I have to show that some of your points are in reality pointless, but thats how I operate on here.

I don't deceive people or suffer fools gladly. I say it how it is, how it REALLY is.

You should respect that instead of throwing your toys out the pram at me in public.

All I stated was that the CPU is non native and you jump all over it defensively saying that is irrelevant, NO, it isn't, its just a fact! Then you go off on some massive tangent about raw memory bandwidth.

Seriously, you might wanna rethink a lot of your comments carefully before you post them and try to stop yourself insulting other members.

[Computersaysno]

Saying 7850 is midrange isnt arrogant or stupid, denying it is!!!!

7850 sits in the middle of the current AMD range.

starting at the top- 7990, 7970 gigahertz, 7970, 7950 boost, 7950, 7870XT, 7870 gigahertz, then finally we get to 7850. Its 7 cards from the top and 8 from the bottom. You cant even buy the bottom 5 separately from a shop because they are OEM and only come fitted to pre built machines.

Lets bear in mind that PS4 aint here yet until this current lineup is axed and replaced with faster parts!

Windows 8 might have a recommended 2gb but it idles in much less if you need it to.

Windows 8 uses what is there. If you have 8GB there, it can expand and use it to be faster. If it doesnt have all that then it folds itself down to less than 1GB most of the time.

If you play a game on it you can shut everything down as you should if you game on Pc and it will be less than 1gb.

[NeverEnding1989]

Stop trolling downandout

PS4 is equivalent to a 2 year old PC
http://www.extremetech.com/...

[Shikoro]

Yeah, nVidia is going to say good things about the PS4 hardware even though Sony ditched them, right?

(._. )

[Reverent]

"Stop trolling"

You're one to talk, Mr. One Bubble.

[TheXonySbox]

One bubbles normally talk truth; fanboys debubble people who burst their bubbles.

Nvidia are hardware masters; their words are pure fact. PS4 is pathetic hardware wise, better off getting a PC for graphics & BF4 1080P @ 60fps too.

[dirthurts]

Uh, No.
My computer is 3 years old and smokes this thing...
Although I still want one. It's looking like a solid console, but it won't replace my pc anytime soon, or ever, really.

[Campy da Camper]

What people are forgetting about is each dev can code knowing exactly what hardware the end user will have in a ps4. Yes, PC can outperform with obviously better specs but the catch is not every PC has the same number of cores, ram, etc. The devs have to code for a lowest common denominator and those with stronger hardware will get a boost in performance but its not the most efficient.

Ps4 devs KNOW what amount of speed they can rely on and how much memory they can tap. This alone will make the coding much more efficient than a PC game. So its not fair to just say well PC has this processor and ps4 has this one so its worse. It might be smaller but it will be used more efficiently.

[shoddy]

All rhe guys complaint the ps4 is a mid range PC should try to
Build your high end PC under $1000.

[SkyGamer]

I can build one that will outperform for under 600 bucks.

COOLER MASTER Elite 430 RC-430-KWN1 39.99

MSI N650-MD1GD5/OC GeForce GTX 650 79.99 w/$75 in bonuses

WD Blue WD2500AAKX 250GB SATA 6.0Gb/s 59.99

Diablotek PHD Series PHD450 450W 19.99

Silicon Power 8GB (2 x 4GB)DDR3 1600 56.99

BIOSTAR H61MLV2 LGA 1155 39.99

LG Black 12X Blu-ray Combo Drive SATA 49.99

Intel Core i5-3350P Ivy Bridge 3.1GHz (3.3GHz Turbo) 154.99

Windows 7 64 bit OEM 89.99

Total 591.91

and you can photoshop, web design, browser games, mmo's, office, and much more.....

[shoddy]

nice try dude.
I said high end meaning intel I7 pc under a grand.

and ps4 got 8gb ddr5 not ddr3 foo.

and then you can't play Sony great exclusive.

[andibandit]

@shoddy
Weak comeback, he pwned you pretty hard with a well constructed post.

[BlackTar187]

i rebuke my statement . i don't care lol

[JoGam]

It means... The PS4 is no George Foreman grill.

[Jazz4108]

We have not seen it yet so that comment is a little premature.

[Omni-Tool]

I bet it would still cook better than the George Foreman Grill.

[joeorc]

well in very simple terms:

the PS4's on board CPU cache Memory Alone on the CPU/ has enough cache mem to through put instruction's on a per core basis that would choke the PS3, the xbox360 and the Wii. to put this in perspective there is 2MB of on board Cache per every 4 core's so that is 512 KB of Cache per core.

Think about this the xbox360 had 1 MB of total on board cache to share with all three of its core's and the PS3 had 512 KB for the Main PPE while each SPE core had 256 KB of Local Store Memory!

And We have seen what each one of those systems that the developer's can do to make great games on those platforms!

the fact that there is 4MB of cache memory on board the PS4 is quite a bit. More than 2 times that of the PS3.

Then take into account that unlike the PS3 that if the rumor is true about this being a 3D stacked System on a chip is true, than the 8GB of unified system+gpu ram will be stacked right on the same die as the CPU and GPU thus very fast system without more processing step cycles thus a very low latency for its instructions due to everything being right on the same die with a High speed wide bandwidth connection Bus the PS4 would be able to do quite well in game development for easy multi-thread management.

there is still very little we know how its design is set up without a PCB board xray but chipworks will be ready soon enough to give out their finding's.

[Bigpappy]

360 has 10MB of embedded RAM in the die to use as cache. Just needed to express that 1 point.

[Ol_G]

wii u has 32mb edram and 3mb on cpu 2mb for main core and a half for the other two so it wont be underpowered compared to sony's cpu

[Blackhawk3]

If Sony can pull off the looks and graphics they do currently with the much weaker ps3 I have high hopes for whats in store. I think some of the PC elitists are downplaying a system built specifically for games a bit too much... This is coming from someone with a gaming PC. I prefer the leisure playing on a console. Looking forward to what can be done on this system.

[_Q_]

Extremely cheap common tools as opposed to specialized hardware and software this is not cheap?

Dev kits work on win7 machines(commonplace in a software company these days) Integration of Visual studios 2010+ is great because many people learn these languages and toolsets formally quite a bit. In short opens PS4 game development to more groups.

[nukeitall]

I will tell you what it means... jack squat!

Hardware isn't pushing software very much anymore and whatever Sony pushes out, it is the software that will define it. So wait to see what they do with the platform, rather than these artificially misleading specs that console manufacturers try to push on you.

It's the end result that matter!

[Tsar4ever01]

So, The ps4 DOES SUPPORT DX11(*Microsoft owned API propriety) & Native OPEN_GL 4.0. What the hell does the word "Beyond" fit in? Is it beyond dx11.1?

And yeah? A head-set for every console, just like I suggested they should do in posts ways back.

About the "reformed" DS4 controller, I assume the touch pad's 2 point control means your 2 thumbs can be used at the same time. And the pad's click function kinda tells me that the T-pad is a cross between a laptop touch-pad and PC-mouse's R/L click buttons, except it's 1 BIG mouse click button.

And last,about this Very large HDD sony's touting. How many bids out there that this hdd is a Seagate Hybrid SSHD. starting at either 500gb or 750gb upto 1TB. Bets anyone? Nothing serious, just bragging rights. I'm calling it.

http://www.seagate.com/file...

http://www.youtube.com/v/7H...

[kevnb]

console games arent nearly as optimized as people seem to think. They get a small boost and need less ram but lets not kid ourselves now. Not to mention pc games get optimzed over time, unlike console games that dont improve much after day 1. You can play almost any multiplat game on a 7800 at around console performance, because thats around console power. But why would you want to?

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

Dont let console makers fool you, the 7800 is getting better performance on pc than ps3 here.

[GraveLord]

All you have to know is its 8 to 10 times more powerful than the PS3. Have you heard about how hard it is to make PS3 games? Well, with PS4 its extremely easy.

You're going to see games that have much better graphics and they will run at a stable framerate. You'll see more open-world games, less loading time and expanded online digital content.

[NastyLeftHook0]

hats off to sony

[gedden7]

Damn 1T HDD lol Thats crazy lol how much this will cost $499 Cpu is looking crazy too

[iXenon]

It's only a guess. They only said it will be very, very large

[despair]

considering they offer 500gb drives for current PS3s, I'm thinking that 1 TB is not that big a stretch.

[dragon82]

I have a 1TB drive in my PS3 now. Its not really that crazy if you have a ton of digital titles.

[SonyNGP]

>Allows featured BEYOND DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.0

inb4thissparksanotherdumbcons olevspcfanboywar

lol get a load of shutUpAndTakeMyMoney and his typical console kiddy argument. BUBUBUBT SALES!!!

[despair]

Hey there's an acronym for that "IBTSADCVPFW", much easier to use.

[MysticStrummer]

You're the one coming off like a kid, kid.

[MuhammadJA]

lol, that's what happens when ignorant console gamers talk about specs. They always go off topic to support their argument. "BUTBUTBUT EXCLUIVES!!!" "BUTBUTBUT GDDR5!!!!" "IT'S ALL ABOUT TEH GAMES, TEH GAMES!!11ONE!1"

[T2]

Uh .... Its not a bout games ? Why tf would you buy a gameconsole ? To type a report ? Nothing matters but games , all this bs is just pissing in the wind

[JewyMcJew]

They are using Microsoft's Visual Studio to develop PS4 games?!

I have to give Sony credit. While PS3 was all about ego, PS4 is all about practicality. The fact that they are utilizing tools from their sworn enemy demonstrates Sony's unprecedented humility.

As a (non-game) programmer I must say, Visual Studio is a great development environment... or at least it was 4 years ago. Will someone let Microsoft know that color-blind design effects productivity!!

[Bladesfist]

As opposed to what, visual studio is the only decent solution. I bet a load of programmers used it on the PS3 as well. What is your point? Plus don't you just love the caps lock menus.

[ArmrdChaos]

Just because Sony and Microsoft compete in the same arena doesn't make them "sworn enemies". That is a view that the man-child mentality on this site has created... (the proverbial fight to the death). Sony is obviously trying to address the developer issues they had last time around. It has nothing to do about humility and everything to do with business.

[T2]

Plus we learned that developers wont be going out of their way to cater to one console so best case is that all consoles have power to run great games

[Bladesfist]

Infact after a little looking around. Sony distributes Vcproj files with the PS3 SDK.

http://thatotherdev.com/201...

[LightofDarkness]

Visual Studio is still likely the best IDE available. And you can customize the colour scheme of just about every element to your liking, so I don't know what that last bit was about.

[Bahpomet---]

sony cares about me ill give them ma money

[Jaqen_Hghar]

well they care about getting your money, but they're trying to get it the right way. By giving you better games and hardware than the competition and giving you more value through services like PS+

[MysticStrummer]

Exactly. Sony is a business so they want to make money, but there's a right way to go about it and they seem better at that than most. When they do lose their way, they correct it before long, which is why they've been around for so long. They'll keep getting my money until they give me a reason to stop. PS fan until further notice. Peace and good gaming to all, even the bitter trolls. Maybe if they got some good gaming they wouldn't be quite so bitter.

EDIT - You keep dropping in and out of character. Stop it. I enjoy the Game of Thrones bit.

[Andreex]

Oh yes Sony best company evaaaar! They found a cure for cancer and aids, they literally give you money and do your laundry too!

[EffectO]

Nothing new except Windows development.

Windows is not free...

[leogets]

throwing my money at the screen but nothings happening,psh

[pete007]

ps4 will sure be an excellent Platform for those who cannot afford a 1000euro pc,
this time gess they took the easy to develop way of things, like x360 did, and a pc philosophy aproach,
letz say, we, pc gamers do not share the same ideas here, you consos only need a low rez texture, 25/30 fps screen teared game with good cinematics and art design to make it goty awarded, us, on the other hand, we need the higher possible image fidelity as to run on silky 60fps vsyncd full hd or higher with 16x anti aliasing, and stop right there..... i do not game on a 20" screen, cuz i have a dual screen and aero is on a 23"led and game outputs on a 60" lg plasma new generation fullhd, so dont give me the crap "we dont need AA nor 1080p" cause on this set up im ashamed to connect my 360 (sold my ps3 fat before buying)
gess this time the generation jump is smaller then before and this marketing crap 8gb gddr5 is only there so people have something to talk about. first time in history that ram take the crown as technological pinnacle (only on your heads psfnbyz) ps3´s ram is wayyyyy faster than this ddr3 graphics variation, latency queen, and not even needed since tyextures can be compressed but in this particular case its better to have bandwidht to compensate average cpu/gpu.
just to finish, it´s not bad for a 400 euro mark,

[Bladesfist]

I wish people would stop hyping this up to be something it is not. It is low end hardware. Why the need to constantly tell us it is high end or better than current PCs. It makes no sense. Tablet CPU + mid range GPU does not = high end.

[DarkHeroZX]

lol no tablet CPU even uses the same CPU as the PS4. Its basically laptop CPU which isn't all bad.

[Rageanitus]

agreed to a certain extent.

Most ppl all of a sudden praise AMD because its coming to console. Not saying it weak, but the GPU and CPU are derived from mobile PC. If you look at the PC front Intel combo with NVIDIA has had the upper edge for quite sometime now

[susanto1228]

DarkHeroZX is right it's probably more like Laptop LOW end hardware...and low end meaning pricing point to keep the price down...will it outperform a GTX 670? probably not but Sony needs to keep the price down

the difference between 4gb and 8gb in a console isn't that much if they want to reduce cost they should bring it down to a 4gb and I see people posting 8 cores...it's probably more like 8 Hyperthreaded cores and more like a quadcore CPU.

[joeorc]

" I see people posting 8 cores...it's probably more like 8 Hyperthreaded cores and more like a quadcore CPU."

No these are in fact, full Processing core's this is not like the CPU's of OLD, the advancement in Multi-core processor's has developed for quite a while. Which you may not have known, but all new multi-core chip's made for the past 4 to 5 year's in pretty much every Consumer electronic's are all true core processor's. even your smartphones and Tablets with Multi-core's are running true core Processor's. Even the SPE's that are inside the PS3 are in fact true processing core's. they Have Direct DMA to each other's Local Store on each SPE to each SPE. the day of the single core processor is pretty much coming to an end.

due to mainly overcoming the limit's of moore's law. Mult-core was a solution but there will be a time when that will reach it's limit's. Now its 3D STACKED TSV's with multiple side 3D Stacked Chip's SOC's.

[DarkHeroZX]

Its 8 hardware cores. And why should they bring the ram down? That's what should stay up.

[AdventurelessHero]

anyone know if the ps4 would support SSD? i'm looking forward to swap it for faster load time.

[Cryptcuzz]

That is a good questions and I surely hope they do.

Then again, I am sure load times with the PS4 should be much faster then that found on current gen systems.

It could help out with reading and writing media such as videos back and forth from the system, I would believe.

[DwightOwen]

It would be nice for the PS4 to offer support for SSDs, but the price all but guarantees they won't ship with the console.

[ninjahunter]

XD
Sony didnt lie, this is pretty much directly compared to a PC architecture. We have the GDDR5 at 256bit, which is PC standard, Has a relatively low-mid power CPU, its not really comparable to any desktop CPU though because on one hand its 8 core, on the other its low power (aka half baked). CPU Caches look standard.... And its 64bit, so you get a little more oomph out of the CPU, but still is standard.

Idk, all im getting from this is that the process to port to PC will be smooth as pie since it is using very standard setups compared to PC. Heck even the performance levels of the CPU and GPU scale well compared to PC. Looks good to me.

[KingKevo]

HDD is very much detailed... As if they didn't say that before guys.

[one2thr]

Are they sure this news came from sony, because I could've sworn that there was going to be a separate ARM based processor that'll focus on running the OS, thus making the PS4 energy efficient and consume less energy whenever its not running a game...

Or do I have to re-read the details Sony mentioned?....

[SephirothX21]

I hope Sony releases their graphics API free of charge so hobbyist developers like me can put their games on PS4.

[Dgander]

This article is bs and fake. What the hell is archetecture x84? Im guessing its x86.....and windows 7 bit???? Was obviously thought up by someone that had no idea what they were talking about.

[chukamachine]

Still love this on PS3.

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

[Bathyj]

Man, that game still looks amazing

[JasonKCK]

its good enough

[DwightOwen]

I'd like to know more about how the controller's touchpad will be used.

[IcicleTrepan]

"HDD Space

Unspecified, but will have “a very large hard drive in every console.” 1TB, anyone?"

Gee, that was amazing information. I'm so glad I read that article.

[Rageanitus]

GPU > CPU > RAM in terms of gaming and bring new tech.
But you need all of them to go up, so one does not bottleneck

[Gamerita]

if it has better hardware than ps3 then pc is going to take many years to match the quality of uncharted 4 on Ps4.

those 1st party studio's of sony are like nintendo they make magic happen on any hardware no matter how weak it was. :)

[Ulf]

Let me boil it down to the important part:

The PS4 CPU has 8 cores, sharing 4 vector units. ALL of them will be in use in EVERY game.

No matter how you cut it, PC titles never count on having 8 cores, and their game engines cannot rely upon getting ownership of *any* core for certain at *any* point during the frame, whereas a console title CAN.

Timing, as they say, is everything. That is doubly true with regards to fixed processors, and OSes that do not schedule random crap to run on a thread that you desperately do not want to have a context switch on.

Also, if Average Joe doesn't have more than two physical cores, what do you do, as a game dev? You design your game around reliance on *only* two cores, and suffer for it.

Fixed architecture for the win. It hardly even matters that this high-end laptop CPU is clocked (lol) slower than some high-end desktop chips. As if that even mattered, in the end, to a PC dev who can't count on anything -- even good thread scheduling on what limited threads may or may *not* be available.

[lovegames718]

Psuedo PC elitists sucking ps4 off already mad at then world that we will be able to play beautiful games like their supposed high end PCs, what gets me the most is that they act like they have these high end OCS when we all know like 90 percent of gamers on of don't have high end PCs.

And for the person that mentioned bf4 being 720p on next gem so what? Killzone is already confirmed to be 1080p native on ps4 and its a launch title wooooooo

[CaulkSlap]

I don't know why my fellow PC gamers try to slam PS4 so much. PS4 is as good as we could possibly expect for a $300-400 price point. Plus I think everyone is vastly underestimating what an APU and modern PC hardware is capable of when put in a dedicated console.

We are going on 8 years of hardware advancement but with game design being held to 2005 hardware. PC has enjoyed much better graphical fidelity but for big budget multiplats the core game is restricted by old consoles. I welcome a long overdue upgrade and hope we'll finally see a leap forward in game design. A new baseline for developers is a damned good thing for PC gamers because we'll finally be able to really exercise out $300+ cards. The graphical upgrade won't be what's important this time around, it's everything else better hardware can allow for in games

[Axe99]

Very well said CaulkSlap - the PS4 will (like every console before it) easily perform greater than its specs when compared with PCs, _and_ the step up in console hardware will make it worthwhile for devs to create features that will take advantage of current PC hardware (as, like it or lump it, there aren't enough PC gamers with high-end rigs to justify AAA development for them alone). Everyone wins, and everyone gets to go home smiling :). As a PC and console gamer myself, the PS4 sounds excellent :D.

[Felonycarclub8]

I can't wait for my ps4, it's going to look sweet next to his three older brothers ps3,ps2 and ps1. I can't wait to see how it looks.

[Talamak]

With all due respect, I cannot comprehend why PC gamers must always throw specs and other info at console gamers...it's a shame, to see all the arguing and insecurity...I mean if you have a more"capable" PC than the PS4 will ever be, WHY CARE TO COMMENT ON AN ARTICLE ABOUT THE PS4? Personally I'm excited as a primarily console gamer (because Id rather use my PC's resources for music production)...it's just getting old reading responses on Ps4 articles decreeing the PC's superiority (IT'S GETTING ANNOYING)....I just wonder if the PC Gaming Zealots will have to shit on the Xbox 720's parade whenever more info is released?

[DivineAssault]

i think its a great console.. Its not a power house PC but then again i cant blame em for that.. I dont want a super expensive console.. I think its more than sufficient for nx gen engines.. PS4 will have some amazing looking/running software

[black911]

So what does all this mean? Could someone Sum it up in one sentence?

[SonyAddict]

This is a PlayStation article so gtfo you PC nerds!.

[PETE1985]

I dont have a great knowledge of hardware, however I dont think comparing specs directly to a pc is strictly fair. The most recent games on the current gen consoles look really good considering the age of the hardware. I would imagine that a game developer when making a game would prefer everyone in the target audience had identical hardware because they can max out the graphics for that hardware without alienting people who might not have a really powerful piece of kit. Of course there are some games for pc that when on the highest settings will look amazing but if you were to compare launch games on the current consoles with games today there is a huge difference in visual quality.I think next gen console games will look a lot better than a pc with identical specs.

[InTheZoneAC]

the HDD needs at least 1tb with every game being available for download and most likely will be A LOT bigger than the current games.

I'm willing to be people have to upgrade to 2tb drives about halfway through it's life because they'll be out of space.

[L4NCEYJSC]

Look

It is simple for me. I love gaming and I have a lot of hope for the PS4 and new XBOX (not a fanboy of either).

However from what I'm reading above and with my limited spec knowledge I'm going to put it down as simple as this.

If the PS4 graphics looks even only slightly poorer than the PC when compared to the latest BF4 trailer I will not be getting one and will be converting to PC. I knwo the PC will always be far superior but BF3 on the PS3 and Xbox fell well short of the PC version.

I'm married and my loving wife doesn't mind me playing the console in the living room as she will browse on the laptop (usually spending my money) the only reason I haven't got a PC is due to I will have to put it in the spare bedroom and she will never see me.

As said I'm not into the spec side but the above post suggest it aint going to be that great.

[TheKayle1]

Developer Enviroment

Windows 7-bit
Tools are full integrated into Visual Studio 2010 and 2012

directx and this is why ms will be always one step ahead

i laught at the bold beyond directx11....from when they dictate the api developers use?...sony that is ms playground...better u stop to say bs like this as the old 2tf cell ps3 and concentrate urself to dont make another 2.9 billions lost this year

[towelie1288]

my GTX 680MX shits out PS4
and planetside 2 runs circles around BF4 but the game still looks sweet wouldn't mind playing it
i am just really sick of EA and orign and all their shit they pull

[Red_Devilz]

So, since it is a PC architecture, can we play PC games on PS4?

[imchuckbass]

Lol no, but you might be able to play PS4 games on PC as emulation is a lot easier

Imagine that, God of War running natively at 2560x1600 at 60fps... everything being loaded instantly off a blistering fast SSD

Meanwhile, stick the disc in your ps4, it'll piddle along at 30fps, dip to 20fps when a big monster appears, and run at a (amazing by 1997 standards) 720p resolution

[iPad]

I understand you're a PC guy. But do you really have to come out like a douchebag?

[Red_Devilz]

Personally I won't care for PS4 emulation.

I'd rather be interested in PC-emulation on PS4 so that I can play classic PC-only games (like age of mythology, Age of empires etc) on PS4.

[thecowsaysmoo]

What these pc gamers seems to not understand is game developers knows what ps4 specs are so therefore can make a game optimized around the system where as game developers don't know your pc specs is going to be since every pc is pretty much different so they have to make their game around multiple computers and not taking full advantage of your specific computer. Also, ps4 OS isn't going to take up as much resource as a pc.

[imchuckbass]

They DO understand the optimisation, the point they're making is that even with this optimisation, there's a limit because the hardware is so weak (tablet cpu, mid range gpu from 2012 expected to last 6 years)

Case in point, battlefield 4 720p (and probably 30fps)

You can only optimise on weak specs so much

[thecowsaysmoo]

360 has considerable weak gpu ,cpu compare to today standards and only 512 mb of ram and yet can run games like gears of war 3 and battle field 3. For a pc to run this game on PAR with the 360 it needs A LOT more powerful hardware. Hell to run most current gen games on a pc you need at least 2gb of ram.

[AlienFodder]

"Tessellation, adding geometric detail to smooth edges or create more organic shapes"

This, to me, is probably the best new feature. I've always hated how curves often tend to look jagged in most games. This will go a long way to make characters look more realistic.

[kB0]

People need to understand, hardware comes second to optimizing. Look at how much they got out of 7 year old hard ware...

The only disappointment is that PC game still comes second to consoles, and they tend to get unopitmized versions of a game usually....or just a straight prorper port but with no added visuals...other than higher textures and frame rates.

I would like to see games being developed on PC then dumbed down for consoles this generation....lets see the PCs properly pushed!!!!

Either way, I will be buying PS4 day....since I have a Vita, and I want to have remote play :) I hope Sony isn't F*cking with it's customers again about remote play....

[terrordactyl]

How it compares to pc is irrelevant.

The PS4 just needs to be slightly better specced than the Xbox720. That is all it needs to do to be successful. Slightly better, but at the same price and it will clean up. Sony will be considered the next gen winner if it beats Microsoft in sales.

I really doubt that Sony cares about $1000 pc's, as that's a different market. Sony makes pc's and laptops itself, it's irrelevent as far as PS4 is concerned.

[OniXRuleZ]

Next gen i will laf my ass off, wen ill be playing next gen GAMES on MY PS 4 for only 400/500€... wen other's like Pc gamer's need 1000+€ !

[terrordactyl]

PC gamers should be happy about next gen consoles - not slamming them at every chance.

PS4 allows higher specced games to be released on pc as well - it is now financially viable to develop a game to a higher technical standard.

[hazelamy]

don't really care about the processors and gpus and whatnot, i leave that stuff to people who know what it all means.

but i'd like to know what size hard drive it'll come with, that's something i do understand.

with even multi format titles coming on bluray, probably, next gen the games are likely to be bigger, as in how much data not the scope of the games.
so a big HDD is going to be essential if they're going to also be selling those games on the machines online stores.

[SpinalRemains138]

PC gamers are like wine tasters.
Every single one swears they're an expert, and they speak as if they are in possession of some esoteric knowledge. It's absurd at this point.

Spouting off about specs means nothing. We aren't playing specs, and we certainly aren't gaming on your uber cool 2k dollar rig.

Sometimes the cheap wine actually tastes better. Ie....the games on consoles are indeed better than PC games. If PC was the best option, we would all be gaming on them. We aren't because consoles are better for gaming. Deal w/ it.

[Schawk]

3 words

"Weak As Shit" now back to my PC

HAHAH SONY FUKTARD DRONES will sap up this £500 rip off hehehe

[taquito]

the ps4 is a tablet/laptop/console

its not even close to a desktop in power, let alone a modern gaming pc

it has;

tablet cpu
mobile gpu
desktop ram

that does not even come close to equaling a gaming rig...

and please kindly get FU$%ing real, the os overhead on the ps4 will be about the same if not worse than a pc running win7/win8

i am downloading a game on steam, typing this, my email is up, and i have two other browsing tabs open (weather channel and news)

i am using less than 2% of my i7 2600, 1.5 gb of my 16gb ram and my gtx 680 is at 0% load and is using 9% of its power just to run the fan i would assume

u think the ps4 will let you have 3 tabs of web browsing, while downloading a game, checking your email and typing on a website comment section and still only use 2% of that crappy tablet cpu, heck.......i bet any money the cpu usage will be through the roof just for a few os/browsing tasks

and the gpu is a crappy mobile part, itll be maxed day one

[Porkround]

Can't wait to see what the ps4 can do. And it has a pc architecture. That is all. It is optimized to play games. Not be a pc. So we might see games that far exceed our imagination. Or not.

[isyourhouseonfire]

LOL more paper specs by Sony! How about an actual, ya know, piece of HARDWARE?

[Tommymk2]

Who cares as long as we get great games sony never disappoints

[ARESWARLORD]

Wii U CPU

The Wii U CPU is made by IBM, based on its PowerPC CPU architecture, with all new instructions and features tailored for the Wii U system. The IBM Wii U CPU is made at 45nm and is based on the POWER7 architecture, which supports from 4 to 8 cores and 2-4 MB of L3 cache, although there are versions of the CPU with as much as 32 MB of cache. Nintendo has been rumored to use a scaled down CPU with just 3 cores @ 3 GHz, in order to keep power consumption low.

Wii U graphics

Wii U graphics are powered by a newer generation of AMD’s ATI graphics processor (GPU). Little is known about the Wii U graphics chip, but it will be based on AMD’s recent Radeon HD design, and it will be made at 40nm. The graphics and CPU are expected to share the same memory (RAM), but will also include its own frame buffer of 32 MB. The Wii U graphics technology means that this will be the third time Nintendo works with ATI for the console GPU. The Wii U graphics processor has been in development since 2010, according to reports, and it’s based on the Radeon HD 5000 series technology

[ARESWARLORD]

sounds like the wii U a bit don't it.

[TheKayle1]

ok i think theres a little bit of confusing in the sony users..so let explain

ddr3 and gddr5 (pls call it with their proper names)

"The memory is also fundamentally set up specifically for the application it uses:
System memory (DDR3) benefits from low latency (tight timings) at the expense of bandwidth, GDDR5's case is the opposite. Timings for GDDR5 would seems unbelieveably slow in relation to DDR3, but the speed of VRAM is blazing fast in comparison with desktop RAM- this has resulted from the relative workloads that a CPU and GPU undertake. Latency isn't much of an issue with GPU's since their parallel nature allows them to move to other calculation when latency cycles cause a stall in the current workload/thread. The performance of a graphics card for instance is greatly affected (as a percentage) by altering the internal bandwidth, yet altering the external bandwidth (the PCI-Express bus, say lowering from x16 to x8 or x4 lanes) has a minimal effect. This is because there is a great deal of I/O (textures for examples) that get swapped in and out of VRAM continuously- the nature of a GPU is many parallel computations, whereas a CPU computes in a basically linear way."

so it come like this:

Pros/cons of each:

GDDR5
-Pro: Higher bandwith and speed
-Con: Not made for CPU and OS
-Con: Higher latency
-Con: slight cost upgrade (8GB of GDDR5 costs around $80 or so while DDR3 costs around $50 for 8GB)

DDR3
- Pro: Lower cost
- Pro: Much more reliable (and optimized) with CPU and OS use
- Pro: Lower latency compared to GDDR5
- Con: Lower speeds/bandwith

Being unified pool of ram for cpu/gpu ..sony from a side fixed a big ps3 problem ..gpu bandwith.....but to the other side hoping the cpu would not work a lots ...give a big bottleneck to the cpu..plus from the ps4 diagram leak..theres no sort of accellerator in parallelism between cpu -> ram -> gpu...so for example (is stupid to make u understand)...cpu wanna calculate the a.i. of 10 characters on the screen and at the same time (coz work very fast) want to calcule the position of ur co-players in the game but the ram is not this fast . Imagine the bw of the ps4 like a big highroad ..where u can make pass a BIG BIG truck.i dont know 1T..only in ONE direction.....this could cause stall to the entire system.
In MS r using ddr3 that cause not problem for the cpu but it should cause problems for the gpu for this reason they put on it the 4 move engines..that work as accellerators...
Imagine this like 4 medium size road where each road can have different paths....and a normal truck can take on it 200kg AT THE SAME TIME..of course the gddr5 have still that 200kg more in the truck but have a LOTS of LESS parallelism

No wonder why in the high-end workstations..and high end gaming pcs...still we use a combo of DDR3 and GDDR5...is simply coz work STILL BETTER....until we will not have a stacked memory on the die...that would give us 500gb/s to 1tb/s on both cpu/gpu just with normal ddr

another problems CU's on the cpu usually ..in real life performance lose about 33% of their "on paper" capability

so most of the time big work is still demanded to the cpu......take ur considerations about it

now being serious...sony used that memory coz they cant take the effort of big R&D with the ps4 and this was the simplest solution.....in future chips we will not see anymore type of memory as u see from nvidia and amd

http://www.theregister.co.u...

the future is DRAM stacked ...