AMD: Calling PS4 And Xbox One “PCs In A Box” Is Patently Untrue

PR Lead for Gaming and Enthusiast Graphics at AMD Robert Hallock talks about upcoming technology for PCs, and how close these would sync up to games that we'd be seeing on the Xbox One and PS4.

[PeaSFor]

a pc is already a "pc in a box"

well.... unless you simply put it on a test bench and not a case.

this article is totally futile.

[Eyeco]

I agree, I've never understood this statement, Isn't every single gaming console that has ever, or will ever be released essentially PC's that are dedicated to gaming? They have CPU'S ,GPU'S, mother boards list goes on, all consoles are essentially computers.

Up until now the only thing that's separated consoles from PC's aside from power has always been the games for example WRPG'S, FPS, RTS, almost every western developed games were associated with PC's whereas Japanese developed games were always associated with consoles. (JRPG's, Fighting games, Platformers, side scrollers)

If Japanese gaming was the behemoth in consoles the way it was 15-20 years ago then I highly doubt these statements would have been made. In fact they never were made all those years ago, it's only because the line between games on consoles and PC's has been blurred heavily with the rise of western development houses.

[Sayai jin]

Call them what you want...I'll call them happiness. I'm still gonna be getting them.

[MrCrimson]

That's because most PC owners are smart enough to buy intel.

[Hello_World]

With the direction next gen is headed, you might be smarter to buy AMD now.

[MrCrimson]

http://www.cpubenchmark.net...

Current CPU market shares. If you are saying in terms of performance in games that perhaps AMD would be preferable in the future you may be right if I plan on playing only ported games (which I don't play any.) In terms of overclocking and long lasting performance Intel is second to none. I currently own a sandy bridge model which is two generations old yet performs more than admirably in all requested tasks.

[Hello_World]

Both next gen consoles are using 8 core AMD CPUs. So ALL next gen games will be coded to use hyperthreading like we've seen with a lot of recent titles (notice DICE showing BF4 off on AMD CPU and GPU?)

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

Look at the results for all the modern games with a FX 8350 and 3570K overclocked in the video. Imagine the FX 9370 or new chips coming. Now take into account that all games will be built with AMDs CPU structure in mind.

I built a PC a couple of weeks ago, and I asked a buddy of mine who has a amazing rig(HD 7990), talked about it with some guys at geek squad and a local computer store about their opinion on where PC gaming is heading and which processor I should choose for the long haul into next generation.

All but one guy (who used Intel) said they believed AMD would be at a huge advantage this next generation with applications using hyperthreading more and more, and with both consoles now being made with an AMD 8-core CPU. Intel has always had better single core performance, but gaming is obviously headed in the direction of AMD's CPUs and it's silly to say otherwise.

I'm not saying Intel will struggle, I have no clue what will happen...but both next gen consoles running on AMD CPUs will result in good performance for PC gaming if you too have an AMD CPU.

[awi5951]

Yeah intel are full of themselves and always been way overpriced. If your game runs at 60 fps there isnt any point in paying more.

[Dasteru]

Actually the truly smart ones know to only buy a CPU that is powerful enough not to bottleneck whatever GPU they get.

90% of the performance advantage of Intel over AMD is in exclsuive features such as hyper threading, which no game is actually capable of utilizing. Benchmark after benchmark have proven that the best Intel CPUs provide about a 2-3fps tops boost over the best AMD CPUs.

[SpecialK]

Actually depending on the use AMD can be a pretty smart choice.

On the lower end you get more cores, which makes AMD CPU's dramatically better in benchmarks for threaded applications such as photoshop, rendering programs etc.

And then the gap between intel and AMD is never more than 2-3fps anyway. getting a CPU that wont bottleneck your graphics card is simple hence why so many people opt for an fx 6300 for cheaper builds.

Plus considering that multi core gaming is only growing, theyre only going to get better and better.

Its all down to cost/preformance really and both get the job done. If your money nop object them an i7 is the way to go, but your getting little gains for serious cash.

[The_Truth_24_7]

It's better than a high end pc in a box.

[Lunarassassin]

I love the Ps4 as much as the next console gamer, but that is one of the most idiotic statements i've seen.

[Corpser]

A high end pc that 1080p 60fps is not a given and can't use pc hi res textures on cod ghost, yeah

[FlameBaitGod]

1080p is old stuff, 2500 x 1600 resolution is where its at

[JsonHenry]

It is using slightly modified off the shelf PC parts and is a x86 platform. Smells like PC to me.

[Hello_World]

They both use APU's, so a weaker tablet-based PC.

[FantasyStar]

That's not true: recall back with the Xbox that was running a modified Geforce 3 GPU, and it was able to play Doom 3 pretty well, compared to a PC at the time that needed at least a Geforce FX GPU to run competently: 'slightly-modified' is an understatement here. If you get into the more nit and grit like Xenos GPU having its own embedded EDRAM for DX10 AA, or the PS3 RSX GPU having a higher GFLOP than the actual G71 core its based on (400 vs 380 >Geforce 7800GTX). The reference cores for the consoles have been modified and tailored to their hardware because running a 'slightly modified' R520 GPU (or the AMD-ATI X1000 series) with a wattage of 203W (at the time) is fucking impossible for a PC at that. I know cause I tried it. The word "patently untrue" is the qualifier here than makes the AMD PR guy's statement true in that specific sense.

If you want to call the X1 a "PC in a box": I'd think its true since it's using the same MinWin kernel that Win 8 uses for PCs/Tablets. For PS4? I'm not so sure...

[awi5951]

Man and that xbox version of doom 3 looked like crap. The gap between pc and console was even wider back then hell i was gaming in HD back then as well lol and at higher rez than 720P.

[AndrewLB]

Yeah. And that only happened because consoles at the time didn't have any of the operating system overhead as found on Windows based machines.

Those days are over though. These new consoles have elaborate operating systems which require 1-2gb of RAM just to operate as well as a certain amount of CPU cycles. The "hardware advantage" that consoles once enjoyed will not be seen on the PS4 or Xbone.

[cunnilumpkin]

I guess they are mid-low end pc's in a box that do not support some the best features of pc's like mods, emulators, backwards compatibility going back to the 1980's, high resolutions such as 1200p, 1400p, 1440p, 1600p, 4k etc

they cannot do office, works, photoshop, make movies, design beats, create art, master your bands concert from last night or fill out job applications, or order your groceries for the week, or submit reports to your boss, or let you book a flight, or do your banking or.......

lol....so sure, I guess they are crappy/weak pc's with 90% of their features ripped out, that are unable to do any of the high end graphical features, that will nickel and dime you for every cent on day one dlc instead of just letting the community mod free things

sure, they are pc's alright...lol

Terrible pc's that are missing 90% of what makes them worth the money

[AceBlazer13]

Get a $400 pc doing all that smoothly for 7-10 years.

[wtopez]

Smoothly!? Like Killzone and that buttery-smooth 30 FPS?

[clrlite]

A lot of PC snobs forget to mention the great games and continual optimization that comes with the PS4.

Also it's unique architecture, etc.

Their bias is so blatantly obvious they usually refute their own statements.

and don't worry, I have a PC too and have been using steam since I had to switch over for Counterstrike.

Different gamers have different preferences and "better" is usually just opinion.

[Sevir]

LOL!!! I think anyone with a brain knows the differences between Consoles and know that the architecture of these machines provide different benefits at the price which greatly out power PC's at that price with similar specs.

These arent high end PC's by a long shot but it isnt really about being in the top specs. The games coming out Developed exclusively on these Next Gen platforms will show the benefits of this verses the cross gen games built on the PS3/Xbox360.

So yes. it is untrue to loop this in as just a PC in a BOX...

These days PC elitist dont play games, as stated above they play Resolution and frame rates over 60fps because the gameplay and story dont matter!

[awi5951]

@Sevir LOL Your full of it.

Any Pc with a 150 dollar graphics card and a 100 dollar quad core at 3G Plus will beat these consoles hands down. IF your Pc has a Pci-E slot you can easily beat down any console with just a 150 dollar upgrade most pc's these days come with quad cores.

[windblowsagain]

Wow you seriously are an idiot. Possibly the biggest i've seen on here.

They are entertainment systems.

They play games/videos/music/etc.

They are not made for office/windows. That's what a PC is for.

I know your probably a child - maybe 12-13 rebelling against the machine.

But there isn't a graphical feature in dx11 that cannot be done on PS4/XBONE.

Stop talking crap.

As for mods. Some are decent, alot are crap./

I don't normally rag on games much, but some of the games that get high scores are boring.

SKYRIM was coma inducing with a crap story and boring npc's. GTA4 again crap story, crap driving physics, awful ports. Best game rockstar made was RDR.

As for emulators - You don't need a powerful pc to run old games, mame,n64,ps1 games. Or even old pc games.

I'm still on my FIRST PS3. Because i look after my shit.

[starchild]

Yes, you know so much better than everybody. Yet half the stuff you said is blatantly false.

Yes, Skyrim is such a crappy game that it is winning game of the year and even game of the generation awards.

Mods are awesome. Yes, not everything is good, but its FREE and a lot of it is VERY good.

And as far as emulators go, yes you can run those really old console emulators on fairly weak PCs, but in order to run PS2 or Wii emulators you need a fairly decent PC.

When it comes to console reliability, I think the record speaks for itself. Tons of people had RROD and YLOD this generation. My Xbox 360 died about a week after I got it and MS fixed it, but it died again about a year later...luckily MS fixed it again. My PS3 didn't die completely, but 2 years ago the GPU became damaged by heat and shows graphical artifacts in many games.

And I take care of my stuff too. I kept my consoles in a well ventilated area and I cleaned them periodically. They just build up too much heat and it isn't dissipated effectively enough by the cooling systems. I have the older models.. 80gb fat PS3 and 60gb launch 360.

I haven't had a single failure on my PC. And even if I did have a failure on my PC I would be able to simply replace the part that went bad.

[cunnilumpkin]

@ aceblazer

show me a console for $1000 that can do everything I said and I would buy it

plus im on my THIRD ps3 and my FOURTH xbox360

shit was NOT smooth for 7-10 years by any stretch of the imagination

you just cannot admit, a console is an awful pc, missing 90% of the features

and in the long run, it will cost you MORE money than an UBER high end pc would

PS4=$400

PSN Plus for 8 years=$400

DLC=$400 in 8 years and still won't get a fraction of what I will with free mods

Games are at least $15 more average=$1500 in 100 games

and that up son, you can build an amazingly high end pc every 4 years for that and still have tons of scratch for games

[JackStraw]

you're so full of sh*t lol. -1 trolling.

[FamilyGuy]

OMG Jack Straw i was just saying the same thing in my head then I scrolled down a bit an see you literally say the exact same thing!

This guy is so full of it!

[Majin-vegeta]

plus im on my THIRD ps3 and my FOURTH xbox360.

Looks like you need to learn to take care of your consoles and put them in open air environments xD.

[AceBlazer13]

Maybe if u treated your consoles as good as your pc you wouldn't be on your 3rd. Considering PC can get ruined just by touching it the wrong way while upgrading.

[Salooh]

I understand if you say it's your 4th xbox but i can't believe you lost more then 1 ps3 . It took my 60GB fat ps3 4 years if not more and then better ps3's released that don't have the same problem .

[Salooh]

The first moment i turned on the 360 my brother asked me to move the console to see how it looked and when i did the disc got a huge circle scratch , there was no warning about that . so i suffered for months until i was able to buy a new game because i was a kid and i had no money at all after i bought it. So no online and no games.

MS didn't fix my first xbox so it's in the garbage. Bought the second one and guess what , no exclusives only kinect.

I had the same experience you had with the ps3 so it's not only sony. I even love sony because of that awful experience. lol

I only bought 2 Ps3 (Only one got ylod), 2 Ps2 ( stayed until the end and sold them), 2 ps1(Same as the ps2) .

I don't disagree but it seems that each had a different experience with these companies :) . Let's agree that both don't care about consumers. :P

[Hicken]

If any of these companies decided to build a dedicated gaming console for $1000 dollars, it'd blow away any similarly priced PC. You can't spend $200 now and buy a PC that matches up to PS3/360; you couldn't have built one at their launch prices when they launched that could do what they could.

And you can't build a PC for the price of next gen consoles that will outperform them.

About your prices: the best part about consoles is not having to drop a grand all at once. Yes, it'll cost you more in the long run, but that's more tolerable to most than paying such a huge sum up front. And you're assuming random things, like how long somebody will pay for Plus, and how many games someone will play, and the prices of those games.

And you don't at all add in the value of Plus; the free games and discounts which turn the service into a NEGATIVE cost over the years- hell, in one year- rather than a flat-out expense.

Your entire argument is a horribly skewed falsehood.

[gamernova]

@ace Oh of course it's smooth. Battlefield is 720 upscaled to 1080p. If I would settle for such mediocrity I would never have to upgrade again lol

[Saints94]

I like consoles but really? That quote is all kinds of wrong.

[Ju]

Looks like someone stepped on the PC fanboys toes here.

He's talking architecture and you can circle jerk as much as you want, there is no PC (or graphics card) which uses eSRAM (or 68GB/s DDR3, for that matter) or a unified pool of 8GB GDDR5. Wake me up when that shows up.

Not talking about performance here - that's everybody's opinion - but simply the way a dev will approach those will differ from how one makes game for a PC.

[younglj01]

agree 100%

With PS4 having the option of keyboard and mouse.I think we could see a lot more PC indie developers going exclusively with Sony in the future...

[Bolts]

Lol a butt load of eSRAM that's pointless because the PS4 is CPU and GPU bottlenecked. Super fast memory and high bandwidth is required when you're running games at Quad HD (1440p) on the PC but...oh never mind. The these nextgen consoles can't even do 1080p as a baseline!

Ten more years at 720p. Sony and Microsoft are you kidding me?? Five years from now tablets are going to destroy these so called "gaming consoles".

[Bladesfist]

Not sure how performance is an opinion. Pretty sure it is a measurement.

[jlo]

Even AMD knows how bad the new consoles are lol

Kinda embarrassing

[Baka-akaB]

People trashing current console forget what most of us had as pcs in 2007 . Sure a few years later we had stuff exploding those for the same price , it's tne evolving nature of pc .

But as far back as 2006-07 ? you most likely didnt have a better pc , well obviosuly not at the same price than say a 360 .

[piffyd]

I had a 8800 gts in 2006 that was $300

it crapped on the ps3 then and still does

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

there it is running bf3 at higher settings than ps3 and higher resolution with better performance

honestly, he has some settings to high and hbao on, I would turn it down a bit more and get 45 average frames for smoothness and it would still be better than what the ps3 version looks like, if you remember dice came right out and said the console verisons of bf3 are at "the lowest possible settings in 704p"

all this crap console only gamers say about "optimizing" and "consoles do more with less" and devs "program to the metal" its all crap, its wishful thinking, its false hope

bf4 is already confirmed to be less than 1080p and it won't have nearly all the pc features

consoles are for people who want the quick fix, its cheaper day one but more expensive in the long run

these are the same people who buy everything on credit, taget charge cards, best buy cards, finance everything

use Rent-A-Center lol.....

in the long run, a console does much less and costs much more and falls apart in 4 years and is obsolete in 2

[JackStraw]

"use rent-a-center" lolstop. please. the trolling is killing me.

[IRetrouk]

Dude im a console gamer and dont buy anything on credit, thats a mugs game.

[Baka-akaB]

I did insist on it in my post and yet you gloss over it . You've just said it yourself , your 8800gts was 300$ .. Does it sound like a pc at the same price than a 360 ? Nope

Does it also sounds like the bulk of the steam gamer back in that era ? Hell no and it's easy to check .

"consoles are for people who want the quick fix, its cheaper day one but more expensive in the long run "

I'm not contradicting you there , even if you guys vastly exagerate , a pc is cheaper in the long run . But consoles do have their advantages and so long as they got their own set of games , they aint going anywhere that's all

[awi5951]

The ATI 4870 that was 150 dollars at Ps3 and Xbox 360 launch was 5 times more powerful than both consoles. I had a crap dell pc back then but that card maxed every game out but crysis and it still ran that at 30 fps on high.

All games that came out oblivion, mass effect, dragon age, battlefield BAd company 2, bioshock, Batman arkham asylum, left 4 dead games, portal, dead space, The call of duty games and so many other games ran at a much higher resolution with max settings and with x4 AA and at 60 fps + and the textures looked far better as well it wasnt close at all on that cheap ass card. So consoles better than pc for cheaper is crap. If you have a pc right now and it has a Pci-e slot you are good to go and a cheap 150 dollar card when these consoles launch will leave them in the dust.

It's just a fact put a 150 dollar card in your pc when these consoles launch and i bet you 100 percent that the PC will look superior.

Check out the deals on Cyberpowerpc sometimes when i upgraded for BF3 and didnt want to build one myself. My PC build was 411 dollars for everything but the graphics card. I spend 200 on a GPU and im running BF3 on ultra at 50 fps @ 1080P for 611 dollars.

And if you build it yourself like i just did with my latest build it would have saved me about 200 bucks. Because you can get single slot motherboards for 60 dollars and quadcores for 100. A computer case for 60, powersource for 65 if its like a 650, 8gigs of ram for 34 to 60. Then you have your choice of a 7950 which is better than whats in the consoles for 250 or a 7850 or 7870 that can be had for 150 to 200 and this is equal or better than the consoles. And when you add it up its less than 600 dollars.

Even if you go with the 7950 thats a 500 dollar computer. Check the prices on Amazon and newegg on Pc parts. If you got the skill you can max games easy. People build for overkill not just to max their games. IF you build just to max your games its costs the same as a new console or cheaper. And if you already have a PC its 200 dollars on a new GPU then its way cheaper than a new console.

[Baka-akaB]

Let's move on from that nonsense .. you guys wanna pretend that the card= the pc and whole cost of the pc , fine i give up .

Most those game you mentioned even came out years after the 360's got released anyway . And again refers back to the BULK of what pc steam users had as machines circa 06 , and then come back pretend they have powerful pc , or that they cost the same price back then .

[medman]

Are people still pc gaming?

[iistuii]

Yep, & whilst you'll be chugging along on B4 medium settings at 720 ill be maxed out playing it as it should be played.

[sGIBMBR]

Only if he stays on current gen platforms.

Next gen consoles run BF4 at 60FPS 1080p... If you're going to troll, be good at it!

[SpecialK]

Actually from what Ive heard BF4 has taken a quality hit on consoles to an extent.

Theres still time left for optimization so Im hoping they sort it out. Id rather less fps on a game like that. Its not exactly a reflex shooter like cod...

HOWEVER it'll smoke any old pc's or anything around the cost of a ps4.

[sorane]

source sGIBMBR?

[awi5951]

@sGIBMBR

Well since im running BF3 at 120 fPS at Max on 1080P i bet your still going to loose on this one bud. Im looking for at least 80 FPS on BF4 if i upgrade its going to be much higher.

[ElementX]

Don't Sony and MS advertise their consoles as computer entertainment devices? I know Sony does for PS3.

[Goodfella78]

hmm me personally i decided to cancel my ps4 pre-order on friday after weighing up the pros and cons £50 a game and paying to play online and £350 for a box that doesnt compare to my pc,gonna crossfire my 7950 instead only £210 for another 7950 much better deal for me but hey im not knocking the ps4 i might still get one down the line but for me this gen pc is priority sorry sony,(awaiting many disagrees)......

[iistuii]

Good decision...

[Mr Tretton]

Yup, if you've got a good PC right now, you're already in next gen.

[BenRage3]

I'm not disagreeing. I basically made a similar decision. I cannot afford a 7950 for another year, much less crossfiring two of them, but more power to you. However, I am satisfied with my overclocked 8120 and my 2gb 7850 for now. I weighed the pros and cons the same. I do not want to be nickel and dimed by Microsoft and Sony for online features I get for free on PC and Wii U. I may get a PS4 down the line, but for now I will wait and see how things play out.

[Hello_World]

I made the same decision, except I'm sticking with one HD7950 for a while, it does it's job really well by its self....and by overclocking just a little its literally a 7970!

[kingduqc]

Hey look, the console maker is saying that consoles aren't obsolete pc. Let's blind fully trust that.

We know the architecture of the GPU: it's the same as the current radeon, We know how many shaders cores they got on the cards and what are the clock speeds are on those.. There is no magic here guys, it will perform in between a 7850 and a 7870. You can go on many website and understand what those two are compare to the other video card: Upper range of the low tier bracket of the video cards released in 2011.

As for the cpu, it's even worst. A slow APU from AMD clocked at under 2.0 Ghz. That's about half the speed clock per clock of any quad core from intel AND it's about half the Core speed too. but it got twice the core count. Clearly lack luster from any CPU released in the past 3-4 years.

That's why some games will run at 30 fps instead of 60 and will run under 1080p in a year or two. Nothing impressive and dev got to cut the corners to achieve that.

If you look in the past: PS3 was considered high end at the release and how it compare today to pc games: don't except magical results from this gen or you will be disappointed.

[windblowsagain]

PS4 cpu is 104gflops.

I5 2500K does about 80-90.

PS4 has a better ram setup.

It's still a custom piece of kit.

For all those who don't like it, don't buy it.

But when it does come out and games get compared to PC highend, don't moan.

Oh and those BF4 video's were running on PC'S with 3 radeon's in them.

[kingduqc]

Yeah they where running on 3 video card, because they where running in 3k resolution with max settings down sampled to 1080p at 60 fps While recording months before the game is truly optimized...

Ram doesn't affect much performance at all, The gddr5 ram is not made for system ram because of the latency and the speed for it being vram is slow compare to modern gpus.

Gflops is a terrible way to measure how fast and good a cpu is for games it's just a way to crunch numbers. Sure it cna do it fast because of the 8 cores but in a gaming application this isn't really helping that much, You would have to program a lots of things in parallel which is hard to do and not really efficient AND the fact stays the same: It's horribly clocked at like 2.0 ghz when modern cpu are more around 4.0-4.5ghz + intel got way better IPC (Instruction per clock)

that whole "custum kit" Is just a new apu not quite ready for desktop and an old gpu fitted for the thermal of the console

[AceBlazer13]

If PC is so elite why do you people find it necessary to compare them to consoles? When was the last time a pc exclusive won GOTY? Why do consoles get all the hype? You can't go over to a friend's house and jump into a game of fifa or cod if he's on pc.

[Hassassin]

Actually I can (and do) play FIFA on PC with friends (and several controllers).
It runs much smoother, and everyone agrees it looks better.

Edit: Also this, http://en.wikipedia.org/wik... , most GOTY are multiplats or Nintendo exclusives

[AceBlazer13]

let me repeat the question. when was the last time a pc exclusive won goty ?

[sorane]

^^

hahaha using some pointless mass media crap to judge things. The same people give Britney Spears and Taylor Swift musician of the year awards. The same people gave a HALO game graphics of the year award last year and UC3 graphics of the year award the same year Crysis 2 and BF3 were released. Don't be blinded by people and awards that mean NOTHING! Stop believing everything you see on MTV and Spike....

[Hassassin]

@AceBlazer13
2010 - Starcraft 2
Not THAT long ago is it?

@sorane
Totally agree, most games with GOTY are games in the hype train of that year

[JunioRS101]

All the people that discredit this article clearly haven't read anything about huMA or UMA architectures.

PS4 (maybe x1 also) actually has architectural ADVANTAGES over a PC, not disadvantages.

Unified Memory Access (which PS4 uses) is something PCs will be adopting in the near future, and is something no PC has as of right now.

Read this article
http://www.theverge.com/201...

So by saying PS4 isn't JUST a pc in a box is correct, because there are considerable advantages over typical PC architecture. Now, this doesn't quite make the PS4 an ultra high end rig, but it is a lot more efficient than many people realize.

This is why the NFS guys were saying that one console is "a lot more powerful than we thought for a long time". They're talking about the Unified Memory Access feature, which in layman's terms, means it has the horsepower of a GPU and the intelligence of a CPU without having to do one process at a time, unlike PCs which have to send information into a gpu process it then send it to the cpu process it then somewhere else. PS4 can do both at once which is a significant factor.

[prodg52]

The whole PC vs console war is silly. You guys know that Sony MAKES PCs right? If they wanted to put the highest GPU/CPU into a game system they could, but it would be crazy expensive and that's not the market they're after. Consoles are meant for easy access, affordability, and ease of use (controller vs kb/m). Game systems don't try to compete with the ever evolving PC standards. Game systems compete with the last gen model (period).

[GraveLord]

PC Gamers are pretty ignorant or just plain blind when it comes to console technology. They don't know the meaning of the words "optimization" and "custom".

We saw 1 or 2 articles saying their using "off-the-shelf" parts and people take it literally.

OT: It looks like AMD finally confirmed PS4 is using hUMA. Let's hope they don't take it back again.

[starchild]

He said UMA (unified memory architecture), not hUMA (heterogeneous uniform memory access). Not the same thing at all.

I know the meaning of optimization and the benefits of developing for a single fixed hardware platform. It WILL give advantages to the consoles over similar spec'd PCs, but it's just that some people overestimate what this can achieve.

It won't suddenly turn consoles into high end PCs. It hasn't in past generations and it won't this generation either.

Already we are getting confirmation of next gen games looking better on PC. Watch Dogs, Call of Duty Ghosts and Assassin's Creed 4 are all going to have advanced graphical assets and features above and beyond the console versions.
http://www.geforce.com/what...
http://www.geforce.com/what...
http://translate.google.de/...

And Battlefield 4 on PC is also being reported to look better than the PS4 version and will run at higher resolutions and framerates, with higher quality texture filtering and anti-aliasing.

[GraveLord]

"Already we are getting confirmation of next gen games looking better on PC."

Which PCs? If you are talking high-end $1000+ PCs, DUH.

Why even make the comparison? This is what makes you guys so annoying. You also bring up "the PC" and you have this attitude like its better than everything else. Here's the truth, in terms of price per performance, next-gen consoles blow away PCs. This price-per-performance advantage only gets bigger over time.

[urwifeminder]

What an insult to pc must admit.

[Holeran]

"and the PlayStation 4’s UMA are all powerful examples of such decisions."

Is this the infamous (HUMA) which in the past few days has been said to exist on PS4 and then not exist and then exist again?

[mmj]

They both feature primarily off the shelf PC hardware, apart from a few customizations such as the memory bandwidth improvements they both feature an embarrassingly low end CPU and mid range GPU's by PC standards.